Kaffeina

Sorry this took such a ridiculous length of time to drop, it's mostly for a variety of reasons but I won't make excuses sorry. If you see any typos please let me know. Some of the spelling during dialogue is intentional. It might've been a wait but please enjoy.

Thanksgiving Vacation

So, considering I hadn’t done much of anything besides read fanfiction for the past several months, I had thanksgiving wide open. Since I hadn’t had much of anything besides some changes of clothes, they’d booked the ticket in an advance. So here I was, hundreds of miles from college and somehow, she was still the main thing on my mind. I sighed as I watched the cars pull up.

Normally I could distract myself by people watching and going over their lives but instead my mind went back to how she was taller than me. Going by the typical standards I was short, for a boy, and maybe average for girls. Not that any of that mattered when she was several inches taller than me. I really needed to stop thinking about that. Shorter girls were best, yeah. So small. And…

I’m lying to myself again. Thankfully, as luck would have it my uncle pulled up just in time to pull me from that thought. Where my aunt was a slimmer woman and age had yet to show much on her face, my uncle’s age showed, but it had always made him look dependable. He gave me a crooked smile as the window rolled down. “All set Kit?”

“Should be,” I answered as I opened the back door to slide my suitcase into the backseat. Upon opening it, I was greeted by the grinning face of Faye McCarthy, my sister. My cousin technically speaking, but all of them insisted on being my sisters, not my cousins. It was sweet and I couldn’t help the smile I gave in return.

“Surprise!” she laughed as she dragged me down into a hug. I returned it, “You’ll sit back here with me, right?” Faye immediately attempted her best puppy eyes impression and I fought back a snort.

“Obviously,” I rolled my eyes, though I could tell none of my sarcasm was getting across based on the fact I knew the smile had never left my face. My sister was such a dork. I wheeled my suitcase to the back of the car.

“Hey!” she called out as the trunk open, “I know that look! You’re thinking it again!”

“Totally not,” I retorted as I tossed my suitcase in.

“You are!”

“Are not.” I heard my uncle chuckling in the front seat as I opened the door to slip into the backseat.

“Fine, a deal then. We both are,” she said, squinting at me out of the corner of her eye before looking away, “Right?”

I snorted, “Okay okay, deal.”

“Perfect,” she said as the engine started up before turning to me, her smile lighting up her face again. “Okay so I have got to tell you about this story I started reading yesterday.”

I nodded, “Of course, what’s it about?”

“Okay, right, so the main character is a relatively meaner guy right, oh it’s a manga by the way, ” as she went on, she moved around quite a bit, Like usual, she talked a lot with her hands too, it was really funny sometimes. “he just looks that way you know? He’s not the nicest person, but he’s not quick to lose his temper.” She smacked the plastic on the back of the seat with her hand as she talked; that was why Faye almost never wore fake nails and kept hers so short. She snapped one of them clean off once, it actually cut her too.

“Well, the school decides to do a play, one of those usual tropes, but this time they have the class pick seven of their classmates to do the main roles, but then class president uses her authority to make the roles system a lottery. And the main character gets the female lead. So, everyone is annoyed, and they want to switch his role, but the president makes a deal. She’ll teach him by himself, and they’ll have someone else practice the role. Whoever does best, according to the teacher, wins.”

“Oh. That’s neat, haven’t heard of that one before,” I ran over a lot of the stories I’d read in my head and couldn’t think of anything. I hadn’t read a ton of these stories before but I’d read some. “Does he go along with it?”

“He hesitates but yeah. He totally has a thing for the class prez too, it’s super obvious ya know?” she waved her hand dismissively, “She goes kind of hard on him at first but after getting the makeup on she’s distracted because he looks way different. She starts treating him nicer and gets friendlier and all that. In the chapter I finished when we pulled up, she admitted that it was easier to talk to him dressed like that because she had trauma from guys or something. He wants to help her so I’m totally expecting the crossdressing thing to go on past the play.”

“Probably, and wouldn’t it be better to try getting used to him dressed as a guy though?” I asked, it just seemed like continuing the crossdressing past the play wasn’t how to help her. “Does he enjoy it or something?”

“I don’t know, he defs said it was nice not having people scared of him. They made it sound like her trauma was like, really graphic or something.”

“Oh… Its mostly because he likes her right?” My mind strayed back to the girl again. I wondered if she had some sort of trauma, I’d seen her around guys sometimes, but they were always in the furthest seat and sometimes a girl sat next to her. For a bit I’d seen her and another girl with that one across from her which made me feel a weird pinching sensation. I focused back on Faye who was staring at me now.

“What?” I asked.

“Spill.”

“What?”

“Spill. Deets. Now.”

“I… What are you talking about?” I frowned.

“Melissa, 4^th grade. Alex, 7^th grade. Tammi, 9^th grade. I know that look, you had it for all of them Kit,” Faye rolled her eyes dramatically before locking eyes with mine. “Now spill.”

“Ok, ok.” I gave a sigh and started filling her in on what had happened at college and how I literally couldn’t get that girl out of my head.

“Okay, first off, you and I are having a movie night tonight and you are absolutely not allowed to touch your phone. Seriously. Second off, you have it pretty bad, but you’re def not stalking her ya know? Let’s unpack that later though, because I know you. You’re too nervous huh?”

“Yeah…” I muttered.

“Okay so like, what has you nervous? Like, not like the whole crush thing, I mean otherwise you know? Cause the butterflies won't go away until you talk to her and actually relax, I know you’d do it if you knew you could, but you couldn’t. So why?”

I opened my mouth to talk and closed it again, looking at Faye. I loved her to death, but she kind of scares me sometimes. How can she even tell? “It’d be creepy and gross.”

“Why?”

“Because it would be? We’ve been eating at the same place for awhile and I haven’t tried talking to her. It’d be even creepier now.” It really would be too, like seriously, we’d been eating at the same place for two months a few times a week and I hadn’t even said anything.

“Okay I just think that makes it more reasonable that you’d talk to her. If that’s the only place especially you know? But okay, again, like, why?”

“I already said.”

“Only like half Kit,” she deadpanned at me, her hand resting next to her face. “So why? Why would it be creepy and weird?”

“Because I’m a guy,” I answered.

Faye went silent and stared at me. I looked back for a second before squirming and looking away. That look again, here we go. “So don’t be then.”

“What?”

“Hey Dad,” Faye leaned through to the front seats, “Can we stop at the store?”

“Sure thing, it’s on the way home anyway,” he laughed, “I’ll call Cora and see if we need anything.”

Okay wait, what had I just gotten myself into here? What’s going on? Faye turned around and winked at me. I shuddered, okay, Faye scares me more often than I’d like to admit even if she is my sister.