hey. i was doing just fine before i met you,

#1

Bridie’s two classes outside of the Special Ed wing were PE and Cooking. People were talking somewhere in the distance right next to her and she was sourly musing on how embarassing it was to, like, have to wander through the Special Ed halls. Never too many people there so she always felt awkwardly stand out whenever she was wheeling her favorite brown backpack to and from class. Backpack? Backpack... Other people called it a ‘roller’. People were still talking and Bridie began to tune them in bit by bit, straining to slowly readjust her focus.

“-... Mr. Philip’s fault, fucking swear to god.”

“He is so damn lazy with updating his shit on Portal, how was I supposed to know-...?”

Oh, maybe it was both a regular backpack and a roller since it still had straps if she wanted to… Do the whole carrying thing. The others continued to complain about Math teachers. Bridie was still tuning, she contemplated as she thought about her own thinking… cool how that could be a thing. The door to the Study Hall room opened, a poster of really difficult looking math equations and assorted triangles rustled. Bridie thought, to herself, that she didn’t think Mr. Phillips was so bad. Easy on the eyes, soft spoken, upstanding citizen sort… Phillip… Phillips, uh, which one was it again? Maybe she’d mistaken the plural form.

A chair across from her rustled, but Bridie’s head remained tilted upward.

“... Anyways, shut up. I’ll text you the details for the party later.”

Bridie looked down again, finished drinking in the conversation just in time for it to end. Better late than never! Someone was sitting across from her now. Probably the case, right, with the chair scraping around and all. She drunk in details for a moment, thoughtfully obviously chewing on her bottom lip as gears in her head serenely tumbled. Strong jaw, scruffy sort of haircut like he belonged on an album cover with a guitar. Wait. He was kind of cute? Bridie inhaled, a slow inflating of her lungs. Smelled acrid sweet. The innards of her nose tickled like she was going to sneeze. Her heart beat a little faster. Allergy?

Nope, crush. Definitely a crush, this was exactly how Bridie imagined it had to feel and she’d felt stuff just this exhilarating before and… All that, yeah.

Gifted with awareness Bridie’s hand began to tremble, soundlessly drumming over the wood of the table. Unintended, but welcome. She heard her wedding vows resounding somewhere in an otherwise empty head. Oh, but she didn’t have a lot to go for with those, right? ‘I knew I loved you from the first time I imagined how your unshaven face would feel gently caressing over my palm?’ Somehow that didn’t seem poetic. Or maybe it was? Bridie didn’t really get how that whole poetry thing worked, though she guessed it was kind of like song lyrics when they were sung so sweetly like the heart of an earnest girl electrified, beating in fluttering leaps against the bars of its rib cage. Something like that.

He was looking. Wait... Wait! He was looking- specifically, at her! His eyes meeting her own. His eyes brown, simple, understated. Bridie didn’t really process further than that, no need, no point, probably not much brain to work with anyways.

She offered a coy smile and a bold wave.

“Hey! My name’s Bridie.”

#2

Clay
ㅤPeriod 4 Remedial Math (NOTES PAGE 3)

x⁴ + 5x³ㅤx⁴ + 5x³ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ‡‡
x³ - 25x = x³ - 25x

x⁴ + 5x³ wrong
x³ - 25x

remember buy eggs

ㅤx³(x+5)ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤxx0x‡‡
x(x-5)(x+5)

x³ / x = QUOTIENT RULE
ㅤx²ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ$_$
x - 5ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤmr. phillips = phillip phillips

logs are inverses of exponentsㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤdancing for little rain girl
+ because of this terms go from 1 to otherㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤby the drain
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤmotherless child
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤREScue REScue
x=
x = y
y = bˣ =ㅤㅤ
log b(ʸ) = xㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤlike the sun like the sea
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤher eyes and mine we meet
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤb♭ / e ??
'we will pick up tomorrow' - phillips 2017
1 2 and 3 1 2 and 3
so̧҉ǵ̴̛͞͞ for͠͝͏ ͞͏́b̸̡͝r͏͜͟͞͝ḑ͞҉i̵͘͟͞͡éㅤㅤ

six heartstrings and a lonely tune
D♯ -> D?C?
six heartstrings ONE SLURㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤdrum pattern?
six he-art-strings

𝒸𝒽𝑒𝒸𝓀𝑒𝒹 𝒷𝓎
𝐵𝓇𝒾𝒹𝒾𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝓈𝓈𝒷𝑒𝓇𝑔
𝒷𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝒻 𝑀𝓇. 𝒫𝒽𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝓅𝓈 𝒾𝓈 𝒫𝒽𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝓅 𝒫𝒽𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝓅𝓈???

