In Real Life ✓

10. Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Every time I came back online, my internet friends always noticed it immediately, because they were just as addicted as me. Especially Traviatis. Within a minute, he'd already sent me a message. Sometimes I wondered if the boy even had a life outside of Twitter, but that was... a tad hypocritical.

The only reason why Traviatis, whose real name was Travis, had become as popular as he was now was because I'd helped him when he still only had like a dozen followers. I'd noticed him replying to my Tweets and I laughed my ass off at every single thing he said, so I gave him the attention he deserved, and the rest was history.

When Travis started new conversations, he always did so in the most ridiculous, random ways and I couldn't help but wonder how he hadn't run out of options yet. It was fascinating. Today, he greeted me with 'hiyayaya'.

Like the creative person I was, I replied, 'hi'.

I told him about the fail of trip I went on and he gave me his condolences, and I un-invited him to my funeral, and he promised me he'd get Simon and Garfunkel to perform while they spread my ashes. Totally normal conversations between Eve and Travis.

Travis was the only one on the internet I was so close to that I'd told him my real name. Being friends with someone for such a long time earns them a certain amount of trust, and Travis had never given me any reason not to trust him. Some would say it was foolish to think that he was not some fifty-year-old creep, but well... When he gave me his address so I could send him my birthday gift, I knew it was alright. Travis and I often told each other things we couldn't even tell our friends at school. We ranted to each other whenever we were angry or sad, and the only thing the other needed to do was listen, offer advice and say ily.

I figured I could tell him about Gilbert, since Tamara and Leslie (and Hugo) would only fangirl until I got sick of it and started googling how to block people in real life. That's exactly the type of conversation I didn't want. I wanted Travis's sarcasm that matched mine so well, and I wanted his hilarious weirdness that made tears spring to my eyes, but most of all, I wanted his unbiased opinion.

And that's how I killed Travis. He exploded right then and there. He sent me at least a dozen of messages that consisted of pure nonsense, before making me tell him everything that had happened. He assessed the situation how only Travis could assess a situation, and came to the conclusion that I should date this guy for one reason: he sounds hot.

How a person can sound hot from a description beats me... and asking advice from a pansexual guy was, I must admit, not my brightest idea—we were quite the opposite when it came to situations like these. Nonetheless, I wasn't that opposed to the idea. To be honest, I was actually kind of warming up to it.

So when the boy in question walked up to me later that week, I knew exactly what he was going to say, and I knew exactly what I was going to say.

"Would you like to go out with me?" he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets, looking a lot more nervous than I was used to. Then again, he did have a tendency to blurt and stutter when he was embarrassed. At least he got it out this time.

"Sure."

He blinked. "Oh."

"You say that a lot."

"Do I?"

"Yes."

"Oh, well, I guess it's because... you surprise me a lot."

I shrugged and hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders. He followed me as I started walking, glancing at me from the corner of his eye, but neither of us said anything. I thought it'd be funny to torture him with the silence, until I couldn't resist anymore and asked, "What made you decide to ask me out anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know... because I'm ace."

He slid his hands in his pockets again. "Well, you said so yourself. It doesn't mean you're not interested in relationships, right? So..."

I nodded and smiled to hide my surprise. He didn't mind?

"When are we going out?"

"Tomorrow?" he suggested.

"Okay, yes, I am free this Friday." Pfft, who was I kidding? I was always free. I had no life. "As long as we're not going to the movies."

"Do you not like movies?"

"I love movies, but Tamara and Darren are going too. I'd like to avoid them. If she sees me, she's just going to cling to me in fear, and I want her and that boy to finally get together. She keeps sinking her own ship."

"Tamara is the brunette, right?"

I nodded.

"She's cute."

"I thought you were asking me out, Casanova."

"No, I'm just saying," he said with an awkward chuckle. "Good for that Darren guy, you know? You're prettier."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

He seemed to be unsure how to reply to that, so I rolled my eyes and told him, "I'm just messing with you, dude. I thought you'd have noticed by now that I'm not really... the average girl."

"Yeah, that's what I like about you."

"Straight-forward, are we?"

He shrugged.

"Okay, pick me up at eight."

A/N: I tried looking for an app that allowed me to make twitter DMs but I had no such luck, so I'll just make do with iMessage then....