So....was this a dream too?
It was a little weird, but luckily I was good at going with the flow. “Apparently hard enough I don’t remember making a date with you.”
“Oh, well, truuust me. You did. You also said I was the hottest guy you’d ever seen and that you wanted to pleasure me in ways I never thought possible.”
I huffed. “Really?” I challenged disbelievingly. “Cause that doesn’t sound like something I’d say.” Certainly not out loud…
“What can I say? You were incredibly high from the pheromones coming off me.”
“Probably choking, in fact,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him.
His grin spread so far it should’ve taken flight, and after we stared each other down for a few seconds, he asked, “So are you comin’ or what?”
“What the hell,” I decided, and climbed into the Ford truck.
He laughed and adjusted his cap. “Try to hold back on the enthusiasm. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
He shifted the truck into gear and pulled back into moving traffic. I had my nosy moment and subtly scanned his vehicle. Dusty consoles, tons of coins and gum in the storage compartments and the half cab behind me was stuffed with clothes, shoes, text books, school and gym bags and tons of things that needed to be chunked into the nearest trash bin. Typical teenage boy. I could only imagine the mess he had going on in the bedroom.
“So where are we going?” I asked.
“I thought we’d head over to the Revival Theatre and catch one of the movies they’re playing tonight.”
“That’s that place that just plays the old ones, right?”
“Yeah. But now that I don’t have to go get you, we’ve got an extra forty-five minutes to kill.”
“Then I want my snow cone,” I said quickly.
He smiled and replied, “I see you haven’t forgotten that part of our afternoon. You forget me but remember the snow cone. That can’t be good.”
Fifteen minutes later, I had his so-called life-changing snow cone within my grasp. As I looked down at a blur of colorful stripes, I asked, “So what am I looking at here?”
He pointed at each stripe as he said, “You’ve got wild cherry, which isn’t as sweet as most cherries, cola, watermelon, leche, which is like a creamy vanilla, followed up by blackberry.”
I just nodded my head as he listed them off. My stomach gurgled a little – and not in a good way. “That’s…really interesting.”
“Don’t knock it till you try it. And you’ve got to get all five flavors in at the same time.”
I scraped my teeth across all the colors, half expecting my tongue to be disgusted and spit it out. But surprisingly, the flavors blended remarkably well, as no one flavor overpowered the others.
“Hmm…I expected it to be sickeningly sweet, but it balanced out better than I expected.”
“It’s good, huh?”
I nodded my head and took another bite. I offered the snow cone to him teasingly. “Willing to swap spit with me now?”
“Maybe. Ask me again at the end of our date.”
Yeah, right. As if I would beg for a kiss. I began devouring the snow cone myself.
“So what are we watching tonight?”
“It’s eighties weekend so we have a choice between Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Beverly Hill’s Cop. Which would you rather see?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t seen either before.”
“What?!”
I almost sloshed the snow cone all over myself when I jumped – he was that loud. I’ve seen very few movies in my life and his reaction was pretty typical. Everyone’s always so appalled that I hadn’t seen their personal favorites. What few movies I had seen had mostly been horror movies from a few dates I’d gone on.
“In all fairness, I wasn’t even alive when those came out.”
“Yeah, but you’ve seen Gone with the Wind, haven’t you?”
“Oh, come on! That was a literary classic!”
“It barely made color it’s so old!”
I pushed him and he rolled sideways onto the ground. “I’m not even gonna defend that one.”
He laughed as he rolled back up. “Glad you didn’t do that in the paddleboat. So which one do you want to see? One’s about a kid skipping class and living it up on the town, the other is about a couple of cops. They’re both comedic.”
“Kid skipping class. And I should warn you now, just to keep you from having any crazy outbursts in the future, that I have zero movies in my repertoire. And by zero, I literally mean I’ve barely seen any movies in my life.” I finished my treat and crumpled up the paper cone. When I looked over at him, he was looking at me kinda funny. “What? You’re not gonna smack me with a soccer ball again, are you?”
He smiled and tilted his cap farther down. “Nah. Then you may really forget about me. So why are you so uneducated in the ways of cinematography?”
Ugh…even in my dreams I’m forced to say this crap. Not cool.
“I’m a ward of state, so I’ve never had anyone to give me money for a movie. And the group homes usually only had one TV and I really wasn’t one to fight for control over it.”
He fidgeted with his cap again. Treading carefully, he asked, “You’re in the system?” When I nodded he continued with, “You know, if you grew up like that, we don’t need to create a juvie record to bring you back down to earth.” He stood up and offered me his hand. “Come on.”
He pulled me to my feet and kept a tight hold on my hand all the way back to the truck. Three hours later we emerged from the theater and he snagged my hand again.
“So what did you think?”
I gently bumped him as we walked. “I think you’ve earned the right to keep choosing the movies.” And that was a rarity with me. Chance was the first guy that didn’t take me to some creepy monster movie that made me sick to my stomach.
“Well, that would mean we’re going on more dates. Are you even going to remember we have a date the next time I come to find you?”
“Maybe…if you did something so memorable I couldn’t possibly forget about you.”
He reached out to open the passenger door, but his hand paused on the handle. His other hand dropped mine and slowly trailed upwards to the side of my face. My heart pumped faster and faster as his mouth neared, his eyes set softly on mine. Our lips had barely touched before he suddenly hovered. Several seconds passed, then motion kicked back in and our lips locked for good. My insides felt all nervous and I’m sure he felt me tremble when his other hand pressed against my back. My body flinched a little when he did that, but zero pain followed his touch – guess my back wasn’t hurt in dreamland. My body relaxed as he deepened the kiss and my hands came to life and slid their way around his neck.
