Story Intro - feedback welcome ^^

[Herro]

Feel free to comment and give feedback, whether you like or dislike! Originally, I was planning on making a steamy, shorter flick... but as I wrote it, it turned out to be the intro to more of a slow-burn, the kind that goes more in-depth about characterization, etc. If you are looking for really quick, hot action, let me save you the time!! (though, for the record, there is nothing wrong with quick, hot action - I love that stuff ;D)




It was the summer before Aiden was supposed to go off to college... though he didn't quite look the part. Throughout his life, he'd always been one of the thinner boys, cursed with a delicate - some might say androgynous - frame.

Androgynous. He hated that word, just like he hated the fact that, somehow, he was still in that phase of his life where not everyone was entirely sure if he was, in fact, even a he. The last time it had happened was just two weeks ago. He'd been walking back to his car after picking up some milk from the store when, out of the blue, some guy had shouted "Hey, Jennifer!" *Aiden turned slowly with possibly the glariest of all glares hanging from his face* "--O-oh, nevermind, man!" The guy awkwardly chuckled. "--Haha! I thought you were someone else!" And with that, Aiden turned to begin walking double-time back to his car, sheer embarrassment flushing red-hot on his face. The worst part was, when he drove off, he'd seen the guy again, who by that time had found the girl he was looking for. Geez, she looked, like 15! What kind of cruel gods would curse an 18 year old guy with the looks of his younger sister?? Apparently, all of the above.

But even though he sometimes reacted to his circumstances with hyperbole, Aiden didn't really think he let it get to him as much as other people might - at least not on any deep, self-esteem-crushing level. Yeah, it was embarrassing... but there was something about that feeling of being... he couldn't quite put his finger on it - being taken down a notch? Was that it? No... it was more like-... ugh, that weird feeling he got when people thought he was a girl when he really wasn't, --or when they thought he was a kid when he really wasn't, --and even though he might try to make himself look tougher, or look older, that he would just end up looking - at best, like some butch teenager - and at worst... like some person named Jennifer.

But that was all behind him, and at present, Aiden was driving on the way to meet up with his best-friend-in-the-world, Brielle. She had an unusual name. He'd asked her what it meant the first time they'd met. She had shrugged, saying "truthfully, I don't know. I Wiki'd it one time, and apparently my name is some city in New Jersey or something." She bobbed her head to the side in a way that somehow managed to make her look both playful, and sort-of pensive at the same time. She did that a lot. "It's not a name that you hear all the time - people have actually asked me if I would change it before. I guess they wouldn't feel comfortable with a name that was kind-of out-there... but honestly, I like it. Who wants to be boring?" *she had looked at him, puzzled, trying to figure out what his game was.* She wasn't bad looking by any means, so - being a girl in her mid-high school years - wasn't unfamiliar with unwanted (and sometimes wanted) attention from others. But, something had always held her back from reciprocating that attention beyond a certain point. She was... different than most of the other girls - it was a secret that she, and only she knew.