Chapter 4: WTF

Hardbeck (22:30) Franky?

frankyfitzfuck (22:51) Rich? You still there?

Hardbeck (22:52) Thank fuck

frankyfitzfuck (22:52) What's up?

Hardbeck (22:52) I don't really know

frankyfitzfuck (22:53) It's your date tomorrow, right?

frankyfitzfuck (22:55) Nervous?

Hardbeck (22:55) Kind of…

frankyfitzfuck (22:56) Okay…

frankyfitzfuck (22:58) You're not giving me a lot to work with here, Hardbeck

Hardbeck (22:59) Grace and I kissed

frankyfitzfuck (22:59) WTF?! Well, finally. And when did this happen?!

Hardbeck (23:00) Huh? No. It was just to help me for the date.

frankyfitzfuck (23:00) Hmm… interesting

Hardbeck (23:01) It really is not a 'Hmmm' situation. That's what happened.

frankyfitzfuck (23:01) Sure. So what's the problem then?

frankyfitzfuck (23:06) Rich?

Hardbeck (23:07) Uh, yeah. Well things might be weird.

frankyfitzfuck (23:08) Probably not, it's Grace. Maybe you should talk to her then, see if she's fine with it.

Hardbeck (23:10) Right, sure. Sounds good, gotta sleep. Talk to you later, alright?

"Rich, what are you doing here?" Grace asks and I stare on, thinking of the best way to tell her why I am here in her room at about 10pm. Why did her asshole of her Dad even let me in anyway?

"I…" Words fail me and she is still standing by her desk in one of those classic type nighties you would probably see in a shit 80's movies (not like I've ever seen one. Okay maybe one, but it was Grace who forced me into it) and she looks confused. The last time I saw her we were in this room, just a few hours ago, and she was basically teaching me how to kiss.

"Are you okay?"

I let out an uneasy breath as I glance around the room, not fully believing that I'm currently here in her room. Why would I even bother coming back here? Is there anything really to say or ask her about earlier?

My eyes finally fall back onto her face and she's looking worried as if she's about to walk right over and hug me. The questions going off in my head fade away when I look at her and no, it's not her who closes the distance between us, it's me.

I reach her in three easy strides, staring down at her as I take her face in my hands. My lips are on hers in the space of seconds. I don't need lessons this time, because kissing Grace is one of the easiest things I've ever known. I lean further into the kiss as I feel her lightly tug on my shirt. After seconds or minutes, she is pulling me on to the bed, straddling me in a way I would never have imagined Grace to do, but now it is going to be imprinted on my mind.

She is leaving delicate, yet powerful kisses on my neck, lightly pulling my shirt upwards. I am overwhelmed by all this and can only lie back and close my eyes. In one easy movement, she has moved from my neck to my ear to lightly nibble on it. I feel her hot breath hit my neck and I involuntarily shudder before she shakily says,

"I want this, you do as well, right?" I nod, feeling her hand travel southwards, and I am left wishing I knew what to do with my awkward as ever hands.

And then the sound of 'Let the Bodies Hit the Floor' begins to boom throughout the room.

"What the –," I start, before my eyes open and I am in my room, Friday morning, with no Grace. That's how it should be.

I lazily hit the alarm off, lying in bed for a second to get my breath back. What the fuck was that? It was like some sort of warped nightmare where in my dream I was actually happy about something horrible happening to me. I mean, eugh, Grace. She's a friend. And friend could kind of be a loose statement in this sense, I was 10 when I met her and she kind of invaded mine and Alo's lives. Invaded it in her own Disney loving way, I guess… Anyway when you've known someone for that long, they just naturally become a part of your life.

But saying that, she has been helpful, I guess, these past few days. Yesterday teaching me how to kiss… Well, it was weird afterwards. I made an excuse to leave and she seemed to want me to go, so now I'm wondering how things will be between us. I need to talk to her really. To see if everything's fine or if she's now obsessed with me. Probably not the latter.

And we're not even going to even fucking touch the subject of that otherworldly nightmare. Alo would be the best person to talk to about odd dreams like that, but telling him I had a dream about Grace? T hat ginger twat would never let me hear the end of it.

Why couldn't I have had this dream about Jade. That's the name of the 'Metal Princess' (as Grace as nicknamed her.) and the person I have a date with tomorrow night. The person who probably should have been in the dream, you know, instead of my 'friend'.

