āāā d ļ½”ļ¾ā: *.ā½ .* :āļ¾. āāā
Once she cleaned the mess sheād made by choking on her shake, Annabeth was thankful that her food had come out. She was hungry and needed to eat something. When she was about to dig in and start eating, she noticed that he grabbed a napkin and pen, writing something on it. She was curious as to what he was writing. That is until he handed her the napkin.
āI would love to-ā she paused, feeling as if she sounded too desperate. Honestly, if the two felt this connection with one another, maybe it was fate or something. It was weird, but she wanted to get to the bottom of it. Maybe the more time she spent with him, sheād figure out why they seemed to know each other without having met prior to this interaction.
āIāll check my schedule,ā Annabeth corrected herself, trying to make it seem like she wasnāt too eager to see him again. She was though, for reasons unknown to herself. She wanted to understand why she knew himā why he was familiar. After putting his number into her phone as seaweed brain, she texted the number.
āHey! Itās Annabeth aka wise girl.ā the message read. It was stupid and funny, but it fit. Wise girl.
Why did that name feel so familiar? What couldnāt she remember?
Annabeth began to eat her food, a million thoughts running through her mind.Ā āSorry for, uh, being rude I guess.ā Her words were genuine. She didnāt know why she had the strong impulse to insult him and call him names such as seaweed brain. It wasnāt even clever to her in that moment, yet nothing else seemed right. It fit better to her.
āDo you have any plans for the night?ā She found herself blurting out. It had just slipped out, she wasnāt even sure when sheād be ready to see him again, but yet found herself wanting to see him. It was odd. She wanted to know everything about him, wanted to uncover why she remembered him yet didnāt know him at all. Maybe he was the missing piece in her life that sheād been feeling for a while. Or maybe she was just going mad.
He was making a move. Heād never been too good at making moves--it wasnāt that there hadnāt ever been interest interest (Percy wasnāt blind; he knew heād come out the other side of puberty pretty well off, and his years on the swim team hadnāt hurt), but heād sit there wide-eyed, blinking, unsure how to read the whole thing, afraid to screw it all up. It was easier to play oblivious. No one got hurt that way.
(Right? Right. A nagging feeling in the back of his mind told him that, no, maybe it wasnāt that easy, but he also told that nagging feeling to shut up and bother him later.)
This didnāt feel like making a move, though. This felt like retracing steps heād already taken a million times. This felt like putting a chain of inevitable events into action. For a split second, Percy was afraid that he was wrong, but the look on her face, the curve of her lips, drowned out his nerves. What was that quote from The Office? Something about the shots you didnāt take?
Something about the shots you felt like youād already taken?
And--she didnāt throw a burger at his head. She didnāt run screaming. She said yes.Ā
Holy Hades, she said yes.
(She said sheād check her schedule, Percy, you dumbass. Donāt get ahead of yourself.)
He tried not to watch her type something into her phone, tried to act surprised when his own lit up with a message from an unknown number. He hid his smile poorly, texted back a little owl and thumbs up emoji, and saved her in his phone as wise girl, as requested. If they were committing to this bit, they were committing to it.
āDonāt sweat it,ā he said.Ā āIāve dealt with worse.ā He thought of Smelly Gabe, of Nancy Bobofit and her peanut butter sandwiches, of the dorm of burly jocks whoād terrorized him in high school. Seaweed Brain was a compliment by comparison.Ā
Percy slipped his phone into his back pocket and turned to face her properly. The stool squeaked under him again, determined to ruin whatever momentum they were drumming up.Ā āWell,ā he said. āI was going to watch the paint peel off my ceiling and eat cold pizza. But Iām not married to that.ā