Filmed [complete]

Firsts

When I opened the front door to reveal Nick, I was not expecting him to be holding a bouquet of white roses. Not red. The white roses matched the white dress shirt that he was wearing.

"I figured that red roses were to cliche, and you know how writers hate cliches," Nick explained to me. "Here you go," he handed me the bouquet, and I had the chance of looking at them up close. They were fake. "I did not have the many to buy real white roses and plus, these will last longer than regular alive roses."

I gave Nick a small smile and walked into the kitchen with the fake, white roses and placed them on the counter.

Mom and dad were in the kitchen, cooking spaghetti together. Dad was not allowed to touch anything that invovled the stove so his job was to cut the raw carrots that mom was going to put in the pot later. Mom would sometimes allow him to use the oven, just to cook the garlic bread though because that just involved setting the timer on the mircowave, flipping the bread over halfway through, and then taking it out.

He almost never messes up that job. Almost.

"Autumn," Dad dragged out my name, "who is this young man?" He held out his hand, and Nick placed his hand in dad's.

"Dad this is Nick, he is on the newspaper staff with me," I introduced him. "Nick, this is my dad, Max."

While shaking his hand, Nick said, "It is nice meeting you, Mr. Riles."

While shaking Nick's hand, dad used his other hand and patted Nick on the back, "Where are you planning on taking my daughter tonight, Nick? Is it a date?"

"Dad!" I exclaimed at him.

Nick did not miss a beat though, "I am going to take Autumn downtown. They have a few food trucks down there, so we will probably grab a bite to eat. We will be back before her curfew is up, Mr. Riles."

Their hands stopped shaking and dad looked at Nick for a little longer, before he let go of his hand and dropped the hand that was resting on his back, "I like this kid, Logan."

Mom rolled her eyes at him while stirring the noodles in the bowl. "Max, leave the poor boy alone, let Autumn and him go out on their date."

"Mom, it is not a date, it is a night outing between two friends," I explained to her.

"In other words a date," she teased. "It is okay, honey, just come home safe and sound because I do not think that your father will be able to sleep until you are safe under this roof." She turned her attention to Nick, "It was nice meeting you, Nick. I hope that you two have a good time while you are out."

Nick smiled, "Well, I will try my best."

* * * * *

Nick had parked the car half a mile away from downtown so we could walk and talk our way into the town.

"Why do you want to write about six word stories?" He asked me. His hands were resting in his pant pockets.

"Because it seems like the easiest thing to write about when they are already stories," I tugged the sweater that I was wearing closer to my body to keep it warm. "And there are so many topics that a six word story could be," I took out my phone out of my pocket, and immediately went to the cite that I favored a week ago, "Let me read you all the topics: crime, death, failure, funny, happy, heartbreak, inspiration, loss love, memoir, mistake, morbid, murder, pop culture, sad, scary, sci-fi, secret, surprise, triumph, whoops, and word play. You should read some of them. They can change your perspective on a couple of things."

"Well, that was certainly a wonderful alphabetical list," he commented. "Can you read me a morbid story?"

I scrolled through them, not wanting to read any of them outloud because they were twisted. Finally, I found one that was not so bad, "The chainsaw screams. So does she."