Author's note: Hey guys! I wrote a 500 word story for the #WondertheMovie contest about choosing kindness. It's called "Keeping Time," and it's about a choice I made in high school (a looong time ago lol) that may (or may not) have saved my life. From time to time, I still think about that choice and what could've been, and remind myself to appreciate each day and treat everyone with kindness. The subject is a bit heavy, but I hope you'll check it out and vote.

Misery Loves Company

By: theinkslingerr

Track 20: Real Heroes Don't Wear Capes, They Make Pizza Rolls

When we got to my house, Rocco walked me to the door. My Mom wasn't home (surprise, surprise) and all the lights were off.

"Uh...do you wanna come in?" I was having a hard time unlocking the door, because I was super nervous. Before tonight, I'd never been on a date, much less invited a guy over to hang out alone.

"Sure." Rocco smiled, and waited patiently for my motor skills to kick in.

I stumbled inside, painfully aware of his muffled laughter as I flipped on the living room lamp.

When Rocco left I was going to burn these shoes in my backyard while dancing around the fire.

For now I just cleared my throat, slipping his jacket off my shoulders and draping it over the back of the couch. "Thanks for bringing me home." I tucked a purple curl behind my ear. "Do you want any water? Or like beer? Actually, I probably don't have beer so...water?"

"Yeah, that's fine," he said with a laugh.

We walked into the kitchen where I pulled open the refrigerator to grab him a bottle of water. Spotting a box of leftover pizza from Friday night, I asked, "Are you hungry?"

"Is that a trick question?" Rocco was peering over my shoulder, rubbing his hands together. "It's pizza- of course I'm hungry."

"Is your whole diet sour patch kids, water ice, and pizza?" I dragged the cardboard box out of the cold and set it on the counter, staring accusingly the entire time.

"It's the diet of champions."

"Do you know what a vegetable is?"

"A what?" Rocco asked, crossing his arms. His biceps strained against the thin, white t-shirt he was wearing, triggering about a dozen mental images of what Google had revealed during my illicit search. I shook my head to clear it, but picture number three in row five of the search results wasn't going anywhere. Taken during a tour, it captured Rocco sweaty and shirtless; bathed in azure light on stage. His Les Paul hung off one shoulder, smile brighter than anything I'd ever seen. I'd had to fight myself not to save the picture and make it my wallpaper.

I cleared my throat and looked away.

That boy definitely ate his greens.

I threw a slice of pepperoni pizza on a plate and moved toward the microwave.

"Wait," Rocco said, blocking my path. "I have a better idea."

My head tilted in confusion when he grinned. "Tell me you've got shredded cheese and a little basil?"

"No to the shredded cheese. Maybe to the basil." Opening the spice cabinet, I found half a container of basil, and handed it to him with a flourish.

"Good. Where do you keep your knives?"

"Why?" My eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. "I already promised you I wouldn't tell anyone about Mr. Fluffbutt. Or Saturday Night Wrist."

Rocco leaned back, elbows on top of the counter. "Hm...you do know too much. But I want pizza so you're safe- for now."

With my eyes still narrowed, I opened a drawer next to the fridge, pulled out a knife, and gave it to him. He turned around and began cutting the slices of pizza into thinner strips.

"Get me toothpicks. Oh, and butter if you have any."

"Bossy..." I mumbled, grabbing a stick of butter then toothpicks off the kitchen table.

"Throw the butter in the microwave until it melts," Rocco instructed. He started rolling the strips of pizza, skewering them with toothpicks he'd first wet in the sink. "How do you work this oven?"

I preheated it for him before liquifying the butter in the microwave.

"You have baking trays, right?"

"Oh my God," I groaned. "You're worse than the dude from Hell's Kitchen!"

He chuckled as he lined the rolled up pizza on a baking tray. After drizzling melted butter and sprinkling basil on each piece, Rocco grabbed my Mom's oven mitts and slid the tray in. I stood there admiring him for a second.

What other guy could pull off rooster-shaped oven mitts?

We talked while the pizza rolls baked. When the timer on his phone buzzed a few minutes later, he took them out and set them on top of the stove.

"Careful- they're hot," he said. He picked one up and blew on it then handed it to me.

My heart warmed, rising to meet the oven's scorching temperature. I took the snack from him with a quiet thank you, and bit into it slowly. It was crispy, buttery, and delicious. "Wow...this is really good!"

"I'm Italian." Rocco grinned as if that explained everything.

"Grazie!" I cringed immediately. It hadn't sounded lame in my head.

"That's about all I know too." Rocco was already on his third pizza roll. "Oh, and Nonna. I call my grandma Nonna. Her and my grandpa grew up in Italy."

