Holding Hands
AlexOC
Max squeezed gently, his heart racing in his chest.
Her smooth skin gave just a little in his grip.
“Did all girls have skin this soft, or was she something special?” He thought as she tugged him along through the woods.
He couldn’t believe it. Not only was he holding a girls hand, something that was supposed to bring death from cooties, but it was fucking Nikki’s!
“I think we lost the gnome!” She said smiling at him despite their failure to catch the non-existent creature, and he almost fell over his knees just couldn’t take it.
“I’m sorry.” He said. “I was slowing you down.”
Did he just apologize? What the fuck was wrong with him?
“It’s not your fault Max, everyone knows you can’t catch gnomes!”
Even as inexplicably happy as he was, that made no sense. “Then why were we chasing it?”
“They’re really good runner of course. Great if you want to race!”
He rubbed at his nose with the fingers of his free hand, but he didn’t let go of her. Even if she was being Nikki again.
“Which way is it back to camp?” She asked, turning her head this way and that.
“Uh…” Was he supposed to know that?
“I asked you to keep track remember?”
Fuck, he was.
He racked his brain; she had said something about remembering something, but he’d been to giddy to think straight. Shit.
David!
He’s been ignoring David for a month now, but that guy is persistent something has to have stuck.
“When you’re in the woods…” He silently mouthed, trying to remember the thing David has drilled into the campers a hundred times. “Go North of the trees.”
Well that was no help, he didn’t even have one of those things that tells you where North is.
“Are we lost?” Nikki asked at his side.
“HA HA HA” Max forced out a laugh while his brain raced for a solution.
Lie.
“NO!” He said to loud. “We just need to go this way!”
He pointed in a random direction.
It was a long walk, like ditch your signature hoodie and contemplate walking around shirtless when you literally have the physique of a 10 year old boy long. So at least an hour.
Their stomachs started to growl and he was running into a serious bathroom issue, when Nikki let go of his hand, turned to him, and asked him again.
“Hey Max-”
He could feel the words coming.
“-are you sure-”
It was going to be humiliating.
“-we aren’t lo-”
“MAX! NIKKI!” David’s mother fucking nail on a chalkboard voice, had never been so sweet to his ears.
David stepped out from behind some trees like the forest ninja he seemed to think he was. “I know you two have had fun circling the camp all morning, but it’s lunch time so hurry up.”
One, possibly best moment of his life so far, trip to the bathroom later. Max was sitting alone in the mess hall eating mashed potatoes so bad he probably deserved them.
Nikki sat down next to him.
Oh boy was he going to get it.
“Hey Max.”
Maybe if he ignored her she would go away.
Something soft and warm touched his hand under the table.
He took hold of it and looked back up at her.
“You didn’t have to pretend to be lost if you wanted to keep hiking together.”
“Ok, Nikki.”
He smiled a goofy grin and they held hands under the table as the dining hall filled with other campers.
