V
❝Praying for love and paying in naivety.❞ ►PANIC! AT THE DISCO
SOPHIE STOOD STILL, waiting for the urge to pass. She stared at her opponent head on with a triumphant smile and crossed arms. She wasn't about to lose a staring contest to Jack Smith. Her eyes burned, and she could have sworn she began to feel the cold air against her bare eye. Jack looked like he was about to give in as well. He jumped to life suddenly and poked at Sophie's face. She shut her eyes instinctively.
"Ow, you cheater!" She whined, rubbing her now burning eyes. "I thought we agreed on not poking each other. You promised."
Jack leaned back and ran a hair through his untamed brown hair. "Yeah, we did. But I had my fingers crossed, so ha ha. It doesn't count."
Sophie allowed some sort of angered noise to fall past her red lips, "Hmmmmmn! You son of a biscuit!"
Jack stuck his tongue out at her and smirked, leaning forward to press his lips around his straw to get another taste of the vanilla milkshake he ordered. Sophie rolled her eyes and took a sip of her own milkshake. Her face contorted into disgust as the all-too-familiar taste of cherry touched her tastebuds. Jack snickered at her.
"Eww... I hate cherries," Sophie groaned, spitting the cherry onto the napkin in front of her. She mentally face-palmed at herself. So ladylike, Sophie, she thought. Great Job. Jack didn't seem to care. Instead, his head perked up.
"Can I have it?" He asked. The question was innocent enough, but it still slightly disgusted Sophie. That cherry had been in her mouth.
"Sure..." She pushed the napkin over to him, and mumbled under her breath, "nasty vermin."
Jack smiled as he popped the cherry right between his teeth, "You know you love me." His tongue flicked out momentarily to snatch the cherry, then brought the cherry back into his mouth.
Sophie made a 'seriously?' face at him. "So unnecessary," She smiled. She attempted the rest of her milkshake in a few long slurps as Jack did the same. There seemed to be some sort of silent competition between the two but, then again, when wasn't there?
Her stomach quickly filled up with the sugary goodness, and she laid her head back while rubbing her belly. Jack chuckled, shoving his empty cup over with a quirky grin.
He burped, "Bless you."
Sophie gave a distant laugh but didn't bother to ask any questions about her friend's shenanigans. He sat back as well, poising his arms behind his head and relaxing. They sat in silence for what seemed like hours, but it was still enjoyable. That was a pleasant five seconds.
"You got full quickly," Jack breathed. His head was turned upward so that Sophie could barely see his features over the sharp curves of his jawline.
"Hey, we can't all be tall," Sophie sat forward, stretching her arms in front of her. Jack's gaze met hers as he raised an eyebrow at her from behind his sunglasses.
"That is completely irrelevant to this discussion," Jack replied. The check came by and he snatched it before Sophie could even reach out. "I got this, Shortie."
Sophie pouted, "I'm not short!"
Jack's smile returned, "Weren't you the one who was just pointing out how tall I am?"
"Yes, you're tall, I'm a normal height."
"Normal height for a third-grader, maybe," Jack taunted.
Sophie glared at him. Jack sat back with a satisfied expression. The seat behind her back was stiff but reassuring as she tried to steady her breathing. She and Jack had gone to this same ice cream shop since they were old enough to ride bikes. It had grown on them, and they still satisfied their sweet teeth by buying creamy milkshakes.
After Jack had paid off the check, they headed over to the park nearby. The weather was pretty warm, considering it was February. They chained their bikes to a rack and walked over to a tree. Sophie sat down, but Jack adjusted his sunglasses.
"I'll be right back," Jack stated. "Just wait here."
He jogged off to somewhere unknown to Sophie, but that was part of the Jack Smith charm that she loved so much; he was unpredictable. Of course, he was also funny and adorable and handsome, but that's beside the point.
She sat briefly against the tree, which they had practically claimed as their own. On one side was engraved: JS+SG. Jack had carved their initials into that tree back in second grade, on their one-year friendaversary to mark one whole year of being "bestest buddies" so it would be known forever.
Sophie heard something calling to her. Some voice, in a whisper, had been carried by the wind to her ear. I'm sorry.
Sophie rose from her spot and followed the voice. It was almost as if something had taken over her senses so that all she could think about was following it. She was deep in the bushes when she noticed she could be getting tricked.
Look down.
Sophie continued to shut her eyes and stare straight ahead. Chances were, this person was after her head. The voice returned, louder this time, with enough force to shake her eardrums.
I said, look down!
Looking down, Sophie noticed a doll on the ground. It gazed up at her. The porcelain expression it held was enough to shake Sophie's mind up further than it had been earlier, and it did.
Take the drawing...
She reached down and snatched up the paper that the doll had been resting upon. Upon closer inspection, she realized that the drawing was probably a child's. It depicted a woman drawn in all black apart from the red tinting her face. A shiver made its way down Sophie's spine.
Save us...
