Progress

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Charlie

I sat in the driver's seat. Not only was I debating where to take him, but I also wondered how the hell I'd gotten myself into the predicament. Next thing I knew, I'd be running off with him to join the carnival.

"You wanna go park with me?" I asked.

As soon as I saw the look on his face, I realized my mistake. "Holy shit! To a park. Go to a park. Outside of the car. With trees. And grass. A bench. No making out involved." My cheeks flushed a bright pink, and I wanted to cry in my mortification.

He chuckled out a snort and kept his head down, giving me a sideways grin. "Yeah, Charlie, let's go to a park."

I shook my head and pulled out of the parking lot, grateful again for the darkness that concealed my embarrassment. "Can we just start over? Hi, Jesse. My name is Charlie. And I have no idea why it's so hard to talk to you," I laughed.

He stared out his window momentarily, then faced me again. "I'm not big on apologies. But... If I made you feel uncomfortable back at the restaurant... Well, it's not usually this difficult for me, either. I don't know if it's you, or me, or just the two of us together."

I guess that was sort of an apology. But I still wasn't sure if he owed me one. There was something charmingly innocent about him, boyish, without filter. Yet something else completely sinister. Though it might have had something to do with his relationship with Christy that made me come back to that thought. He said he didn't date; I just wondered if Christy knew that last night.

After ten minutes of mostly silence, I pulled into a parking lot close to my parents' house. With a baseball diamond on one end, the park also had a small pond for ice-skating in the winter and an array of playground equipment made of blue industrial plastic. The wooden sign was branded Sky Sight Park, and there was a vast view of the Twin Cities beyond the tree line.

Jesse paused before opening his door. "Why did you choose this park?"

I hesitated in my response, because I didn't know how it would sound. But the night couldn't have gotten any more strange, so I thought fuck it.

"Well," I began, "I was part of a volunteer group in charge of saving the wetlands here. They're some of the only ones around that are home to four different frog and amphibian species close to making the Endangered Species List."

"Frogs?" He dipped his chin, causing blond strands of hair to cover his brow. "This park is sentimental to you because of frogs?"

"No. Not sentimental. I mean, I'm not an environmentalist or anything, but I like to help out where I can."

"You were successful then?" he asked, opening the door.

I got out of the car and lit a cigarette, handing one to him. "Mostly," I said. "I didn't have to go door-to-door petitioning the locals, but I had to study up on the species that resided here. I gathered a lot of information for their case studies." I shrugged.

"You must really like frogs."

I noted his sarcasm and smiled widely. "Not really. It was the principle."

He nodded and we continued walking toward the pond.

"So are you some Little Miss Do-Gooder? Do you comb the local papers to see how you can become a contributing member of society? Have you ever flown to Africa and fed the children dying of AIDS, or will you be doing laundry this weekend for a quadriplegic in your neighborhood all because he fought for our country?" The words flew from his mouth, and his face was unreadable.