"Cool. Did she teach you how to make these?"

"Figured it out myself. When I was younger I had to find ways to make the same things taste different."

He said it lightly, as if it had been fun to experiment, but I had a feeling there was more to the story. There always seemed to be more to the story when it came to Rocco. His phone rang suddenly, interrupting my train of thought. He answered it while devouring another pizza roll. "I'm gonna need Dom to stop switching phone numbers on me," he grumbled to himself. "Hey, what's up?"

Rocco froze mid-chew, face paling considerably as his hazel eyes hardened. "I'm not sure how you got this number, but don't call again." He hung up before slamming the phone down on the counter.

The silence that followed sat heavy in the kitchen, broken only by the ticking of an old clock that hung on the wall. Who could that have been? He'd clearly thought it was Dom, but his reaction proved otherwise. Could it be a crazed fan? An over-zealous stalkerazzi? After a few unnerving seconds, I found my voice again. "Is everything OK?"

"Yeah...don't worry about it."

I couldn't help but do just that as I watched Rocco sift a hand through his hair, eyes focused on whatever intangible evil that phone call had left in its wake. I almost waved my hand in front of his face, because he looked like he was under some kind of trance. Instead, I grabbed his unfinished bottle of water and nudged him. Rocco accepted it and chugged the water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before crushing the plastic bottle. The remaining pizza rolls went on a plate, and we moved to the kitchen table and sat.

"Are you sure you're OK?" I asked, peeling some loose skin down the corner of a thumb.

One of Rocco's hands landed on both of mine, gently separating them so I couldn't pick at my skin. "It's nothing. Believe me," he replied with a quick smile. He grabbed another pizza roll and instantly I felt the loss of his warm hand. "So...what do you do for fun- aside from Dennis? Do you like to cook?"

I smiled back and told him my dream was to make enough money to hire a personal chef. The tension dissipated as we talked, and Rocco delighted and terrified me with random facts about himself. He didn't like even numbers, he wrote with his left hand but did everything else with his right (including playing guitar), and he was double-jointed; which he proceeded to demonstrate by bending his left thumb back until it touched his wrist. I screamed and laughed and talked more than I had with anyone other than Enid.

"Trying not to flunk out of college is hard when you're on tour," Rocco admitted sometime around midnight.

"You're in college?"

"Yeah, online. Figured I should just in case this rock star thing goes south. I'm in my first year and it sucks."

"Aww poor thing," I teased. "You should email your professors tickets to your next show. Maybe they'll cut you some slack."

" I would if I thought it'd work! They're harsh, man."

Laughing, I glanced at my phone only to realize the screen had gone black. "Ugh- phone's dead. Hold on a sec." I shot upstairs to grab my charger, couldn't find it anywhere, and started ransacking my room. After fifteen minutes of wild searching, the chord and brick turned up under my bed. When I got back to the kitchen, I apologized to Rocco for taking so long, and we continued goofing off until two in the morning.

"Whoa, it got late!" Rocco exclaimed, stretching. "I'd better get the batmobile aka Ackerman's baby home."

"Thanks again for everything. Giving me a ride, making the pizza rolls. I had...fun." The last word was a mumbled confession that made my cheeks burn. Tonight was probably the most fun I'd had in, well, forever.

"Anytime." Rocco threw me a little wink then got up and pushed in his chair. "And hey, now you know what to do with leftover pizza. I'll see you next Tuesday, OK?"

"OK."

"As for Dom, don't worry about him- we're gonna talk. I've known him since first grade, and believe it or not, he's a decent guy. He's just gotta start making better choices."

I nodded, hoping that one of those "better choices" would include keeping our kiss a secret from Rocco. As soon as he left, I started cleaning up the kitchen. Surprisingly, we hadn't made a huge mess, so there wasn't a lot to do. I loaded the dishes in the dishwasher, and put the basil back in the spice cabinet. Earlier I'd moved the pizza box to the edge of the counter near the trash can, but now it sat in the middle by the microwave. Confused, I opened it to make sure it was actually empty. On the inside of the lid was a message scrawled in black marker: next time we're using shredded cheese/ 917-855-7721.

I blinked, staring at the random sequence of numbers, wondering what they could mean, because they couldn't possibly be Rocco's phone number.

I closed the cardboard box and opened it repeatedly in an attempt to interrupt whatever hallucination I was having. When the message didn't disappear, reality set in and my eyes widened.

Rocco had left me his phone number!

