Adam laughed as he exited the theater, holding the door open for Fetch. His classmate, a short goblin and fellow freshman at Murray State, was clutching fistfuls of her dark black hair.
"That was so stupid! Nothing made any sense! Why was Lisa so evil? Why was the kid so weird? Why did Johnny talk like that?"
"I still can't believe-" Adam choked through his laughing fit, "-that you've never seen The Room. It's a classic! Best of the worst!"
The pair started walking back to his car. Adam took slower steps to stay beside his friend. He eyed her as best he could without being too obvious as they moved. She was dressed like she was most days they had class; a crop top and jeans that were near threadbare on one of her thighs. When he'd picked her up earlier that evening he had joked that unless she'd found them in someone else's laundry bag, she'd paid too much for them. She'd snorted, then informed him that it was a style, and that the proper term for them was "distressed."
Not that he minded her wardrobe. It looked good on her. But then again, everything did. Her emerald green skin made it somehow easy to just look at her. Perhaps a little too easy. She glanced up at him, and hurriedly he looked away, trying not to blush. He felt a few tense moments pass, but when she didn't say anything, there came a sigh of relief.
'Maybe she didn't notice.
'
He thought again of the question he'd been thinking of asking, but it still wasn't ready. '
I think I love you.
' was obviously too forward.
'Hey, do you want to date me?'
was too casual. Iterations upon iterations clogged up his brain, bringing with them an anxiety that made him sweat.
Perhaps-
They reached his car and he climbed into the driver's seat. Then he leaned over and popped the passenger door open, waiting for Fetch to circle around. "Want some help getting in?"
When she reached the open door, she rolled her eyes. "Why are human car seats so fucking high? It's not like-" she took his hand, and he pulled her up. Despite her short stature, Adam was tugged against his seatbelt. He found himself pleasantly surprised by her sturdiness. "-you freaks need the extra height!" With some audible exertion, she clambered up into the seat, and settled into it with a triumphant
thump
.
She sighed, then looked over at him.
"Couldn't have gotten the little step thing, huh?"
His cheeks lit up red, and he put his hands up defensively. "I didn't- I just-"
She snorted. "I'm fucking with you, dude. Loosen up a little! We're just hanging out." He nodded. "Now," she declared loudly, pulling her hair into a ponytail and slapping her belly like a drum, "mama's hungry! Where do you wanna go for food?"
He'd thought of this answer ahead of time. "That little diner place on the edge of campus is really good! I think it's called Martha's, or something. Have you been there?" Fetch shook her head, and he smiled. "You've been missing out. Their apple pie is so good!"
By now, the key was in the ignition, and he was pulling out of the theater's parking lot. Fetch reached up and pressed a button on the dashboard, bringing the car's old radio crackling to life. The sounds of electric guitars and drums warbled forth from the speakers, and almost instantly, Fetch's face lit up. "Yo! You listen to-"
Whatever words followed were drowned out when a voice in the song cried out "Thunder!" Fetch gave the volume knob an excited turn, and the song flooded the interior of the car, smothering any hope he had of making out anything of what she'd said. He nodded sheepishly, but she was no longer looking at him. Instead she was banging her head in time with the song, sending her ponytail bouncing around erratically as she seemed to be trying to jump out of her seatbelt without standing up. Her mouth was moving along to the music, but it was so loud that it was impossible to tell where the singer's voice, the crowd's cheers, and Fetch's voice were separate.
Adam made sure the road ahead was clear before allowing his gaze to wander. The goblin's thrashing did more than just slightly rock the car. She had the proportions characteristic of most goblins; wide hips that gave her a pleasantly pear-shaped body, and thighs that looked like they were used to straining against whatever they were put in. Each bob of her head sent a ripple through her body, and his eyes naturally followed it down past her shoulders, through her chest. Her crop top wasn't as stretched as her pants, but it was white, and taught enough that he had been able to see her black bra beneath it all day. It felt like a good sign. Maybe she knew about his crush?
More eye-catching than that, however, was the bouncing of her cleavage. Adam suddenly worried that he might have made his averting of his eyes more obvious than his staring through the night. Regardless, his gaze continued to roam; through her midriff, where dark green freckles were spattered over her emerald skin, betraying how often she left it bare. It was clear that she enjoyed showing herself off. Or, perhaps, disliked being covered. Either gave Adam a flutter in his heart. The ripples continued, pulling his eyes along with it past her waistband and towards her thighs. Every tantalizing jiggle seemed to shake the whole car.
God, what he wouldn't give to feel that pressing down on
-
A drawn out breath hissed from between his teeth.
He turned his attention back to the road, trying to clear his head. '
Don't be weird,
' he thought to himself, '
if she's interested, she'll say something. Please God let her say something.
'
She continued to belt out lyrics, and Adam joined in on the chorus as he tried to remember the name of the band. Suddenly he wished he'd paid more attention when his parents had played these CDs on roadtrips. Fetch didn't seem to mind too much, however, if her hair whipping around and hitting his arm was anything to judge by.
The drive to Martha's was short. That was one of the nice things about the small college town, nothing was ever more than a five minutes drive from anything else. He pulled into the gravel parking lot and sat back, waiting for the song to end as Fetch sang, now playing a set of imaginary drums, even miming finger movements that he assumed were stick twirls. When the song had finished and she pounded out the last beat in time with the radio, he reached to turn it off and looked back at her, his eyebrows raised.
"It looked like you were really going nuts on those drums! Do you actually play?"
She nodded, catching the breath she'd lost following along before replying. "Yeah-" Adam noticed a spreading blot of darker green beneath the lines of freckles on her face. Was she blushing? "-I played a lot of percussion in high school and middle school bands; y'know, pep and marching and concert and stuff. Plus there might have been a teen angst fueled garage band. Maybe. If there was, I was definitely the drummer."
Adam laughed. "Nice. It looked cool! Now I've got to hear you play sometime. I never did band. Sometimes I wish I did, a bunch of my friends did, but I think the piano lessons I was forced into sort of put me off that whole thing." He shrugged, then nodded towards the restaurant. "Anyways, food?"
