We walk down the main streets in Asheville and blend in with the other couples who are coming from dinner or going out. I like imagining for the moment that I’m on a date with Lily. That I’m not sixteen (almost seventeen) and that I’m not stuck in some YA novel.
Eventually we see a bench opening up, so Lily takes it. I move slowly toward her. I guess too slowly, since she moves over and pats the seat.
“It’s okay,” she says. “You can sit next to me.”
As I do, we see an older couple, probably in their twenties, walking hand in hand and talking and laughing.
“So why doesn’t a guy like you have a girlfriend?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
And I’d rather not tell you my little horror story.
“I mean—it’s not like you’re a dud or something.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Such a compliment.”
“See?” she laughs. “You’re kinda funny in your own nervous way.”
“Am I supposed to feel good about these comments?”
“You’re cute, too. The messy hair and that little wise-guy grin.”
I’m trying not to grin, but I can’t.
“At a place like Harrington, you can’t find a girl?”
I think for a minute. “Let’s say this—it’s hard to keep a girl.”
“And why’s that?”
I don’t want to tell her about this high school or the town or anything like that. I don’t want all that invading this date-that’s-not-really-a-date but that I really want to try and believe is one.
“It’s just a strange place,” I say, leaving it at that.
“Trying to forget about someone?”
This time I don’t say anything. I just nod.
She takes my hand, and once again I’m feeling like a little boy out with his babysitter.
His extremely hot babysitter.
“Then let’s forget together.”
“Okay,” I say, not exactly sure what that means but certainly wanting to forget.
“One more week of summer school.”
“Not for me. I’ve got a whole other session.”
“Brutal. You being punished for something?”
“Yeah. Don’t laugh—it’s true. I think the principal hates me.”
“But why?” Lily asks, looking over at me and still holding onto my hand. “Why would anybody have anything against you?”
“They don’t like newcomers.”
“Great. They’ll just love me.”
“The guys will.”
Some girls might say Really? but not Lily. She knows they will. She knows they’ll take one look and fall instantly in love without needing or even wanting to get to know her.
I don’t know her, not really. But I want to.
“You have some deep, dark secret you’re not telling everybody?” Lily asks.
“No. Not that I know of anyway.”
“Everybody has secrets. I think the important thing is to allow people to have them. To just let them be. It’s easier that way.”
So what are your secrets?
That’s what I want to ask. But she stands back up and in some kind of restless way tells me to come on.
We walk down another street. As we pass a store, we hear a song blasting.
“Ooh—Chris—I love this song!”
And she starts dancing. On the sidewalk, in a world of her own, her legs in those long boots moving to the pounding beat. She claps her hands and sings along, then looks over at me.
“Come on,” she says, taking my hand again.
We’re not alone, but you certainly wouldn’t know it. Or maybe she likes people watching. They’re certainly watching us. Or watching her.
“I love Adele,” she says of the soulful singer that I’ve never heard before.
She sings the words to me. Something about scars of love and having it all and being breathless.
We haven’t even started to have it all.
She mouths the words and spins around me, and I really, really try not to dance like a donkey. But I’m not doing a great job.
It only amuses her.
She lifts a hand, and her lips curl up as she closes her eyes. She needs a mike and a stage, not a stagehand stumbling around her like I am.
The music stops except for singing and clapping, and she urges me on—clapping. “Come on, white boy, show a little soul.”
Then she keeps dancing, a girl in her own world, not caring a bit about the onlookers, the guys checking her out and the girls wondering who in the world she thinks she is and the older people amused at her passion.
The song ends, and she just laughs, locking an arm in mine. “So you wish you were still at that party, shooting off fireworks?”
“I went there hoping you’d be there,” I blurt out in an honest way, just like her dancing seconds ago.
“Guess it was all in the cards. Pun intended.”
We are back in the dark, sleeping town of Solitary in front of the place Lily guided me to. It’s a large Victorian house not far from the main strip of downtown.
“This is your house?” I ask, glancing at the two-story home partially hidden in the woods.
“Ha. Hardly. This is a bed-and-breakfast. My mom and I are staying here while we go through my grandmother’s place. It’s pretty messy. Not really in any condition to stay there.”
“This looks nice.”
“It’s very—well, quaint. Kinda like you.”
“Quaint?”
“Totally quaint,” she says with a smile.
We’re standing at the sidewalk leading up to the inn.
“I don’t think many guys would like being called quaint.”
She walks up to me, and since she’s tall enough in her heels to look directly at me, that’s what she does. She moves her head inches away from mine.
“I wouldn’t call many guys quaint. But you are, Chris. You’re sweet.”
“Oh, come on, if I—”
She interrupts me with a kiss. A soft and mesmerizing and confident kiss. And Lily knows just how long to kiss me, because she gently moves away and smiles at my surely dumbfounded face.
“This was really nice, Chris.”
The kiss? The evening?
“All of it,” Lily continues, as if reading my mind. “Hanging out. Getting away and just forgetting.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Thanks.”
“No, thank you,” I say. “I want to forget. I need to forget.”
She studies me and waits for more.
Maybe more will come eventually. But not tonight. The only more I want tonight is to continue where that kiss left off.
“Have a good night. And a good weekend.”
“I don’t—” I start to say, thinking about the long weekend and about whether or not I’ll hear or see or—
“You’ll hear from me. ’Kay? Soon.”
I think I’ve started to breathe again. “Okay.”
She smiles and then walks off into the shadows and up the steps of the inn. Then she’s gone.
And yes, just like that—just that easily—so am I.
Lost again in the lair of some beautiful girl I want to know and love.