The final two hours of my shift felt like the countdown to my nervous breakdown.
This date was a disaster waiting to happen. What if he was playing another game with me? What if this was all a joke being recorded for a TV prank show? What if, what if, what if.
After all, David Star wasn’t simply attractive; he was the glowing porch light, and everyone, and I mean everyone, were the little bugs launching themselves at him. He could have any girl he wanted, and yet here I was, cherry-picked from the bunch. Why me? I kept circling back to that one thought as my insecurities reared their ugly heads.
I texted Marcy.
What do you do when a guy is a total d-bag to you and then asks you on a date?
Her text bubble popped up.
OMG!! This is it. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. WHO IS HE? DOES HE GO TO PLEASANT VALLEY? IS IT STAR?
Me: Can’t say.
Marcy: Nooooooo!!!!
Me: Help, plz! Hurry!
Marcy: Guys who are mean to girls 10/10 times are in to them. Or he has severe anger issues . . . Either way, YES, PAPI!
Four fifty-nine. The next volunteer showed up for her shift and started flirting with the boy in the funnel cake booth beside us. My hands trembled as I reached under the counter to pack up my bag to leave. “Snap out of it,” I told myself. “You can do this. It’s only a date.”
“Hey, gorgeous,” said a hoarse voice.
I popped my head up over the counter and came face-to-face with a clown. “Ahhh!” I screamed and recoiled. “David! Don’t ever do that again!”
Laughing hysterically, David peeled the clown mask up over his forehead, his expression reflecting a child’s delight. “I won it in a game. Are you ready to go?”
“I’m going to kill you,” I growled.
“Cool,” he beamed. “I’ll meet you around back.”
Leaving the booth, my stomach performed a series of happy cartwheels. David waited for me right outside, posed like a magazine ad come to life. With a backdrop of a Ferris wheel and other colorful rides, he stood relaxed with his hands in his pockets. The clown mask was replaced by his baseball cap, tufts of chestnut-brown hair poking out along the sides. As I examined him like an art appraiser, his lips curved into a slow smile.
“Hungry?”
Hungry for your abs. “What?”
“Do you want to get something to eat?” he reiterated, grinning now.
“Oh.” Snap out of it! “I’m kinda suffering from a major sugar rush from the lemonade. Could we eat a little later?”
“Sure, whatever you want to do.” He filled the silence expertly as we began to walk. “I hope you’re feeling better about the car accident. I’ve been in a few fender benders myself. They can really shake you up.”
“It’s been okay.” I blew a flyaway strand of hair from my forehead and tucked it under my baseball cap. “My friend and I weren’t injured or anything, just a few minor bumps and bruises.”
“That’s great to hear. You guys got lucky.” He placed his hand on my back as he steered us out of the way of a group of kids fighting over a bag of ride tickets. I felt the heat of his fingers through my clothing, even after he removed them. “Tell me more about you.
What are your plans after high school?”
My brain was static, an old television with a broken antenna.
“Um . . . ”
“Are you applying to art school?”
“I’ve considered it, but the cost . . . ”
“It’s outrageous, I know.”
Thinking about college always began a domino effect of stressful thoughts. My parents maintained they’d help pay off most of my loans, but I knew they couldn’t afford any of my top schools without major scholarships, and I didn’t want to burden them.
“You couldn’t possibly understand,” I murmured.
“I understand very few people follow their dreams because of one excuse or another. It could be money, time, or the fear of failing.
Most will regret not doing so the rest of their life. If your passion is art, you should chase it. Even if you fail, it’s better than looking back at your life and knowing you didn’t even try.”
His words resonated with me deeper than he could know. After my haunting interaction with David at the interview, this side of him pleasantly surprised me. I looked down at our shoes as we walked.
“To be completely honest with you, I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I have a few ideas of where I want to go to art school, but I have no idea what I’m going to do with my degree after I’ve earned it. I feel rushed to figure everything out, you know?”
David chuckled. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing. You have plenty of time to figure that out. People go to college to be a history teacher and wind up becoming a lawyer, or a business owner. Fate has a funny way of putting you right where you belong.”
“Spoken like an old soul,” I said.
“More like a guy with time to think while procrastinating in a gap year.” The sun peered out from behind a cloud and a halo of light slanted over David, stretching a golden glow across his features. Suddenly, David stopped in his tracks. He winced, squeezing his eyes shut and unclasping his aviators from the neck of his cotton T-shirt.
“You all right?” I brushed his arm with my fingertips, and he flinched.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He gaped at me a moment and rubbed his arm where I’d touched him before his mouth stretched into a dazzling smile. “The sun went in. I figured I was good for the rest of the day.
