Kissing someone is pretty intimate, actually very intimate, and your heart always kind of skips a beat before you do that.

It was the last week of August, the first month of school was ending and the last two weeks had been pretty much normal, at least what was normal by my new standards of life events after that little adventure with the gangsters. This ordinariness lasted till Friday, 1st of September. That evening while going to the area where all the school buses were parked ready to take us all home, I heard someone call my name and turned around to see Anna.

"Hi, What's up?"

"I was looking for you to talk about something. It's Nebula's birthday tomorrow."

"Yes, I know."

"So we were planning on throwing a small birthday party for her, we were thinking of going to the Mall with the PVR, have some lunch there, do some bowling then watch a movie."

"OK cool sounds good, Let me know when we are meeting up I'll see you there."

"12:30 at the bowling alley on the 3rd floor."

I nodded my head in acknowledgement and went to my bus and sat down for the trip back home wondering how this happened. I knew for certain, that things had changed quite a bit from the previous timeline because I wasn't invited to this birthday party last time around. It was probably because I had now spent 3 weeks sitting next to her and talking to her and her friends in school. We had actually become good friends quite a few months before this happened in the last timeline.

Next day, I left home early and arrived at the Mall much earlier to buy a gift or rather what I did was walk around the mall trying to figure out what would be an appropriate gift. I ended up buying a Limited Edition Hardback Novel from the crossword on the 2nd floor and managed to arrive at the bowling alley by 12. Since I was early and the party was a surprise Anna would be bringing Nebula to the food court at the Bowling alley by 1, So I waited till the rest of her friends arrived.

As it turned 12:45 I saw Anna and Nebula coming up in the Elevator from the Window and we all got up and stood at the side of the Entryway of the Bowling Alley/Food Court for the surprise. Since there were only 9 of us, we hadn't booked anything except 2 lanes for bowling, so the area was pretty crowded and busy, it being a Saturday afternoon. As soon as both of them entered, We all shouted "Happy Birthday" and let out a few Paper Throw crackers And Snow Spray.

Then we moved on to bowling and food. I will say in all honesty my energy was flooding my body as I copied bowling skills walking around the bowling alley from everyone. I was last to bowl in my lane, It took a few seconds to bowl, so I went all out and entered my forced Enhanced mode for each time I bowled since the time duration was so less I could keep entering and leaving it. I ended up having a lot of fun since we were playing in teams and I was in Nebula's team. I made sure to make a few mistakes and convert a few Strikes into spares but with my enhanced senses and reaction time and technique copied from all the people playing around me, I easily beat the score of the next highest person by a considerable margin. There might have been a semi-professional in the alley that day.

After the Bowling was done, we went to the food court tables across the alley for lunch. The tables were only those for 4 people, so we got our own food and split up into smaller groups and went to get whatever we wanted to eat. I was sharing a table with Anna, Nebula and Sunny. Anna dragged away sunny with her to get food for all 4 of us.

As we were sitting alone at the table just me and Nebula, an awkward silence hung in the air. She turned to me and asked, "Do you know how much does the average polar bear weigh?"

I knew this one, she had used this one in the other timeline once and I could help but let out a loud laugh, barely squeaking out in between my laughter "more than enough to break this ice."

Hearing that, she smiled too and I slowly calmed down. I knew this was it, I had to say it now or it might be too late. I looked up at her face, extended my hand to take her hand in mine and said: "I have never felt like this before, since the 1st time I saw you outside the principal's office the day I came for my interview, then the 1st day of class and then the lightning strike, Every time I looked at you or talked to you, I could feel my heart beating faster and faster and I can't hold it in anymore without you knowing how I feel. I really like you, it makes me feel like my heart will just jump out of my chest to tell you that." I reached into my jacket and took out a Happy Birthday card and gave it to her, smiled and said: "In there are 2 vouchers valid for one very awesome date, that I will take you on, redeemable from now till the end of eternity, let me know when you want to redeem them."

She smiled, seemed relieved, squeezed my hand and replied with just 5 words that left me dazed and went to get her lunch.

"I think I do too."

I don't really remember much of what happened during lunch or what was the conversation that was going on was about, I just had a goofy smile on my face till we all got up to go watch a movie. After we got the tickets Nebula grabbed my hand and held me back and we sat together at one end of the row. I don't even remember what that movie was about, maybe something about dancing, can't really be sure, coz I spent most of the moving talking to Nebula in whispers and at some point, I don't know how we went from just holding each other's hand to having our entire arm entangled with each other's. Then she slowly leaned towards me, my heart started beating harder, I could feel the energy flooding through my entire body. Then came my first kiss, at least in this timeline, and then I felt my heart literally skip a beat or maybe two. I could feel her lips on mine and a little bit of my energy flowed into her, at that point, I couldn't care less about it. I held her face in my hands and kissed back. It was a simple kiss, not a chaste one but it felt like I could feel the depth of her emotions from the kiss. It seemed to last an eternity but was over in a second.

When it over she was blushing tomato red and started watching the movie again, Anna who was sitting next to her couldn't stop giggling. I looked over and I could see no one else noticed except her. Anna saw me gave me a thumbs up and went back to watching the movie. I also tried to watch the remaining 15 minutes of the movie while Nebula was holding on to my arm with both of hers.

That was how my first semi-date ended with Nebula. After the movie ended all of us said our goodbyes and went back our separate ways home. I was still so dazed I forgot to ask for someone for a lift back home, but I was too happy to care. I waited on the third floor from where I could see the front exit. After I saw everyone else leave, I waited for 15 minutes and then ran back home. I was so excited about this that I had missed something important happening around me, multiple somethings at that. This would come back to haunt me very soon. But for now, I was feeling like I was on the top of the world and nothing could get me down.