#3

One of the things Bridie was most proud of this year was that Mr. Phillips had said 'Bridie I trust you with helping me grade the papers for one of my classes' and Bridie had been pretty loudly proud of that! Supposedly Bridie was one of the 'better ones' because the others in her classes like Erik weren't so 'manageable' whatever that might have meant, and because she was a 'better one' she got to help out the teachers. What was especially awesome was that helping Mr. Phillips would be good on her resume, which was the thing that Bridie would be turning in when she enlisted! A very important thing, one Bridie was resolved to take good care of once she could find an actual physical copy of it.

A few more idle spins of the slightly chew-marked red ink pen in her hand, until it tapped against her thumbnail.

Whoops, back to work! Mr. Phillip's desk was Mr. Phillip's desk of course, but Bridie was temporarily sitting in the way-too-big teacher's (Mr. Phillip's) chair while Mr. Phillips himself was watching the rest of his class idly chatting. Probably chatting WAY too loud, and that was pretty much entirely against the rule of the letter (somewhere in the class syllabus probably but Bridie didn't have one for this class, because she wasn't actually in this class, it just made sense) but it wasn't Bridie's place to do anything to reprimand all the people talking and being disrespectful. She just had to focus on her work! Her eyes brought the tip of the pen into focus as she honed it in onto the name of the paper she was grading. Clay. Bridie's eyes diverted, she glanced up. He was sitting alone in a corner of the room, staring off into space.

"He looks at you too, you know."

Checked... by... 𝐵𝓇𝒾.. 𝒹𝒾... 𝑒... Bridie still wasn't the best at her cursive because it made her hands sorta cramp but she was trying her hardest to keep practic-

Wait, that had been Mr. Phillip's voice! Oh, she just had to respond, no way she couldn't:

"Hmmm?" She hummed her response, all songbird like.

"Mr. Bronson. Also looks at you."

"Oooh..." Weird thing to bring up, wasn't it? "Of course he looks at me, sir! He has to look at me whenever he turns his work in, it'd be pretty awkward otherwise." And after that Mr. Phillips had that look on his face he sometimes did, usually before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. And then after that Mr. Philips sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"At times besides that, he looks at you."

"Oh. I didn't know." Bridie looked up from her paper. Mr. Phillips wasn't looking at her, but into the distance, but Bridie couldn't follow the arc of Mr. Phillip's gaze. "Hey, sir..? Could I ask you something?" Mr. Phillips grunted, and that wasn't exactly the word 'yes' but Bridie had learned over time that grunts like that also meant yes sometimes, if they didn't mean something else entirely. "What did you do when you had crushes in high school?"

"Isn't that a bit of an intimate question, Mossberg?"

"What do you mean?"

And then there was one of those really big pauses where nobody speaks for a bit and Bridie almost went back to correcting the work on the desk since Mr. Phillips was probably done, but he wasn't:

"I went for it, Mossberg." Bridie's eyebrows scrunched, a second of silence later:

"Went for what?"

"Whoever I was crushing on.

...Not in the 'actually attack them' sense, Mossberg." And Bridie's eyebrows un-scrunched. Silly silly, she'd missed the figurative language or something, probably.

"Oh. Okay!" Made sense! She'd probably have to think more about it later though. She went back to her work. She didn't notice, but she was smiling a bit.

She also didn't notice, but Clay was watching her.

Grumbling to himself 'Bridie probably has a crush on Mr. Phillips, just my fucking luck'.

#4

And yeah, Clay supposed he was over Bridie by now.

It was just, well. Stupid hard to avoid her when they shared a class, and a lunch period, but he'd been doing his best. 'Twas the season, at least, with Homecoming around the corner. Clay's best guess was a bunch of cute and buff (at least, relative to him) dude suitors had materialized from thin air with a certain painfully gorgeous, five-foot something beautiful curls of hair brunette all in their sights. Bridie to fight them off and enjoy a whimsical life, Clay left to suck fumes on the sidelines. He was happy for her, of course, he just wished he still saw her around more... If he had to guess? Their friendship had percolated, oversizzled until it burned and charred grossly on the metaphorical grill.