I get ready in some sort of whacked out daze, unable to quite remove the nightmare out of my mind. It scarily isn't exactly troubling me. Well, the fact that I dreamt that to begin with is scaring me, but not the stuff in the dream.

Thirty minutes later and I am descending down the stairs to the pits of the hell a.k.a where my parents are usually present. I grimace as I hear the horrible shriek of Anita calling my name. Even though I try to sneak down the stairs to avoid human interaction, she still manages to hear me. It must be some kind of weird superpower of hers.

"I wanted to ask you," I roll my eyes as she appears from the living room to stand right in front of me.

"Whatever it is it can wait until I'm back from college." I say, taking the final step down the stairs.

"Your Mum's been wanting to talk to you about it all morning, Richard," Great, now Kevin is standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders.

"For fuck's sake." I mutter angrily under my breath before raising my eyebrows, waiting for what it is she wanted to ask me.

"Well, Poppet, I was thinking we could all go to the garden centre tomorrow for a spot of afternoon tea and a wander a-," I'm shaking my head violently before she even gets to finish that train of thought.

"No fucking way," She stops giving me her sickening smile and makes a furious tsk-ing sound.

"Well, why not?"

"Well, Anita, ignoring that it sounds like living hell, I also have a date tomorrow evening, so yeah, no." There's a deafening silence as Anita turns between me and Kevin. She looks extremely confused.

"What? Date? You?" There's a long pause between each question, as she still looks just as confused as before. Kevin, meanwhile, has a small smile growing on his face.

"Date. Yes. Me." I say, answering each of her questions, before reaching into my backpack to pull out my headphones.

"Well, uh, Anita, if Richie has a… date then we should just go by ourselves." For once I am thankful for Kevin trying to get Anita off my case.

"Hmm?" She is still looking at me, still entirely confused, before realizing Kevin is talking to her. She turns to him and back to me once more before saying, "Yes of course… But uh, is it with anyone we know?"

Why do parents like to think they know a lot of teenagers?

"Right, yeah, I forgot you always hang out at Roundview so happen to know most people my age." I say, adjusting the headphones to fit over my head, waiting for this conversation to finally end.

"So it's not Grace?" I stop, not knowing what to do or say at that question. I shake my head slowly, forcing myself to snort in response.

"Why would it ever be Grace?"

Kevin nudges Anita so that silence falls and I can FINALLY make my way to college.

"Okay, okay…" She says, reaching out to hug me, but I walk past it. "Bye sweetie, have a lovely day."

In the middle of Chemistry I get a scrunched up piece of paper thrown at me by Alo. I scowl over in his direction.

"Why do you look like you're off in La La Land?" He whispers extremely loudly, proving yet again that it is possible to fuck up simple tasks. Truth is, as our obese Chemistry teacher discusses safety in the lab, my mind is drifting back to last night's nightmare.

"Thinking about your Metal Princess?" He sniggers and raises his arms to pretend he's making out with someone. I swear sometimes it's like I'm a reluctant babysitter in our friendship. He's the other friend that I've kind of just been stuck with all these years that maybe we're not even friends but we just feel like we are.

I exhale deeply, unsure why exactly I'm about to even talk to him about this matter.

"Look… what if you have a dream, well really a nightmare, because it's that bad, but yeah, a dream about someone you know in real life and it's a -,"

"Wet dream?" I cringe as he once again fails to whisper properly.

"Shut the fuck up, Alo." I hiss quietly at him, ignoring the weird girl who just turned around to shun us with her stare. "And yeah."

"That's normal. I've had loads." This doesn't surprise me.

"Naturally, but with people you, you know, don't like at all?" I ask, still managing to keep up the whispering.

"Yeah, course. I mean there was , that librarian," He's starting to count them all on his fingers while I stare at him with my probably most disgusted face of all time as he lists people well over the suitable MILF age. "That girl from comp who had that monobrow, and there was another one with Mrs.-,"

"Right. Please stop now." I say, shaking my head and giving a visible shudder at what he said before turning back to look at the sheet before me. Alo nudges me though and leans in closer.

"Why? Who were you dreaming about?" He sounds all too eager to hear about it and I know I can definitely not tell him another thing about it.

"Have you seriously never heard of a hypothetical situation, Als?" I say, continuing to look disgusted with him. He looks momentarily confused before shaking his head and turning back to his work.

