It's a strange thing really, letting a boy love you in secret.
It starts off normal, like going steady in those movies from the 60s Aunt Berta likes so much. He picks you up at eight, grabs the door, buys you a happy meal, and pecks you goodnight on the porch fifteen minutes before curfew. You sneak out of AP Lit to make out on the bleachers behind the baseball field then start dancing on second base just cause. You're weird. He likes that.
Then it becomes you keeping up with his schedule more than yours— first period remedial Algebra, second period U.S. History, third is study hall— and getting good at reading him from across the room. One eyebrow up means he's confused and two means he's about to say something he thinks is clever.
Being loved is crumbled notes with bad handwriting. Coupled glances, no more than three seconds at a time, you know the rules. A smile here or there. Laughter when it's just the two of you. Stolen kisses and waist grabs and jeering from the guys— they're assholes anyways, don't listen to them— and the last row in movie theaters.
You get used to being the back row of places— his car, the parking lot, Home Ec when no one's looking.
You pretend it's your eyes he finds dazzling instead of your legs and let yourself blush when he writes your initials— A&A forever— on the hemming of his jeans with the too-deep blue pen you keep around for occasions like this one.
Letting a boy love you means rubbing your skin raw of any trace of sweat or hair or blemishes and stealing your mother's date night perfume. The bottle, it's still full. You promise yourself that when you're in your 20s and 30s and hot and unbothered and free you'll go through bottles of perfume and lines of men. Like, just, rows of them. Even if you've only ever been with one boy in your entire seventeen years of living.
The thing though is this boy is different. He really is! He notices things, the little things— like that you wore your hair up today (he likes that) and that you seemed a little quiet during chem lab (even though you never talk during chem lab, he sorta just knew something was off) (he just knew) and points out that your lip is swollen again in that puffy, chewed up gross kind of way (you're not kissing other guys are you, he jokes and you both laugh).
Andrew actually listens. And has good taste in music. And he's strong. And weirdly sensitive about his waist line. And underneath all that rough and tough macho big guy on campus Mr. Popular assholishness— shoving freshmen into lockers, talking up other girls at U-Ground, laughing at the fat kids in gym finishing their mile five minutes later than everyone else— underneath all that, Andrew is a boy who loves you.
You.
Or maybe it's a teenage adolescence thing (love and all that) and Allison really is just delusional and hungry and sad and every other synonym there is for being a girl. Because it's been three days since she's last seen Andrew and four since she's last kissed him and it can't be normal to still feel his touch on her cheek, to replay again and again him saying you smell good, like lavender.
a/n - just a little blurb bc i was always interested in what happened to Andrew and Alison after the movie. i always figured it was just a little thing for him. but i started writing and then this turned up. i'm wondering what Andrew's pov looks like. should i turn this into a story? lmk your thoughts!