She always seemed fidgety and distracted in Mr. Phillips class as of late, and he'd been keeping his distance to be respectful. Maybe it was the occasional bout of protracted gazing her way, maybe he'd creeped her out. He'd been trying to watch out for that, but occasionally the awkward side eyes would be instinctual habit, not realized until he'd dried out his eyeballs from the overslow blinking. That's what it felt like, at least, when he thought about it too hard in the lonely hours of the night... buried in his bed, half a pair of earbuds in, listening to guilty pleasure Bublé tracks at a low hissy thrum of a volume.

Okay maybe shit like that was why Bridie was putting the breaks on their friendship?

... Joking. He wasn't that insecure. And Bridie most definitely wasn't that shallow.

Clay had tucked his slightly fat ass (he was starting to pack on the pounds as of late, and unfortunately he wasn't just bulking up) into one of the cafeteria's shoddy plastic chairs, the ones with the family tree's worth of gumming up on the undersides. Three other dudes at the table but on the far side of the circle from him, chatting among themselves and Clay too apathetically polite to bother to eavesdrop. He heard words, whispers, but he definitely didn't commit them to memory. It'd be pretty amoral of him to try even if he wanted to, yeah?

Well, not like he knew. He could contemplate over this soggy two-bites destroyed sandwich all he wanted. The pastrami wasn't going to answer anything on his behalf.

"Hey.. Clay, hi!"

She, apparently, was.

What Clay felt pretty damn creepy about sometimes was that.. he'd moved on, in a sense? Or was the term 'graduated'? He'd asked his two unconditionally reliable friends on this whole earth about it- parents, unfortunately who else- and they'd said it was a perfectly natural thing to do. He'd mentioned Bridie by way of photo- a selfie of the two of them on their final day of summer school smirking, faces barely visible against the glare of the sun at it's zenith- and his parents had mentioned her eyes. To him anyways, her eyes were too obvious. They were unfathomably deep and easy to lose the self as a viewer in, but Clay had appreciated more subtle things about the whole package. Her hair had just this little bounce right at the tail-end curls of each strand when she had enough excitement in her stride, or her lips had a particular way of curling at a harsh angle when she didn't like a certain harsh sound like styrofoam rubbing or whatever. His parents had said that sort of thing was a sign of how much he cared.

... Nah, it was still probably just creepy.

Anyways while he'd been staring blankly Bridie with all her deep eyes and bouncy mane and kinked lips had nonchalantly taken the seat right beside him. His brain, continued to suffer from latency... dial-up, telegram, horseback courier, the message to his lips to do anything that wasn't outright slightly gaping in shock experienced a period of delay.

"... Hey, Bridie. I'm good?"

Two things: he hadn't intended to phrase that like a question and he hadn't even intended to say it at all. Hi was probably enough. Or maybe it was too inoffensive and un-noteworthy?

"I'm glad you are because I totally am too!" There was a pause for breath too small for Clay to even begin to consider accidentally slotting himself in the in-between. "I've been all kinds of, I guess, good with my schedule. It's nice to feel productive," she concluded decisively.

"Yeah, pretty much. Uh, we've been studying The Outsiders in English-" and well, that was one of the classes Bridie was segregated from the rest of the school from, of course Clay had brought it up like the idiot he was and now it was far too late to try and desperately swerve out of his own running mouth's way- "and I've been pretty on board with it."

"Oh, okay! Well.. what's the book about?"

And he was put right on the spot, and where had his brain gone? Probably sucked up into Bridie's innocent gaze, why was she so casually close like that where her face was virtually an inch apart from his shoulders-..?

"Uh.. kind of like a teenage coming of age in a complex, uh, social situation.. two gangs, someone dies, it's chaotic. And like, kind of like, Romeo and Juliet-ish, like.." Wait why was he still talking "and some dudes in class don't agree with me but I'll be debating them soon, we have this like, front-of-the class thing?" How many seconds of Bridie's time had he wasted, how much of her oxygen had he dared steal?