For the rest of the class I drift in between lab safety and kissing Grace.

Maths and Chemistry. What an amazing productive day I've had. Alo and I are both done with classes for the day and so we are walking down the corridor to most likely get into his van and head to the pub for a bit or go to the farm and watch some zombie movie. I haven't seen Grace all day; this is why I am walking more slowly than usual and keeping an eye out for her. Like Franky said I probably need to talk to her about it.

"Rich?" I blink, turning to Alo who is waving his hand manically in front of my face.

"What?"

"Wow, what the fuck is wrong with you today? You keep spacing out and shit." I am trying to think of some explanation for it, but the next sentence that Alo says makes me stop. "Oh, Grace, there you are."

I swivel my head around to where Alo is staring to see Grace walking over to us and waving.

"Thank fuck, I was thinking I was just stuck with this walking table for the rest of the day." Alo says, before ruffling my hair. I shake him out, trying to look like everything was actually normal.

"Hah," I say, while Grace just smiles at us both. She's acting like everything is normal too. Or maybe she's not acting; maybe it's all just normal to her… Which is good, obviously, because I want everything to be normal as what happened yesterday didn't matter at all.

"Hey boys, where are you both off to?" She asks in her usual chirpy voice.

"Well, we can all go to the pub now. Or the farm." Alo says, looking ready to take off again. See, it really is only one of the two options where we're concerned.

"Ooh, sorry, I've got another class left." I let my gaze drop to the floor, wondering when I'll actually get a chance to say something to her.

"Ugh, Gracey! Ditch it, come with us," Alo whines, so I hit him. He always acts like a puppy in desperate need of attention. It's beyond annoying.

I think of an idea to get Grace alone for a second. I fish out some coins from my pocket and hand them to Alo.

"Get us both a drink from the vending machine then I'll meet you in the van." I can tell he's about to argue, but then he looks down at the coins and must realize it's best not to argue when he'll be getting a free drink out of it.

As he walks away I give a small, slightly awkward and uncomfortable laugh and Grace continues to smile as if she's waiting for me to say something.

"So…?" She eventually says.

"I uhm…" I start off pathetically, beginning to wonder why I even wanted to talk to Grace so badly when I didn't even have anything to say to her.

"I'm actually going to be late for my class," She says, glancing down at the watch on her wrist. She has one of those pink girly, my little fucking pony watches or something that Grace would so obviously have because it's Grace we're talking about here.

"What do you have?" I ask, not even caring about whatever class it is but just needing something to fill the silence between us.

"Music, my teacher's such a sweetheart." She says, with a dreamy sort of smile. I look down at my feet, trying not to think about Grace in the dream from last night.

"You ready for your date tomorrow?" She asks lightly and I look up, nodding slightly.

"Uh yeah."

"Oh, right."

Silence. Long, painful silence. Fuck it.

"Look, Grace, yesterday was...-,"

"Helpful, right? Now you know what to do. I was happy to help, you don't need to thank me." She says all this very quickly that I momentarily forget what I even wanted to say.

"No, uhm… It was, I guess. I mean, it's not weird is it?" She doesn't say anything for a second, instead just stares at me for what feels like minutes. She finally smiles and lets out a weird giggle.

"Rich, don't be silly. Why would it be weird?" I let out an awkward, non-committal laugh as well, as she once again looks down at her watch.

"I really have to go now. Text me the deets on the date tomorrow, okay?" And then she turns around and walks in the opposite direction.

Well, yeah. That settles it then. There's nothing weird between us. Pre-kiss Rich and Grace, Post-kiss Rich and Grace are exactly the same thing. Nothing has changed. And what, this stupid nightmare that's been playing in my head? That's just fucking regular teenage boy hormones that's been messing with my sleeping brain.

Now that it's all been settled and discussed thoroughly with Grace, I can turn my attention to my date which is occurring in just over twenty-four hours. Brilliant.

A/N: Yeah, so this chapter isn't really up to par with my Grace POV chapters, but I felt I couldn't just skip over Rich's confusion here so there it is! More awkwardness and confusion lies ahead for these two!

omg you guys, the reviews are really making me grin and getting my hands to furiously type, you are all stars! Please continue to let me know if you're enjoying it, what you want to see happen etc. etc.

LOVE