When I awoke the next morning, I still had a smile on my face. Weird thing was, I could totally remember every little detail of that dream. Usually when I dreamed, the images I saw during the night would fade fast, and maybe only the slightest of details would linger for me to analyze. But for some reason, I could recall everything Chance and I did on both dates.
Except the movie. Maybe the time at the theatre was just an illusion cause I still felt like I hadn’t seen it. There were a few moments here and there, like scenes you’d see from the advertisement promos run on TV. I didn’t really pay much attention to the TV in our dorm room, but Sophie always had it going on in the background. I probably just caught a promo at one time and never even realized it.
What I didn’t quite get was why I dreamt of some random guy twice in a row. Okay, I’ve had random guys inserted into my dreams before, but never the same creation twice in a row. Don’t get me wrong; I loved that this particular hotty had shown up twice now, cause he’s actually really sweet and funny. I’m just saying…weird.
But yay! Totally got the kisses this time! And for some reason, my mouth felt all stretched out and sore, like all those heavy duty lip locks really happened. But score one for the imagination, cause Chance definitely knew how to get my heart skippin’!
7
Sophie and I met after sixth period and slowly made our way through the main courtyard. It was clear and mild out, and the sun kissed our skin with the perfect amount of warmth. So we couldn’t help but stop at one of the running fountains to dip our feet in.
The sculpture had a skinny base that fanned out as it became a large bird’s nest with several baby birds facing out in different directions. They looked to the sky for their mother, mouths open and awaiting food. Water shot from their mouths and fell into the pool, but the base was so large that we only got hit with the faintest of droplets.
I knew the glistening swirls of water before me were harmless, but my heart still sped up a wee bit faster when the cool liquid made contact with my skin.
“So you wanna hear some gossip?”
“Always.” Unless it was about me and my stupid jump, of course.
“I heard that Lena chick from our history class last year didn’t come back cause she got knocked up by that Jeremy kid.”
Alright, I’m not really one for gossip, but pregnancy scandals always rocked the house.
Gasping, I cried, “Seriously?”
“Yep, and in every athletic class today, every guy in this school got handed a box of condoms.”
“What?!”
“That’s what Jhett said in his text to me earlier. So I’m thinking it’s gonna be a little hard sneaking into opposite dorms for awhile. At least until this blows over.”
Not so much a problem for me since Robert and I hadn’t advanced beyond simple kisses, but Jhett and Sophie were a little more hands-on than we were. Robert had already been given the boot once this week cause their heavier make-out session required a little privacy.
“Wouldn’t giving them condoms just encourage them to have more sex?”
“Probably not. Either they’ve got a girl willing to ride ‘em or they don’t.”
Sophie abruptly screamed and her body jerked forward, but I swear I jumped a hell of a lot higher than she did. Luckily, I immediately felt the familiar comfort of Robert’s hands on my shaky shoulders, and he pressed down to ground me to the fountain’s concrete base. That’s when I realized Jhett was flat against Sophie’s back and had thrust her forward, but not really far enough to push her into the water.
She playfully shot up and chased after him through the sea of people, trying constantly to swat after him. My heart found its way back to my chest and I tilted my head back to see Robert smiling down at me. He knew better than to do that to me, as I was still a little wary about pools of water.
“Hi,” he said, leaning down to kiss my forehead.
“Hi.”
He grabbed my bag as I stepped out of the fountain and slipped my shoes back on.
“So Jhett and I were thinking we could double date tonight.”
I glanced as Jhett and Sophie rushed by us again, and I spat out a sarcastic, “Oh, goody.”
He laughed at me and gave my back a little shove toward the dorms. “Come on. You know it’ll be fun.”
At six, Sophie and I met them in the commons and headed outside. I can tell you three things about Robert’s car. It’s black, it has two doors and it says Infiniti on the back…but that’s all I’ve got. Sophie and I literally had to squeeze ourselves into the backseat and we quietly whispered all the way to the restaurant. It drove the guys nuts – and that’s totally why we did it.
We ate at some remote steakhouse in the middle of nowhere, so it was nice and quiet inside and out. After dinner, we stuck around and went our separate ways on the property, which had outside eating areas, a flowing creek nearby and wooden ramp walkways that led to different hiking trails.
Robert pulled me in the direction of the creek, and once we were out of view of the restaurant, he brought us to a stop.
Teasingly, I asked, “What is it with you and the water?”
“Well, we could always go back to my car and hit the backseat.”
I rolled my eyes, knowing he was just screwing with me. “Like we could both fit in the backseat of that car. No wonder your parents got you that one.”
He chuckled and replied, “Yeah, but the seat reclines really far back.” With a wink, he added, “I can show you later if you’d like.”
“Uh-huh.” I nudged a rock on top of the tip of my shoe and flicked it up into the air. A moment later a splash filled the air beside Robert and he was forced to jump sideways to stay dry. I swear I wasn’t really aiming for him. Hell, I couldn’t aim that well if my life depended on it.
Eyeing me playfully, he tossed a rock back and forth between his hands. “Was that an accident, or do you have a wet t-shirt competition you need me to get you ready for?”
I held my hands up in surrender, not fancying the visual of what a wet version of my beaded blue top would do to enhance the curves of my figure. I slowly edged towards him and slipped my hand into his to pull him back towards the trail again.
“Come on. You can play with the water any time.”
He tossed the rock to the ground and let me lead him back to the ramps around the restaurant.
“So why haven’t you told me about your family yet?” Wow. Big sigh on his part. “You know, you don’t have to hide the fact that you have one. It’s not something I can hold against you or anything.”
“It’s not that,” he said, pulling me to a stop. “It’s just…what happened to you disturbs me. I can’t even begin to understand how someone could abandon their child like that. What kind of person just leaves a newborn outside for someone to find?”