Reese and Kayla were upset at first that I hadn’t called them but once I told them what happened, they began to accept me going on another date with Dylan. Although a little hesitantly.
“What about Michael?” Kayla asked, watching me from the bed as I put my hair in a side braid and looked for my sandals.
“What about him?”
“Well, like, I thought you guys had a thing.”
I had been thinking about this very thing all night. I had decided that I might have a little thing for him, but I brushed it off as just regular attraction. He was attractive and he was a really good guy, so really, anybody would have a thing for him. “Kay, we’re just friends.”
“Whatever.” She sighed and Reese groaned.
I ignored them as I heard a knock on the door and went to answer it. Dylan stood in the hallway, chewing on his lip and shuffling his feet. “Alana, hey.”
“Hi, Dylan.” I smiled, waving bye to the girls and stepping out into the hallway, closing the door behind me.
“You ready to go?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
Dylan took me to small little burger joint about fifteen minutes away. It was really cute and retro looking, with the black and white tiled floors and the red stools at the counter. We had settled on burgers and a basket a fries, but we were still debating how many milkshakes to get. I wanted my own. Dylan wanted to share.
“Come on!” He begged. “That’s what they do in movies, Al! They share milkshakes and then they kiss!”
“I think that’s Lady and the Tramp, Dylan.” I laughed. “And that was with spaghetti, not a milkshake.”
“So what? People still do it on dates.”
“Or you just want to kiss me.” I smirked.
“So what if I do? I get to go out with a beautiful girl. Of course I want to kiss her–”
Before he could finish, I leaned over the table, pressing my lips to his. Dylan reached up to twirl my hair between his fingers, but I broke away and sat back down. He pouted at me. “Tease.”
“You’ve gotten to kiss me twice and I haven’t even known you for twenty-four hours.”
“Yeah, but it feels like I’ve known you for years.” He shrugged. “I’ve told you things about myself that I haven’t told a lot of people. Like about the scouting possibility and the time someone spiked my drink and I woke up in my shower with a Sharpie drawing that looked a lot like Angelina Jolie on my chest. Haven’t you told me things about yourself that nobody knows?”
He was right. It did feel like we’d known each other for years that I hadn’t even told Reese, much less Michael. But I had figured that I had years to tell him, so there was no rush. Michael was just the kind of guy you wanted by your side years in the future. “Yeah. But we don’t have to rush anything, you know?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, Al. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
“Yeah. Thank you.” I said slowly. I felt bad. I really liked Dylan, and I guess he really liked me too. I just wasn’t really the type to spend all their time making out with guys. I especially wasn’t the type to spend time making out with guys they just met. But I think there was another reason, bigger than this, that held me back from kissing Dylan. Get over it. I chided myself. That was almost a year ago.
The conversation ended when the waitress came for our orders. We ordered two burgers, a basket of fries, and two milkshakes.
***
