Something Real (14 page)

Authors: Heather Demetrios

BOOK: Something Real

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Yes. But this is Patrick Sheldon, not some shady-ass guy at a party with roofies. Still, I get a bit of a thrill, walking on the wild side. For the past year, I’ve been wallflowered, trying to rein in every inclination to make noise, be noticed, get a laugh. Bonnie™ died hard. Even though by the end of season thirteen I’d hated doing the show, living my life in front of the camera had fashioned me into a total ham. Before, I could stand in front of crowds of people or hang out on the set of
Good Morning America
like it was my own living room. I went to movie premieres, did photo shoots, whatever. Never nervous or shy. Now just the thought of any of that makes my stomach churn.

I pick my way out of the shadows and move up the path, the ground growing soft beneath my feet as I get to the sand that marks the playground’s territory. I shiver, both from cold and anticipation. The empty swings move eerily in the breeze, faint starlight glinting off their thick metal chains. The apparatus looms before me, a sturdy wooden structure consisting of a hut enclosed on three sides, a slide, monkey bars, and a tiny net of rope for climbing. We used to have one just like this in our backyard when I was a kid. I remember falling off the monkey bars, the air whooshing out of me with frightening speed. Our nanny at the time was too busy preening for the cameras and so, for a long minute, nobody noticed me. Finally one of the cameramen heard me gasping, but by then I was so frantic that it took almost an hour for me to calm down. That was the episode where the nanny got fired. I think it was season six.

“Hey.”

I hear a soft whisper, and when I look up, Patrick is dangling from the monkey bars. As he hangs suspended above the sand, I catch a slight glimpse of the bare skin between the waist of his dark jeans and the hem of his flannel shirt. I look away, blushing.

“Hi,” I say.

He jumps down and comes over to me, our mutual nervousness hanging in the air between us, heavy and cumbersome. He reaches out and grabs my hand, pulling me toward the swings. I wish I wasn’t wearing mittens—I want to feel his skin against mine.

“Will you tell me the moment you start freezing your ass off?” he asks.

“As soon as I experience a numbing sensation in that general area, I will let you know,” I assure him.

“Excellent.”

He lets go of my hand when we get to the swings. I wonder if this is a cool thing to do on first dates or if it’s a Patrick thing. I’m guessing Tessa and Mer will let me know.

I twist my swing until the chain gets all tight and wound around itself. Then I pick my feet up and let it spin me. I feel dizzy, but I’m not sure if it’s the swing or being alone with Patrick.

“So do you live around here?” I ask.

I instantly regret this question because now he’ll want to lob it back my way.

“Yeah. Up the street a bit. You don’t though, huh?”

I shake my head, and he doesn’t press the issue. For a while we’re quiet, pushing ourselves into the sky, letting the cold air wrap around us. What does one
say
on a first date? I can’t have conversational filler with Patrick. I want a deep thought, a witty observation, something that will not be off the picked-over carcass of Getting to Know You.

“Your three favorite words: go,” he says.

(How totally wonderful is he?)

I lean back and pump my legs, climbing higher and higher. I had forgotten how fun something as simple as a swing set could be.

“Ummmm,” I say. Obviously stalling. I want good words. I want the right words.

“Don’t think. Just, you know, whatever comes to mind first.”

“Okay,” I say. “
Serendipitous
.”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Was
serendipitous
not good? I find our being in the same government class very serendipitous indeed.

“
Malicious
.”

“Nice,” he says.

“And…” I swing higher, until my feet go past the roof of the jungle gym and kick the stars. “
Brazen
.”

“Brazen,” he repeats, like he’s tasting the word, seeing if he has the right palate for it.

“What about you?” I ask, my breath coming out in puffs of autumn smoke.

Immediately he says, “
Gloaming
.”

Oh, I love that word.

“Cool. Number two?”

“
Paperweight.
”

“Paperweight?”

He nods. “
Paperweight
.” He pumps his legs a bit faster, and just as he catapults into the sky, releasing his hands from the swing, he yells, “
Yawp!
”

I laugh, my stomach in my throat as he lands on both feet.

“You’re insane!” I shout.

I let my legs dangle so that my swing slows, descending toward the ground in graceful back-and-forth swoops. Patrick’s eyes are shining as he comes toward me.

“So you sound your barbaric yawp over the roofs of suburbia?” I ask, quoting a millennial version of the Walt Whitman poem he’d referred to. We’d had to do a report on it in English last year.

He laughs. “Something like that.”

He reaches out his hands and grabs my swing, bringing me to a stop. I tilt my head up to look into his eyes. Suddenly I’m realizing that this might be a terrible idea. Am I really going to let myself proceed from harmless crush to bone-crushing feeling just when I should be keeping my distance? He must see some vestige of that worry in my eyes, because he drops to his knees, his chest leaning ever so slightly against my knees.

“What’s got you freaked out?” he asks.

What is he? Aren’t boys not supposed to notice things like this?

I open my mouth to say,
Nothing, I’m fine,
but then, unexpectedly, “It’s really complicated. I mean, I can’t tell you. Not … right now.”

“Do you want to be here?” he asks, his voice soft.

