Silver Linings

Chapter 5

5

E r i k a

"Shawn who's this?" I heard a voice and turned to an older man behind the kitchen counter.

"Dad this is Erika. She just moved in across the street with her dad."Shawn spoke quickly, as if he wanted to move on with the conversation.

"Oh! It's a pleasure to meet you darling. I'm Shawn's father." He smiled genuinely, and looked at Shawn as though he'd spoken of me before.

"It's nice to meet you too Mr. Mendes. Your son is a true gentleman." I giggled earning an elbow nudge from Shawn.

"I hope he would be." He chuckled with me.

"We'll be in the game room."Shawn groaned, embarrassed by his father's actions. 

"Alright, call me if you need anything." He nodded and Shawn led me downstairs where Aaliyah and her friend were playing air hockey.

"Aaliyah could you go upstairs?"

"But we were here first."

"Aaliyah." Shawn gave her a look that would kill anyone just by seeing the way his brown eyes glared, and glassed over.

"And we're walking!" The two ran upstairs and I looked at him in disapproval.

"That was rude."

"Eh. I wanted them to leave."

I sighed and took a step back to look at him better. "They were fine Shawn."

"Too late, they're gone now." I shook my head as he took place in front of the table and grabbed a puck and plastic knob. I don't know what they're called, go away. "Ya wanna play?"

"I suck so no thanks."

"Aw, come on."

"Naw I'm good." He jogged over wrapping his arms around me and wobbling from side to side.

"Pleaseeeeeeee?" He whined and started to spin around the table, making me slightly dizzy. This kid was fricken cute okay?

"Ugh fine." I groaned.

"I always win." He spoke a smile on his face. When Shawn smiled something happened to me. You know the little sparks that fly up from a fire? The ones that float up and are a nice orangey red? But then they slowly cool down and disappear? It was kind of like that. I felt phases of emotion I hadn't really felt before. But they came up like those flecs and slowly went away. But they were always there as long as you had wood fueling the fire. I was the wood. Shawn was my flame.

We played a good six rounds of air hockey, (I won four to two, Shawn most likely purposefully losing to heighten my self-esteem.) before we ended up back upstairs in the kitchen. Shawn was going around eating essentially everything in sight. The boy could eat an elephant and still be hungry. I looked out the window slowly to see Aaliyah and her friend running around in bathing suits in the fading daylight. "You have a pool?" I asked looking out the window still.

"Yeah! We should go swimming!!" I looked at him semi-scared. Here's the deal. I can't swim. To put it simply. So when Shawn said this I had no idea how to gently reject it.

"Well, I don't have a suit."

"I'll let you borrow a shirt and you can go in your underwear." Shit.

"I won't have clothing to change into."

"Yet again, you can borrow some of mine. If we need to I'll run over to your house and sneak in." Mendes you are making this extremely difficult.