"That sounds crazy, actually! I kind of wished I could read it... uh, well. I mean I could, probably!" She smiled through her own awkward mistake and goodness almighty the softness of her lips could smother a man to death what had Clay gotten himself into.

"I could.. like, lend you my copy when I'm done."

"Oh yeah, that'd be fun! But," she warned.. teasingly? Was that what a cute girl sounded like when she teased? "You also owe me a demo of your new song!" Wait, she'd remembered? Clay couldn't even remember how many weeks out of the year ago he'd blurted out his projects in a loser-ish attempt to impress her.

"Well, heh. Yeah. That's right."

".. Yep. I did want you to get me into more of your, like, oldies music." But, Clay would happily have dropped out of school to become a member of some questionably talented corporate boy band if Bridie had even non-verbally hinted at the idea.

"Well, also. Been listening to, like, more of your favorites too."

And that one got Bridie to smile sharply enough that it made Clay want to smile too. Only reason he didn't, he felt awkward and heavy and no part of him felt like moving because it was like all his muscles had become lead weights. He only spoke on the sheer force of dumb instinct.

"Really? Cool. which ones?"

"... The Little Rock Six, are like. I mean, I liked some of the tracks off the album, they did some, uh. Cool stuff with the guitar." Clay wasn't lying- like he could have, to a puppydog look like that- he'd legitimately enjoyed Bridie's boyband stuff more than he'd thought he would have. Good thing to keep an open mind, he guessed. It was paying it's weight in gold in dividends. Bridie was freaking out- emphatically touching her fingers gently to his hand. Clay was pretty sure this moment was going to be emblazoned into his mind for ever and then always, when he was lazing around still in God's Kingdom.

"That's amazing, Clay! I told you they were good!"

"Yeah, uh..! Sorry it took me a while to get around to it."

"That's totally okay, I'm just happy you let the magic into your life like it changed mine!"

"Yep. I'll probably start listening backwards through their albums now..."

...

He could still feel her hand on his, the spots her warmth was beginning to penetrate, becoming slightly numb.

...

"Wait." Bridie suddenly broke the silence- Clay didn't even know. Had it been awkward? Poignant? Blissful? He kind of just felt nauseous. Overstimulated, by such a gentle and simple presence of another girl so utterly unlike any other he'd ever before seen in his life.

"Uh," she continued, her lips shuffling on and off, quickly so. "Well, I didn't just come here to, you know! Talk about classes a bit or whatever." Clay couldn't have cared in the least about why she'd come.

"I came to say, that uh. I'm sorry! I mean, I don't know for sure, but.. I was just. You know how I've been a bit more standoffish-?" And Clay nodded, quick, wait was that the wrong move, he'd just been trying to emphatically agree quick enough that it was maybe showing of attentive sympathy, he hadn't been trying to accidentally insult her with her own words-

"I didn't mean to be." Bridie nodded firmly, once, twice. "I just have been super distracted lately, with... um! I've- just, been distracted! And. I'm super sorry."

Clay understood immediately, instantly, reverently, he nodded his head and managed to smile for a change. He was able to relate, to sympathize, and to forgive in no small part because he really very much wanted to. So for him, navigating the rest of an innocent and lovely lunchtable conversation was a piece of cake. He had the happy energy to carry the verbiage until the bell rung, and just a little beyond.

Bridie's side, it was a bit tougher. She was a bit frustrated, because for once she hadn't said what she'd wanted to say.

#5

So
What exactly do you mean when you say I have to be more assertive

ye bride so here's the thing

Bridie loved the song that was playing right now, it was Fall For You by Secondhand Serenade. One heck of a throwback, though she couldn't remember when exactly it was released except it was the just after The General's reelection which was of course a super important date to remember. Bridie remembered Dad telling her she'd only been one year old when the election results had come in with an overwhelming percentage of the Electoral College, which Bridie didn't quite understand all the math behind but she got that it was supposed to help represent the people who needed it. Also, Bridie had been in Pappy's arms then, and Pappy had bounced her proudly to the important and exiting news, and Bridie had laughed and been happy while grabbing her little hands at the American flag in Dad's hands. Bridie liked to think that was the first time she'd really celebrated the country she loved and that made her happy to think just in the sense that it seemed very appropriate and very patriotic of little baby herself!

