Mai stared at the door for a solid ten seconds when that knock rang through her house. She thought she had more time before he actually showed up. Heck, he showed up and there was a part of her that had hoped that he wouldn’t. Yet, he did. He was here. At her house. On the other side of that door stood one Beckett Marsden. She NEVER got nervous around him …Why did it start now? Oh right, because Mai knew that he knew that she had a crush on him – a fact she was DETERMINED to take with her to the grave. Of course.
She took a deep breath. How bad could it be, right? It’d only been one week, not a century since they last talked. They could do this. She could do this. Swallowing her nerves, Mai opened her front door to reveal one of her best friends. He was making jokes. Jokes were good, right? They meant things were okay… Right?
“Oh! Right yeah …” She said sheepishly, putting her right hand in the giant pouch. “It’s a nice hoodie? Really soft…You pick out good hoodies.” Mai smiled warmly, scratching the back of her neck. “You …Grew out your facial hair, like you said you might do. It’s nice – you look nice with it. It’s a good look for you – Do you want to come inside?” She gestured abruptly into her family room, moving aside to allow him room to pass if he so chose. “I got us pizza and I even picked something alcoholic that we both might like that hopefully isn’t too sweet. It’s from a brand we liked before but umm… I asked the employee at Target for help so…It should be good.” Stalling. They were stalling. Mai knew it, as she shuffled anxiously in place. Surely Beck had to know it too. The thing with Mai was, she could stall on this topic all night, even though it was her who said that they needed to talk. She had stalled on telling Beck that she had liked him for a very long time, before Casino Night. What’s one more day?
When you’ve been friends with someone for as long as Beckett had been with Mai, you learned to pick up on the little things that somehow managed to come out in situations that didn’t come out before. And as he looked at her, he could tell something was off. Something about her lacked the same happy and darling aura that she seemed to carry on her shoulders and it had been replaced with almost an... awkwardness? Was it awkwardness? Mulling it over quietly, he only tilted his head as he was soon leaning against the door frame, “Thanks, I’ll make sure to let my bank account know that I at least have some good taste,” he continued to joke, instinctively rubbing his cheek at the mention of his facial hair. “I mean, I kinda hated the way that I looked without it so one night was more than enough for me, yanno? I know I do but I appreciate the compliment,” he soon smiled, a smile as warm as ever when he was around Mai despite everything in his head. Nodding his head, he only made his way inside with a simple silence as he noticed the food and beverages that she was talking about, “Wow, look at you. You clearly weren’t lying when you said you wanted to talk since I don’t see anything sugary and girly in sight.” Moving himself, he soon plopped himself down on the sofa and gestured for her to sit, “I know what you’re doing and I’m going to tell you right now that this was your idea.” His words came off blunt but he didn’t want to beat around the bush, not when the curiosity was eating away at him, “So, if you want, you can ask me anything you want first. We can go from there, I guess?”