Let’s keep walking.” He touched the back of my shirt, guiding me forward again.
“That photophobia thing must suck.”
“I’m used to it.”
“How did you injure your eye, again?”
“When I was a kid, I was at the playground with Dad. I tried to see how fast I could run through the jungle gym to impress him and went down the slide the wrong way. I fell off the side of it into the mulch. A piece of a wood chip stabbed me right in the eye. Wound up in the hospital with a broken wrist and a permanently damaged cornea. No vision loss, thankfully.”
“Sheesh, that’s awful for a child to go through! I’m so sorry.”
He seemed uncomfortable talking about it, so I figured I should change the topic. “We were discussing passions, right? What are you passionate about?”
His pause suspended in the air, as if he were still reeling over my previous question. We passed a fire juggler, contortionist, and various dancers with Hula-Hoops performing sideshow acts. David bent down to put cash in a tip box by the fire juggler, earning a seductive wave from the upside-down contortionist.
“Humanitarianism,” he said, once we continued on.
“Humanitarianism?”
“That’s my passion. I have an impulse to help others.”
The night before, Marcy mentioned the Stars donating a ton of money to children’s hospitals. “How do you help others?”
“I don’t want to bore you with the details.” He cleared his throat.
“I’m curious, do you still have any interest at all in the art counseling position for our program? Or maybe an advertising or public relations direction with your creativity? I’d be more than happy to find you an internship at the D&S Tower.”
I fidgeted with the cross at my neck, withdrawing from the conversation. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach after he dodged another question in his direction. I was noticing David didn’t want to tell me anything about himself, which heightened my theory that this wasn’t a date after all but some kind of self-serving ruse to make himself feel better.
David glanced down at me as we walked further. “You’re upset.”
“A little.”
His smile was lazy and sexy. “Because I tried to make a job connection for you? I’m only trying to help.”
“There are people much more worse off than I am. I don’t need your pity.”
Grabbing the sleeve of my shirt, David jerked me to a stop.
“Hold on, I don’t pity you, Faith,” he said in an earnest voice. “I’m just trying to get to know you—”
“I want to know more about you first.”
David opened his mouth, perhaps to defend himself, but held his tongue. “Fair enough. I guess I figured you knew everything about me from the media. Down to the supposed freckle on my right ass cheek, if you read Cosmopolitan’s latest article.”
He had my full attention. “They did not write a whole article about a freckle on your butt?”
“That’s the thing, it wasn’t my ass. During a trip to Aruba, paparazzi snapped a photo of me on the balcony of my hotel and photoshopped another person’s ass and legs over my bathing suit.
To make it seem like I got work done.” He snickered. “Submitted a photo of my actual ass to show my real one is fine just the way it is, but Cosmo ignored it. So now I’m being ass-shamed under totally false pretenses.”
I peered around him. “Dumpy is certainly fine just the way it is . . . ”
“Dumpy?” David realized I was checking him out and jumped, covering his jean-clad bottom with both hands. “Hey!”
I burst into laughter, borderline cackling at his reaction. David watched me try to compose myself with his mouth quirked up. “I’m in trouble.”
“Why’s that?”
“I really like your laugh.”
Heat swiftly dispersed throughout my face.
“Did Miss Competitive bring her A-game?” he asked, nodding to the game booths lined beside us. “Because I’m not leaving here without winning a giant stuffed animal from one of these vendors.
I’m not messing around.”
I cracked a smile. “I always bring my A-game. Just don’t challenge me to Frog Bog because you’ll lose miserably.”
He leaned into me. “You don’t understand. I have to play Frog Bog, it’s the only reason I came here.”
“A-ha!” I said and pointed accusingly at his chest. “Now the long drive makes perfect sense. You’re a fellow Bogger addict trying to get his fix!”
“Something about smashing a hammer into that little platform and catapulting rubber frogs onto lily pads brings out the inner sadistic child in me. If I start battle crying or pull my shirt up over my head, do me a favor and just walk away.”
At Frog Bog, the various dramatic stances David attempted to get the frogs in the lily pads had me in actual tears. He’d restrained his reactions to winning until the very end, when he’d finally accumulated enough points to win the largest prize.
David punched his fist in the air and gunned his muscular arm into his side with a bellowing, “Boo-ya! That’s the money shot, baby!”
He then proceeded to yank his shirt up over his head like a soccer player and sprint around the area, blessing my regular townspeople with glorious washboard abs.
And no, I didn’t walk away.