Also also, Secondhand Serenade's singer's story inspired her a ton because he was an immigrant from, like, some country in Europe or the Middle East or wherever those places even were on the globe (didn't matter), and then he and his father had become proud Americans and that was really great and inspiring to think about, that one of her favorite musicians happened to have learned how to be an American! It was, like... the importance of hard work, or that was what Dad told her.

like ok here the thing
when it comes to guys
their feelings donr typically even obvious lol
they hide all that

But its like
Masculine to do that anyways!
Be strong and awesomelike a real soldier should be~
Have some awesome muscles too ; )

mmhmmmmmmmmmmm yep ; )
but like sontimes that means they dont send obvious signals

Wait but what is an obbious signal anyways
Wat is a signal in the first place

Bridie was on her bed, which surrounded her with a nice bright yellow, which was like... buttercup yellow, is what her friends told her when they were around. She was cozy and snug in the blankets, looking up at her ceiling and counting the little bumps that made the white-painted surface not so smooth. Just while she was waiting for texts, not while she was reading them or responding to them which would be rude.

The next text arrived and it took up half her phone screen (with that giant blue blob of square color which she loved, because it meant a friend was trying to call her!) at exactly the same time the drums started in the song...

herp derp ok more specifics the thing about signals iss that guys get like super into you when theyrfe into you but its not alwsys about like talking to you or sendkng you flowers or candy sometimes its jut about a couple of tex messages and ectraeye contact p much

'... I always swore to you I'd never fall apaaaart...'

Bridie really loved this song. It was so romantic!

Oooh ok
I think I get it now!
So the important think to real8ze is that clay might be like
Uhhh
Wait

"... I may have faaailed, but I have loved you from the start-!"

And now she was singing it!

yeah uh

Oh whoops ok, Bridie was typing a message but then her friend was also typing one (Bridie could see the little 'is typing' thing in the corner), Bridie thought it was weird it when that happened because it felt awkward. Usually she stopped typing in that case, just to be polite. And so she stopped typing then and let her friend finish.

Sixteen bumps... seventeen...

Wait, was she counting from the right number? She already forgot. Then, her phone dinged with the bird chirp squeaky noise she thought was super cute so she'd made it her text tone like months ago.

yeah uh ok so the thing about it is that how do i explain this in a simpler way
boys suck and not in the gaay man way before you get weird and offended u dork

Bridie was okay with gay people. She just thought it was weird and didn't understand it too much, herself. It was better to not think too hard about that sort of thing.

so men like vlay will be like all over you

In which way

the not sex wat

Aw!

omg bridiw u are pervert central anywas
THe thinb about dude is that dudes are like all tryinbto make the firs move so hard they get alll in ther on heads essentiall y so like the important thing u have to do is make it easir on them

"Oooooh, but hold your breath-!"

And now Bridie was screaming, and it made her feel good to just get all her feelings out there by singing a good song and pretending she was up on stage and an audience was cheering for her! She was holding her phone just like a microphone and singing at it even, which was a bit silly but also made her feel the energy she was pretending she had was way realer! It was like... she was singing to the bumps on the ceiling. Which she was, of course, not actually doing.

I AM NOT a pervert
Its like okay forg irls to be a little as long as they stay proper and stuff : p
Abtwys like now I get it!!
Clay is like trying

disfuckingclaimer
just what i think
i dont know for sure

Well you said it so I will believe you
And so its better for me to
Make things easier on him
But how

okay so heres the thing about dudes

Bridie was listening. Wait okay, reading. Well she was also listening and singing too. What her friend told her next was...

Somewhere Clay glanced at his phone. Someone was texting him or like...

No, fuck. Just a false alarm. He'd forgotten people never texted him.

....

Oh wait, shit. Someone had. Yep, there was the shitty ironic Secondhand Serenade ringtone he'd put on as an inside joke like, a month ago? An inside joke with himself, that's how much of a loser he was. Something something, 'you're impossible to find'. Meanwhile, somewhere in this universe far away from him? Bridie Mossberg, who he'd already found, but somehow shit still happened to be impossible like...

#6

Question of the hour, what sort of clothes did you buy for a date where it wasn't actually a date date but just one between friends?

