...
In Don's opinion, the bet wasn't going as well as he hoped at this point, mostly because Lizzie Scott practically avoids him now, but he still has five weeks, which is a decent amount of time. As stupid as the bet is, Don did want that hundred-dollars so he could prove Pete wrong. He wasn't as bitter over the breakup as he was a week ago, but Audrey had clearly moved on. Her and Michael seemed to be shoving their relationship in everyone's faces (they would make out in front of the entire cafeteria every day at lunch), and to be honest, that bothered Don.
Plus Michael is a total self-obsessed tool (he's caught the guy staring at his reflection in the change rooms), and Don's not afraid to admit that.
All the more reason to win this bet.
"So, have you talked to Lizzie yet?" Pete asks him after football practice one Monday afternoon.
Don shakes his head. "She's been avoiding me for some reason."
"Avoiding you?" Pete rubs his hands together with a mischievous smile. "Man, I can't wait until prom day and see how badly you've screwed up."
Don ignores this. But he knows Pete's right; he really needs to step it up a notch.
Then he has an idea. "Hey Pete, tell me again where Lizzie works."
"What are you, stalking her now?"
"Shut up. Come on, just tell me. You've mentioned it before, I know you know. This bet is supposed to fair, alright? You can't always be having the upper hand."
"Fine. You know Sarah's family friend owns that Chinese restaurant, Wing Yee's or whatever, Lizzie works there on Mondays and Thursdays after school, to help pay for her scholarship or something."
Wing Yee's? Don's been there a few times before with his parents, and he's never noticed her before (the food's mediocre, that's why they order takeout every now and then). She probably just got a job there.
"Thank you, Pete." Don says, playfully slapping Pete on the shoulder then sprinting out of the school.
"Hey, don't think that this puts you any further ahead in the race, Ressler!" Pete calls after him, but he's already gone.
...
He arrives at Wing Yee's exactly two minutes after Lizzie Scott begins her shift.
Don immediately spots Aram sitting by the back counter and waves at him. If he needs Lizzie Scott on his side, he's gonna need her friends too.
"Hey Aram!" he says enthusiastically, offering him a high-five which Aram awkwardly returns.
"Hey, D-Don, what are you doing here?" Aram says, trying to act casual but fails as he almost falls off his stool.
"Um, I came to see Lizzie, actually." he says, shoving his hands into his pockets.
Lizzie, who coincidentally walked out at that moment, freezes and walks backwards into the kitchen.
"Wait!" Don calls, following her as she steps back out with a mop.
"Hey, can't I at least talk to you? You've been avoiding me ever since last Tuesday when you helped me with my calculus!"
At that moment, she whirls around, letting the mop fall to the floor with a loud clang.
"Well maybe I don't want to talk!" Lizzie snaps. "Maybe I don't appreciate you following me around like a stalker! What is your deal with me, anyways! You're the most popular guy in school, why would you even bother talking to someone like me?"
She picks her mop back up and continues to clean the floor, but Don doesn't let it stop there.
"I just want to talk."
"Why, all of a sudden? Why now?" Lizzie asks, setting her mop aside and starts to collect menus from the tables. "I've tutored you before, you know your stuff now, seems that you shouldn't need anything more from me."
Shoot, Don thought. Maybe she's catching on. She's a smart girl.
He can't let that happen.
"I just want to hang out with you, that's all." Don says, following her to the front of the restaurant. "You're cool."
Lizzie scoffs. "Since when was I 'cool'?"
"Hey, listen, I'll make it up to you." Don says, gently grabbing Lizzie's arm. She finally stops moving around, and looks up at him.
He finally has the chance to actually look at her, and she's wearing a black skirt and a collared white shirt with a silly print tie, which is customary for all the waiters to wear, and in his opinion it actually makes her look adorable.
"We should go somewhere." he says firmly. "Together."
Her eyes widen. "Together?"
"Yeah. Except we should go somewhere that you want to go."
She laughs in disbelief and puts her hand on her hip. "Somewhere I want to go?"
"Yeah!" Don says, patting her on the shoulder. "Anywhere that you want."
Lizzie glances over to Aram, who is still sitting on the bar stool. He gives her a thumbs-up, nodding encouragingly.
"Alright." she crosses her arms over her chest. "But there's really no place that we could go-"
"Yeah, there is." Aram interrupts, hopping off the stool and walking towards Don, two tickets in his hand. "Two tickets to see The Front perform tonight at eight."
