A/N: Another long absense, my apologies guys.

Last time I checked, this is sitting on around 160 reviews. I'd love to get to 200 in the next 10 chapters. It'd really make my entire day-week-month-year-existence.

Thank you to all the wonderful reviews! I promise, I'm going to try to respond to them from here onwards. You deserve to know just how happy the reviews make me.

Also, I will hopefully be getting around to updating The Very Secret Diaries of New Olympia, probably today or sometime in the next week. I'm still taking ideas for that, so head over to that story and leave me a review, if you so desire.

I'm currently working on a different drabble series - Memoria, for the Young Dracula archive. It's same-same but different in ways to this, and you may enjoy it. Or you may love it. Or you might think meh. Whatever your initial feelings, you should check it out and leave me a review!

Thanks!


Date

Jay had once tried dating other girls.

Well, one other girl. Singular.

Sara sat two tables to his right in English. She was blonde, of average intelligence and probably a little too chatty for his liking. Sara felt the need to babble about the most mundane facts. All. The. Time. At first, it had been a welcoming distraction. Absentminded chatter in the corridors between classes. Her laugh had been nice enough; it made the edges of her lips curve upwards to form the tiniest of dimples.

They weren't really friends; acquaintances at best, really. Yet she'd come up in conversation one day, between Theresa and himself.

Jay wasn't stupid. He saw the way Theresa's eyes narrowed as he talked about Sara. Her jaw set stiffly and she was suddenly colder. The shift in demeanour had been small, but he made a note to remember the effect of discussion of the insignificant girl had on his team mate.

Jealousy, he decided, was a beautiful emotion in Theresa.

Asking Sara out for dinner was much simpler than what he'd pictured it to be. She gushed – there really was no other word for it – as they walked between English and Biology. She gushed about restaurants and she gushed about dresses, and hair, and days and times.

He tried to be charming, he really did. Even when she ordered the most expensive set menu to share. And when she rambled for eight minutes about her older sister's flatmates, and her friend Kirsten's boyfriend's new job at the local supermarket.

It was so normal, it was stifling.

When it came to his time to talk, he found himself mumbling about school and sailing. When she asked about his friends, he shook his head and quickly changed the subject. Too complicated for Sara, he decided. Too complicated for anyone else.

They ended up splitting the bill. He offered to walk her back home. She declined, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder before hailing a cab.

Jay had walked home alone. The lights of the Brownstone were still typically on when he arrived. He found the team sprawled across the lounge room, a trashy zombie-comedy-horror film playing.

He didn't stay. He left quickly, feeling Theresa's knowing smirk follow him to his room. He bolted the door shut and flopped gracelessly onto his bed. He lay there all night, unblinking, staring at his ceiling. Rising sleepless the next morning, he decided to forget the horrible night by burying himself in a painful training session. The Jay solution to everything.

He was three reps into his cardio when Odie wandered in. He settled onto a yoga ball, watching him bemusedly as he finished his drill.

"I take it the night didn't go as you planned?"

Jay sighed. "And what gave that away?"

The teen shrugged nonchalantly. "Sara wasn't your type."

No, Sara wasn't his type. And they both knew who was, in fact, his type. A certain redhead who had no doubt read his mind the moment he'd walked in the door last night. A certain redhead who was the complete opposite of Sara. A certain redhead who, he promised, would never try to make jealous again.

"Nah. She wasn't, was she?"

Odie chuckled. "Glad you're sorting this out now, Jay, aren't-cha?"

In the sweaty air of the gym, Jay vowed to never attempt anything as disastrous as dating again. Ever.