Clay groped about for the answer in racks onto racks worth of piles of piles of clothes. And the answer was simple: he didn't know and he was an idiot. Two part question, like on some of Mr. Philip's tests where you'd work out the solution then apply it into some different problem. Common difference between both concepts was that he got both types of question wrong all the time.

Walmart in Stapleton was an earnest enough place, big corporate bucks and racks of guns somewhere close to the produce section. All Americana. Mom had actually run into Bridie shopping in this exact store twice. According to Mom, full-on air quotes representing cryptic tone, Bridie had an 'interesting' outlook on 'her future'. Clay couldn't even begin to guess. Was it, like, one of those things where Bridie sees herself with a rich and handsome dude she totally deserves at some point in the future? If it was that, then Clay was already way ahead of the game. Every night almost he prayed himself to sleep on ominous foreclosure-of-relationship visions of Bridie being swept off her feet and taken to Homecoming by Mr. Mystery Cute-And-Buff Suitor.

Holy shit, Homecoming was literally tomorrow. It was a good thing he'd saved shopping for a new dress shirt until just today. Because he definitely needed to compound his immaterial worries with material ones.

Came back to the question of the hour. What did he buy? What was too casual, or not casual enough, or sending signals of desperation in some other dimension Morse Code only women were keyed into?

He sometimes wondered if he was worrying about the wrong things here. Maybe this was all too petty, too short-term view.

Anyways he stopped wondering. Started with strategy.

Came up empty handed, because, of course. Literally though, he had a fistful of hangers tucked between the fleshy part of his thumb and his four wedged up fingers. He quickly put them back, probably because he was out of shape and it hurt to hold that much weight in an awkward grip for so long (one whole second, goodness the display of ultimate power), probably because none of what he'd seen had been that... good... maybe?? Question marks?? Heaven as his witness he just did not know. He couldn't even certainly ascertain if it was finally coming to terms with a fundamental lack of fashion sense, or merely being discombobulated in the face of a completely platonic and functionally non-important date with a girl he'd awkwardly obsessed over for four something months uninterrupted.

His fingers danced over to the next shirt in the rack. Busy blue color, kind of electric in hue and saturation almost. Hurt the eyes. A statement so bold it would have won at least bronze in a shooting contest. Or whatever the equivalent of bronze was in those things, not like Clay was that into mainstream media whatsoever until Bridie had turned him onto charmingly overproduced boy bands.

Next. His fingers picked out the next hanger. It was an okay looking knit tee. Short sleeves, bulky collar. Was it too simple? Tacky? The color was a nice and handsome maroon, probably perfect for making a sharp impression if layered with something underneath but... it was just. Okay. Was okay good enough for a dance with [insert most beautiful girl in the world's name] where Clay knew exactly the name he was going to put on that form item and he was going to put it in bold letters and twenty four point font?

... Next.

That looked kind of cute. Problem was it was clearly a girl's shirt that had meandered over from the section on the other side of this thin bright metal divider. Cut would have made his love handles the uninvited guests of the hour. But he did like the color, the way the sleeves rode up a little because honestly his overly bulky shoulders stood to be slimmed down a little by illusion. They falsely advertised something he was not, like, pairing swimmer's shoulders and then couch sitter's abs.

He didn't know. He liked the idea of pushing the norms. If something looked good it looked good? Why contemplate anything else? And the immediate and clear answer was, it wasn't a good look in public. Or in private, really. Clay was pretty sure Bridie was more a family values type. Not that she was bigoted, it was just that she was comfortable primarily with the familiar. Understandable, totally. Clay didn't blame her one bit for wanting to keep things easy and comfortable on her own easily taxed mind.

He was about ready to give up. Maybe the next rack would have something.

He stared at it for a hopeful second, then realized he'd already checked that one. Twice, actually. Clay crossed his arms, exhaled deeply. His pocket buzzed with his phone pinging. First once, then twice, then... by the fourth he already recognized the pattern.

I think I know what I'll be wearing for the dance : ) : )
I want to be bold and obvious
So I'm thinking something super bright and colorful
Just so people will know were there you know :p

Came with a photo, too.
God slay him where he stood because he already felt the ascension to heaven.