Lizzie raises her eyebrows. "But Aram, I thought that you really wanted that ticket-"
"Which is now yours. Besides," Aram says, handing one ticket over to Don and the other to Lizzie. "I don't nearly love The Front as much as she does."
"Wow, are you sure?" Don says, looking at Aram. He nods confidently. "Thanks, Aram."
Aram's head whips back to Don, and he's back to his timid-around-Don self. "Oh, y-you're welcome. There's really no need."
Don grins, looking back to Lizzie. "What do you say?"
She nods carefully. "Sure. But my shift-"
"Don't worry. I'll pick you up at seven thirty."
Lizzie smiles a bit. "Thanks, Don."
She walks back to the kitchen, fiercely mouthing something to Aram, who puts his arms up in defeat.
Don chuckles to himself. He has no clue what or who The Front even is, but at least he's finally got Lizzie to go somewhere with him.
...
Turns out The Front is a band, but not some heavy metal one; it's basically an orchestra ("They formed in 1998," Lizzie had excitedly informed him on the drive to the theater. "It consists of like twenty people and they perform all these original instrumental pop songs together.").
Clearly Don has never heard of them before.
Lizzie's a major fan of them (turns out she was listening to one of their songs when Don first met her. She's definitely a bigger music geek than he thought.) and this is her fifth time seeing them live. Aram gets dragged along each time mostly because her dad doesn't let her go alone and nobody else wants to come with her.
Lizzie was getting quite beside herself as the lights in the theater started to dim and the curtain rose. They were sitting in the front row and some of the lights were blinding Don (he clearly doesn't fit in here; most of the audience is made up of hardcore fans, like Lizzie, and music freaks like the ones he sees at school). As for Lizzie, she was having the time of her life and he's never seen her this excited or talkative before.
The Front seemed to be a decent band in Don's opinion, minus the strange multi-colored tye-dyed shirts they were all wearing. The music was good as well and the audience was very much engaged in their performance.
But in their final song, they had randomly picked out a seat number and of course, it was Don's.
He really didn't want to go, but Lizzie was urging him to and he didn't want to spoil her night, so he did.
He was asked to play a solo in their final song by playing any instrument he wanted, and since Don didn't have much of a choice not to, he chose the guitar, mostly because he used to play in high school and it was the only instrument he knew how to play.
Don tried to follow along as well as he could but he failed.
Miserably.
Mostly because he could never play the correct chord at the correct time and it was a song he's never heard before. The other band members tried to keep up with his pace, but he messed up so badly even the band couldn't find a harmony to go along with it.
The audience could clearly tell because they were awkwardly glancing around, so he focused on Lizzie, who was giving him a skeptical look.
He really hoped that there was no one from school in that audience.
Once it was over, he was pretty damn glad, and briefly thanked the band members as he made it back down to his seat as they wrapped it up.
"What you did onstage. . ." Lizzie says on their walk back to the car. "That was. . ."
"Horrible?"
"No. . . it was. . . interesting. I didn't know what to expect."
"Well I'm glad you had fun."
"No, Don. Thanks for coming with me. And doing that. I appreciate it."
They had walked about a block from the theater to the parking lot, and Don had decided it was time to make a move.
After all of that.
"Wait, Lizzie. . ." he takes her hand and gently turns her around to face him.
She looks up at him, her blue eyes wide and alert. "What is it, Don?"
"Your eyes are. . . pretty."
They stand there for a few seconds in the middle of the sidewalk as passers-by walk past them, Lizzie's gaze suddenly becoming piercingly cold.
"Your eyes are pretty. Really? That's what you got?" Lizzie brushes his hand away and walks in the other direction. "Unbelievable."
"What's wrong with that?" Don calls after her.
"This is my fault. You've got to know something's up when the quarterback of the football team starts saying all this stuff-"
"Lizzie-"
"I shouldn't have come here with you. I'll take a taxi home." Lizzie says, turning back to him and even in the dim lighting he can tell her eyes are blazing with something he's never seen before.
He watches her walk even farther away until she's completely disappeared from sight.
Don sighs. He's not even one hundred percent certain of what he did wrong, but he knows one thing.
He's not giving up that easily. Next time he'll get it right, he's sure of it.
...
A/N: Not overly impressed with this chapter but hope you liked it. Anyways I received a suggestion in the reviews that I add Tom Keen in to the mix, and I just wanted to say that I plan to do that very soon! He will certainly make an appearance within the next few chapters. I appreciate that you've all enjoyed this story, and I hope to update again this weekend!