The Heartbreak Club

4. a heart never broken

dedicated to eatmyshorts- for the lovely cover shown above!

Establishing the fact that she was going on a date with Ashton to the rest of the student body had been one thing. Climbing into his car had been another. But now, sitting beside a boy who she barely knew, in his car that was too loud when he fired off of the lights, Willa was starting to wonder exactly what she'd been thinking.

"So since I'm deciding where we're going," Ashton said, "Let's get ice cream."

Willa tried to emphasize the raindrops spraying down her window by holding her hand out in an obvious gesture. She was sure her body temperature was already way below normal with the way her knees were knocking together. "Ice-cream? Today?"

"Do you have a problem with that?" he asked, his face neutral.

"No," she said after a moment. She knew complaining could give him reason to decide that she was getting on his nerves.

To Willa's frustration, Ashton pulled into the first free park he spotted by the shop fronts dotted along main street, despite its distance to the nearest ice-cream parlor. It was like he was testing her as he watched her expression darken in annoyance.

"It's pouring outside," she said, the rain hammering on the windscreen proving her point.

"So?" he said, shrugging and taking the keys from the ignition. "We can just jog through it."

"Jog through it?" Willa asked, looking from his entertained expression to the black leather ankle boots at her feet, which featured a hefty heel that was most certainly not ideal for jogging.

But without another word, he opened the door and stepped out of the car. For a moment she simply sat there, her expression fixed stubbornly ahead as he shut the door behind him. After a moment, her own door opened, and an already dampened Ashton - who had slightly dried during the car ride with the air conditioning - looked at her expectantly.

"Are you getting out of the car or not?"

With a dark look, and some overly-dramatic shivering, Willa got out of the car, wrapping her arms around herself, the damp wool of her V-neck scratching her skin and her boots landing in a puddle.

Her first date with Declan had been everything an awkward first date should have been. It was filled with a nervous tension and the giddiness of butterflies and flushed cheeks. It had involved cringe-worthy kissing in a darkened cinema and whispered flirting in each other's ears. She pretended that it didn't compare to wandering towards the busy ice-cream shop on a freezing cold day, in a school skirt that was too short for the temperature.

"Why exactly do you want ice-cream anyway?" she asked through chattering teeth when they'd finally made it through the heavy glass door of the blue-painted parlor. Ashton was much taller than her, and keeping up with his pace had left her in hurried breaths.