But...why? I'm sure he had more interesting people to text. When had he found time to even write this? I'd been with him all night. I glanced at my phone charging on the other end of the counter. Well, most of the night. The fifteen minutes I'd spent looking for my charger would've given him enough time to do this, especially since my Mom kept pens and markers in a cup near the spatulas and wooden spoons. A slow smile spread across my face as I entered Rocco's number into my phone. Instead of throwing the box away, I carried it upstairs and put it on my desk, then scrubbed off my make-up and took a shower.

The smile stayed plastered on as I fell asleep under a ceiling full of glowing moons and stars.

~~~

The next morning when my alarm went off, I contemplated doing the unthinkable: smashing my phone.

It was something no sixteen-year-old in their right mind would do...but how many sixteen-year-olds could say they survived the kind of day I'd had yesterday?

My date with Dom had been weird. That was the only way I could describe it. He'd gone from sad to aggressive to kinda nice, and then he'd kissed me! It was also hard to ignore the fact that he'd shielded me from First Stall girl and dealt with the fallout while I escaped quietly into the night.

Yawning, I turned off my alarm, and checked Twitter and Instagram again. Still no picture of us making out in the bathroom.

Good.

I returned to my home screen, eyes widening when I saw the icon for "contacts." I clicked on it, a bit shocked to find that Rocco's number was still there. I fully expected to wake up and find out it was just a dream. That he'd never driven me home or showed me how to make those yummy pizza rolls.

A groggy smile spread across my face as I stared at his contact info. Last night when I entered it in, I'd put a little guitar and candy emoji by his name. That just about summed up Rocco Alden, although if I'd really tried to describe him with nothing but emojis, I would've added the sun and that purple smirking devil.

I'd wanted to text him last night. I wanted to text him now to ask if he'd gotten Ackerman's "baby" back and made it home safely. To ask him how he'd slept and what he was doing later today.

To ask him if he was OK after that phone call.

But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't want to jump the gun. I didn't want to come off desperate. Part of me knew that Rocco was a nice guy and there were things we had in common, but that didn't necessarily mean he wanted to be friends. He could be acting this way because he felt sorry for me. It wouldn't be the first time someone did something because they felt sorry for me.

The thought dampened my mood as I got out of bed and got ready for school. I couldn't skip again even though I wanted to. I'd had my break. Now it was time to face Josh, Jessica, Mrs. Mayer- the entire school.

It'd be Misery Hayes vs the World- only I wouldn't get a cool movie.

I sighed and pressed both palms against my eyes before putting a playlist on shuffle. I needed the noise. I needed to be distracted or I'd overthink everything and stay home. Or drop out of school.

The cacophony of Seventy Times 7 by Brand New exploded through my speakers, and the lyrics instantly rang true:

Back in school they never taught us what we needed to know

Like how to deal with despair

or someone breaking your heart

For twelve years I've held it all together,

but a night like this is beggin' to pull me apart.

~~~

Surprisingly, Enid didn't come to my house to drag me to school. She harassed me over text instead, grilling me about the details of my date with Dom. I gave her vague, noncommittal answers as I munched on strawberry pop tarts. There still wasn't any food in the fridge. I'd simply found a box of pop tarts on the kitchen table, signaling my Mom had stopped home at some point.

At least I wouldn't have to grab breakfast in the cafeteria. Just the thought of eating in there with everybody (especially now that Misery Loves Company had aired) made me queasy.

I could deal with my first few classes. It was after lunch that concerned me; knowing I'd have to sit through Economics and deal with Jessica. And Josh.

The thought intensified my nausea, churning the food in my stomach. I still didn't know what to make of what happened on the rooftop or how to act when I saw him.

Do I ask him why he cushioned my fall down the stairs? Accept his apology? Ignore him?

A picture of his scarred torso popped into my head, and I shook it hard, leaving the kitchen for the living room. I was picking up my back pack when I noticed something on the floor by the couch. Narrowing my eyes, I inched closer only to realize it was Rocco's leather jacket! It must've slid off the couch and he forgot to take it.

I lifted it gently, smoothing out the wrinkles with one hand. It probably still smelled like him, but I decided to draw the line at sniffing other people's clothing. I refused to be like those creepy fangirls I made fun of.

I ended up hanging the jacket in the hall closet, glad that I now had a reason to text Rocco without seeming desperate.

It was the only thing that comforted me as I walked to school.

~~~

Author's note: So, what do you guys think of Miz and Rocco? Are you for it? Against it? Why?

She learned so many things about him in this chapter yet there's still so much she doesn't know.

Miz hasn't been to school since Friday, and it's now Wednesday. How do you think her first day back will go, especially now that the first episode of Misery Loves Company has aired?

If you enjoyed this chapter please COMMENT & VOTE.

Also, if you haven't seen the movie Scott Pilgrim vs the World- get on that ASAP. That music video ^ will have you buying it from iTunes.