Spoiler! :
The New Years celebration ended with the unlikely couple sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall, exchanging the convenience of chairs for the privacy of their conversation.
He was holding her shoes, though he couldn't remember picking them up, nor the reason why he held them in the first place, but now that they were in his possession, he couldn't help but admire them. The silver heels were at least six inches tall, making it more heel than shoe. The inside velvet was already worn down to the soles. He thought to himself, she has really tiny feet--
Danielle burped quietly; her face flushed pink all the way to the tips of her ears.
"My bad," she gasped, innocently surprised at herself. Tired as she was, her eyelids had the look as though they were being propped open by her quarter-sized irises, brimming with reflected light yet somehow hard and lifeless. They can't be natural. It took him a moment to realize she was staring back.
"Uh...you...." He looked away. "You want your shoes back?" She didn't look too happy at all.
"Should I really be walking tonight?"
"Dani, honestly? Can't you handle your liquor?"
She stuck her tongue out at him, pulling herself up to her would-be-bare feet, if it weren't for the thin black fabric of her pantyhose covering them. Alfred tried not to gaze up her slender legs without very much success. His eyes followed the curve of the firm calves hollowing at the back of the knees, and finally the upper thighs that clung to the hem of a snug, white dress. She caught him looking and in response, attempted to curtsy. Almost fell forward onto her face.
"Okay, no more parties for a while," she said, steadying herself up, hair falling in gentle waves of amber flecked with red glitter and confetti. She busied herself with dusting off imaginary specs of dust, then bent back, stretching the delicate arch of her back. Alfred couldn't take his eyes off of her.
"I'll take you home," he said, standing up, and even he surprised himself. Danielle gave him a wry look, before spinning abruptly around to face the group of her friends who were waiting for her at the other end of the hall. She waved.
“I'll go say good-bye to everyone, then.” And she bounded off with energy that kept him guessing as to its source. He might have followed after her, but a part of him enjoyed it this way: watching as her retreating figure vanished into the mass of party-goers. And tonight he was finally one of them.
Quickly, he began to gather their coats, her shoes still in his hand.
It was strange for him to feel this way about a girl, and possibly unprecedented. It's not that he wasn't a normal young male with thoughts and urges and things, like everybody else, just that Alfred never really entertained the notion of himself together with anyone before. So over time, he grew to be okay with that. To put it simply, he was hardly the good-looking heart-throb, or even sidekick to the heart-throb. Enough rejection over the years clued him in to that fact. He was the one the kids bullied in elementary school. Called gay in junior high—you know everything uncool was gay in junior high. In high school, he was that loveable geek. That too-nice-to-date-but-who-will-always-be-just-a-friend guy. You know that guy.
And Danielle, he didn't know how, but Danielle was the antithesis to his nature. She was the short to his tall, the cheer to his gloom, the social to his lack-there-of. She was also standing right behind him.
“God!” Alfred held his throat. “You scared the shit outta me!” She only laughed at him, tugging on his arm as she dragged him towards the front door.
“Come on, come on—it's snowing!”
Sure enough, after only seconds of stepping outside, they were already covered in white flakes clinging onto the fabrics of their clothes in much the same way that the hundreds of millions of people along the east coast held onto their treasured memories of the last year. The streets were barren, a desert of snow reflecting the orange glow of the streetlamps. The sound of fireworks going off overhead made the night resemble more a blazing battlefield than a winter wonderland. A battlefield of the invading snow offering the chance of forgetting. Forget yesterday. Forget yourself. Tomorrow all of the snow will be cleared, and the streets will be like new.
Danielle was a spinning ballerina, dancing in the middle of the street with her mouth opened wide to admit the flurries. Alfred on the other hand, became a human target, the guys from the party pelting him with snowballs.
“Fuck you, Teagan!” Alfred said, shaking his hair free of snow.
“Happy New Years to you too, Alfredo!” The Irish boy winked as he ran off with the rest of the gang. Snowballs were being thrown every which way, a cacophony of cries and hollers heard above distant car alarms and barking dogs. All Alfred heard was the glee in Danielle's laughter. She came up beside him, her nose rubbed raw by the wind.
“Your friends?” she asked.
“Some friends, right?” Alfred said, rolling his eyes, but there was a slight smile on his face. The question was not asked in any derogatory or judgmental fashion, but with a genuine sincerity and interest.
“The best,” she said. “I knew old Teague since middle school.” Danielle walked on ahead, her hands behind her back.
“Lucky him,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“Don't worry about it.”
“Well,” she paused, turning around slowly towards him, “he taught me something.”
Suddenly, Alfred found himself nervous. Danielle had bent down grabbing a handful of snow in her hands, but before she could land a throw, Alfred was already ducking behind a shrubbery bush. This was his chance. He doubled back, scraping some snow off the windshield of a nearby Honda. When he looked back...where was she?
There! He caught a glimpse of her red coat around the corner. She was not quick enough to dodge the blow. Alfred found himself laughing, fumbling forward to help her up. She reminded him of a lost puppy, scurrying around in the snow for ammunition to fire back at him.
He didn't know how it happened.
She was always just a friend of a friend, some girl in his french class and nothing more, and yet here they were out tonight, huddled close. His right hand in hers, his left arm hovering around the small of her back, inching for any opportunity of contact, but he needn't struggle, because she was there closing the gap, leaning into his large frame before he even got the change to realize what he was doing.
Imagination and reality melded together that night to some twisted realization of lust and hot breaths steaming in the cold. Panting, he had her against the wall, her body closing into him. There was a dizzying sensation filling his hazy thoughts. Indeed, she was the antithesis to his everything: her tender lips to his chapped ones. He took in the scent of raspberries, tasting the wine from her tongue, feeling her frantic heartbeat, and the sensation of wet and hot, deeper than any embrace, where time itself unraveled, darkness closing in, like a diver long underwater struggling for the urge to pop his head from beneath the surface.
Just like that, the moment was over. He came back to the surface, lungs racing, and an actual smile playing about at his lips. It was the realization that he, Alfred Tiller, had just had his first kiss.
I really think you should expand this as you were contemplating doing in the beginning. These characters are lovable, and I like their names. Call me crazy, but I think the names of the characters really set the tone for their personalities. I might steal the name Teagan from you...just be warned. That last bit about the kiss was just heart-melting. I'm a sucker for aesthetic descrpitions, and you really know how to make one. I'm very jealous
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