VOXISTALE: Novel Edition

Chapter 73

"And so then I said; 'what do you mean? That spaghetti's been sitting there all week'!"

Terrence frowned at Rian's joke. "Isn't this like, the third time you've made that joke?"

Rian's dad, however, howled with laughter from his chair in front of the television. "And it never gets old!" He told them.

Rian grinned. "It's my best joke," he informed Terrence as Greg sat nearby, twiddling his thumbs. None of them had gotten into their dress clothes just yet, as they still had a good hour until the limo arrived, but they were all getting rather antsy as the seconds ticked by.

"Hey . . . Rian, can I ask you something?" Terrence asked, tapping his hand to his thigh nervously.

"Yeah, sure man. What's up?"

"You've kissed girls before, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Uh . . . I need advice. I wanna kiss Frisk at homecoming, but I don't know how."

"Ooo, hitting second base?" Rian grinned widely as Greg seemed to grow very pale in the background, going unnoticed by the other two.

"Uh . . ." Terrence blinked a couple of times. "Yeah. Sure. Just . . . don't bring up baseball references to relationships again."

"My advice? Just go for it," Rian replied. "But not like, randomly. It's gotta be timed perfectly. On the dance floor, during some cheesy romantic song, you look into each other's eyes, and bam. Smooch town."

"You make that sound easy," Terrence commented, making Rian laugh.

"I wouldn't know," he admitted. "I've always wanted to kiss a girl during a dance, but all of the ones I've kissed have been . . . well . . . let's just say I'm not proud of middle school Rian."

"Do you think you'll kiss Fuku tonight?" Terrence asked curiously.

"I . . . Dunno," Rian admitted. "I like her a lot, but I don't know if we're ready. I don't want to rush it, you know? I've got too much experience with that. We're not even like, official, we're just going together."

"That's fair," Terrence shrugged. He would have asked Greg if he was going to try and kiss his date, but the answer to that one was beyond obvious.

"So . . . you and Frisk have never kissed before?" Rian asked. With each sentence the two exchanged, Gregory only seemed to grow more and more quiet and pale in the background.

"Nope. Not on the lips, at least. We've kinda come close, but . . . not quite, y'know?" Terrence gave a halfhearted smile.

"Good luck with that tonight." Rian offered, and Terrence smiled brightly.

"Thanks, man. Also, I wanted to ask how it's going with Fuku? Today's the two week mark, isn't it?"

Rian blushed. He was uncharacteristically nervous when talking about Fuku Fire, or maybe it was in his character. It just didn't seem to fit the big jock. "Yeah, actually. Since I asked her, but it feels like . . . y'know, exclusive," he replied. "She's . . . really awesome. Did you know that she and Grillby can control their body temperature? I think she called it "cold fire" or something. Apparently they can only burn things when they fight or want to and whatever."

"Nice, dude. So I guess things are heating up between you two."

"I- shut up," Rian smirked, his dad once again roaring, his laughter thundering through the house.

"Oh, one more thing," Terrence said. "See those roses I got Frisk?" he gestured to Rian's table, which had a small bouquet of roses in a vase. "I was thinking, what if I held one in my teeth, and made some kind of romantic gesture?"