Sophie watched in horror as the head on the doll slowly turned on its own so that it was facing her. It looked so familiar in a way that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
Save him---
"Hey, Shortie, they ran out of unicorns so I got a Pegasus plushie in---" Jack began to speak, a bit less certain after seeing Sophie's far-from-earth expression. "...Uh... you alright there, Short Stuff?"
With shaking hands, Sophie folded the drawing into one-fourth and stuffed it in her sweater pocket.
"Yeah, I'm fine." She tried changing the subject to avoid any awkward talks. "Are still going to watch the sunset?"
Jack's dubious expression dropped as a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. She loved when he smiled. "Of course!"
Sophie reached for Jack's hand and pulled him along to sit down at the tree they always sat down by whenever they didn't want to put up with the world's nonsense. She loved to enjoy the quieter evenings like these, and who better to enjoy them with than her best friend?
"Can you believe we'll be out of school in one year? Forever?" Jack spoke, breaching the silence first. "High school? Please, it's more like hell school."
Sophie rested her head against the bark of the tree. "Yeah, well, we still have college."
A not-so-dignified groan left Jack's mouth as he hit his head on the bark three times, "Ugh, don't remind me."
"Why do you hate school, anyway?" Sophie asked, lightly picking at the grass to avoid any sort of eye contact. If there was one thing she learned in school, it was that Jack Smith was highly intelligent, but only when it was needed. "You're smart."
"Look at you," Jack chuckled too humorlessly for Sophie's liking. "You've won science fair awards, you have 'A's in all your classes. Heck, you're the teacher's pet. You're calling me smart?"
Calmly, Sophie continued to pick at the grass. She was always smart, but only because she needed to graduate and get a good job in order to make her sisters proud. Thank her jailed mother and her absentee father for leaving that up to her. Jack, however, had a different kind of intelligence than Sophie. She had the knowledge to pass tests. Jack had the knowledge to build entire machines on his own. "I'm not smart in the way you are."
Jack raised an eyebrow at her. "There are different kinds of smartness now?"
"Sure, I can pass tests and I can get good grades, but I can't use my gifts to do important things like you can. That, mi amigo, takes a special kind of smartness."
The two best friends exchanged matching smiles.
Sophie proceeded to compliment him. "Besides, you can get good grades like me, you just choose not to. You're good at a lot of other things, though."
"Like what?" Jack asked, tilting his head.
Being adorable, she thought.
A smile grew on Jack's face, "being adorable, huh?"
Great, she said that out loud. Sophie wanted to bury herself in a hole at that moment because she just had to let that slip. Now he probably thought she was obsessive or even a bit creepy. In her mind, all her chances had been ruined when Jack lowered himself onto his elbows in front os Sophie.
"If anyone's good at being adorable, it's you."
Wait, what?
Sophie was beyond surprised. He just called her adorable. Well, indirectly, of course. Did this mean he returned her feelings? What if he liked her in a romantic way? Or was he just teasing her?
Her gaze momentarily flicked up to his eyes. They seemed to look greener in the setting sunlight. His irises were outlined with gold, his pupils were dilated. However, they trained themselves right back onto hers. His face was simply beautiful.
"I-I'm sorry..." he stammered. "I shouldn't have said that... I don't know what I was---"
"It's fine," Sophie replied, a little too quickly.
Jack's gaze dropped down to her lips, and Sophie's breathing quickened ever so slightly. They were a perfect size and genetics allowed her to hold that shape without any makeup. Her lip color, which was also untouched by makeup, was his favorite shade of pinkish red. In his eyes, she was perfect.
"You have red lips," he muttered. "How have I not noticed that before...?"
She could feel his words bounce off her lips. "You've never been this close before..."
Sophie noticed the faint blush coating his cheeks and felt the heat rise to her own face.
He tested out his boundaries by leaning into Sophie's lips so their noses almost touched and when he got a positive response from her he was more than happy to go in for the kill.
Just before two pairs of lips met in the center, a phone rang louder than church bells. Sophie hoped whoever was calling had a good reason because, if not, she was going to gouge their eyes out. Jack pulled away before she could even feel his lips on her own. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest as she answered the call.
"H-Hello?" She asked, trying to steady her heavy breathing.
"Hey, Sis, just wanted to let you know that they're playing a Hobbit marathon on TV tonight, so if you want to watch, it starts at six," Katherine spoke with too much excitement.
Sophie felt like screaming. Did she miss out on her first kiss for a call about a movie marathon? Count on sisters to make sure her love life was tarnished.
"M'kay, I'll try to be there." She replied. "Love you, bye."
She hung up and looked at Jack. His gaze directed toward the ground told her that she wouldn't be getting kissed anytime soon by him.
"I am so, so, so sorry," He apologized profusely, lifting his head and looking at Sophie with such an embarrassed expression that she felt horrible about this whole ordeal.
Wait, had she just flustered the 'unflusterable' Jack Smith?
"No, it's not your fault," She stammered out. "I just wasn't thinking right and I crossed the line, I know. I shouldn't have---"
"It's my fault too," Jack replied quickly. "Forgive and forget?"
"Forgive and forget."