I nod. Vigorously.

“Is somebody gonna kick my ass for being here with you?”

I think this is his way of asking if I either A) have a boyfriend or B) a violent dad. I shake my head.

He holds out both of his hands and smiles. “Well, then, we’re ready for stage two of our park adventure.”

* * *

Patrick has turned the fort at the top of the playground into a cozy little campsite, complete with a camping lantern, S’mores Pop-Tarts, and sleeping bags. When we get up there (via the rope net), he immediately points to the sleeping bags and says, “I’m not shady. This just isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to sit.”

I pretend to look horrified. “I don’t think this is at all appropriate.”

He grins. “I promise to be a gentleman.”

I roll my eyes and look away. The swings were so much easier than this sudden closeness. We’re squeezed into a space intended for people who still play hand-clap games, and though I don’t mind brushing up against Patrick (quite,
quite
the opposite), it feels like the closer we are physically, the harder it will be for me to tell him outright lies.

“Convenience store ambrosia?” he asks, holding up a bottle of Pepsi.

I nod and take it. “You should have told me to bring some hot dogs to grill or something,” I say.

“Oh, no,” he says, “this feast is on me.”

I smile and break off a piece of my Pop-Tart. “So do you hang out here a lot?” I ask, gesturing to the park around me.

He nods. “Yeah. Well, once the under-four-footers are gone. It’s a good place to be alone.”

I want to ask him what his parents are like, if he has brothers or sisters. Does he need an escape or just a diversity of hangout locations? Instead, I keep my eyes on my Pepsi and nod. “I have a place like this, too.”

We talk, and the words flow between us, sometimes in rushing torrents, sometimes in lazy, slow-moving streams. I skirt around topics I don’t want to answer and he brings up random questions like “How do you like your eggs?” When I have enough courage, I sneak looks at him. His face has sharp lines sketched with a quick, sure hand. The dim light from the lantern catches in his eyes, glints off a silver band on his middle finger. He sits slouched against a rolled-up sleeping bag, and with his longish hair and threadbare secondhand couture, he could be a beat poet, Kerouac or one of his friends. He looks like the kind of boy who would jump trains, strum a guitar, and pass a joint.

We sit facing each other, our legs propped against opposite walls of the fort so that our knees occasionally knock. Once again I notice the quiet energy humming within him, just under the surface of his cool nonchalance. It’s like his ghost of a smile is the only thing standing between him and wild abandonment.

“Tessa says you’re an anarchist,” I say, after explaining, per the question he’d just asked me, what I would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse (avoid malls). I don’t know what being an anarchist means exactly, but I like the sound of it. Being totally free.

“Hmm,” is all he says.

“What’s ‘hmm’? Is that code for ‘I’d Tell You But I’d Have to Kill You’?”

He chuckles. “So you’ve talked to Tessa about me?”

My face grows warm, and I lift my chin to counteract that telltale sign of
eeek!
“I can’t help but notice that you’re avoiding my question.”

He sits up and leans closer. “Sorry,” he whispers, his voice all low and bedroomy. “I got distracted.”

Cue sweaty hands and short breath and warmth in strange, unexpected places. Is this what it feels like, falling hard for someone? Is it supposed to turn you inside out?

He smells like pine needles and dryer sheets, and it makes me happy to think he put on some clean clothes and cologne for me. Obviously I’m super into dirty I-don’t-give-a-fuck Patrick, but I like that he wanted to impress me.

I let myself move into the electric space between us, feeling like there actually is a zombie apocalypse and we’re the last people on Earth and, dammit, why won’t he just kiss me already?

And then he does.

This is what I will always remember about my first kiss:

• Soft lips and the taste of Pepsi and cinnamon

• Patrick’s firm, gentle hands snaking through my hair

• The faraway sound of mariachi music, from a house up the street

• Warm honey filling every cold, lonely, confused, scared place inside me

He pulls back for a minute, and I can’t help it, I say, “That was my first kiss.”

He grins, this goofy sort of delighted smile that makes me not feel so dumb for telling him.

He says, “It would be wrong to leave it at just one, then.”

I nod and he’s kissing me again, and this kiss lasts longer and for a while I feel like I’ve become a long-term visitor on Planet
Ahhh
. When his lips finally leave mine, his fingertips stay on my cheeks, and he looks at me—really
looks
at me—for a long time. Five seconds? Minutes? Centuries? Maybe it’s the feeling behind his eyes or the way the warmth of that kiss slowly slips back on the tide of our breath, but I suddenly feel like I need to leave. Now.

“I have to go.” I disentangle my hair from his fingers and move away.

“Chloe—”

I shake my head, my feet already on the wobbly rungs of the rope ladder.

“Chalk this up to irrationality, okay?” I say.

He looks like he wants to say something, but then nods. When I get to the last rung, I look up into the dimly lit hut. He’s leaning over the edge, looking down at me with this unnameable expression. Disappointment? Confusion? Hurt? I really don’t know.

I can’t cry in front of him, so I smile through my already blurry eyes and stumble away. I can feel his eyes on me until I finally reach the deepest shadows of the tree-lined walkway. Then I run to my car and don’t look back.