After the heated events at Frog Bog, we decided to cool down with a classic game of Gone Fishing. A private smile tugged at my mouth at the sight of David crouching down to help guide a little girl’s fishing pole toward a magnetic duck, and I could feel myself dangerously warming up to this man.
Basketball was next. David executed swishes like he was a power forward in the NBA. My skills took over once we threw darts at balloons. I was in the zone, winning David a goofy pair of blue sunglasses and a mini stuffed toy while he stepped away to take a work call.
Soon, it was night. We wandered to the arcade to play Skee-Ball.
A bet was placed. Loser with the lowest score had to get a surprise temporary airbrushed tattoo of the winner’s choice. I beat him by a hair with the nagging feeling he’d let me win.
“Any good at Disco Rebel?” David asked, as we strolled to the back of the arcade. He shook his jean pocket, jingling a few tokens.
“Oh, please, no. I’m a terrible dancer.” Now that was a total lie.
“No kidding?” He flicked the mini toy pinwheel I’d won at darts so that it fanned my face. “Now we have to play.”
Marcy and I were Disco Rebel queens. We’d beaten all the game packs on my game console at home. Needless to say, David was screwed. He crouched to put our tokens in and then stood beside me as the two large television screens lit up.
“Good luck,” David said with a wink. “You’re gonna need it.”
I flashed a fake smile and spun my baseball cap backward. “Try to keep up, freckle-butt.”
Turns out, I was the one who was screwed. David was a phenomenal Disco Rebel player. It was in his stance. The second he slipped on the sensory gloves and got into formation, I knew he’d nail every instruction on the screen. Our characters awakened and sidestepped across the screens, raising their arms over their head and hitting each beat to the disco music. Our scores deadlocked. David melted into his groove, smooth and confident. On my side of the game, sweat poured down my neck. We stomped and rocked to the same rhythm, the madness to win reflecting back at us through the colorful lit screen.
He was nailing every move!
David peeled his focus off the screen, noticed my frustration, and grinned. Then he did the unthinkable and went off the rails, tossing in his own sexy pelvic movements and iconic dance moves in between steps. An off-rail distraction!
“Ever play switch, Twinkle Toes?” David taunted.
He sidestepped toward me. I anticipated this move and we sinuously switched spots, our character’s jumping across the screen to mirror us. Thrown off balance by being on a different side now, I missed a cluster of movements and David got farther ahead. Cheater.
I would see hippie neon game characters with afros boogying in my head every time I shut my eyes before I lost to him now.
“You cheated!” I shouted.
“No, sweetheart, that was flirting. If I wanted to cheat, I’d do this.”
We switched places again. As David slid past, he gripped my waist and spun me around so our bodies were flush together. In one fast movement, he wedged his shoe behind my heel and leaned his weight into me, arching me backward like putty in his hands. He caught me in a perfect dip and posed with a disco finger to the sky.
The crowd cheered.
A crowd?
David picked me up in a smooth tug, and my heart pounded uncontrollably as he leaned in to kiss my cheek.
Electric. Our eyes connected. He twisted back into his game and picked up right where he left off, barely missing a beat.
Warmth migrated up my neck. Off-kilter, I stumbled off the small stage, giving David an insurmountable lead. He ended with another Saturday Night Fever finger to the sky as the screen declared him: “WINNER!” The crowd of women flooded into his space, begging for autographs and taking pictures of him. They must have recognized him underneath his disguise. My mind was inactive as I continued to stare at David’s profile. He chatted with a group of fans and uncapped a marker with his teeth.
My fingertips lifted to my cheek, where his lips had seared my skin like a branding mark.
I went outside to cool down, and sometime later, David found me.
“There you are,” he said, resting his arms on the railing beside me. I was leaning against the outer barrier of the carousel, watching the horses glide up and down. He must have warded off his fans with selfies and autographs because he came alone. “I was looking all over for you in the arcade. What are you doing out here? Wallowing in despair over your brutal loss?”
I playfully nudged him away. “I wanted fresh air.”
“You a hippie now?”
I laughed, despite my best efforts to hold it in.
“Seriously, why the long face?” he asked.
“Thinking.”
“About?”
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “For my remark in your office.”
“Ah . . . ” He leaned back, sliding his hands into his pockets.
“You mean the savage remark about my womanizing tendencies and superiority complex proving I’ve become completely detached from ordinary life?”
“That’s the one.” I tucked a stray piece of hair underneath my baseball cap and pulled the ends of my flannel sleeves to my palms.
“Listen . . . I tend to make a lot of judgments about people. I always thought it was because I make better decisions than them, but lately, I’m realizing it’s because I’m jealous. I mean, I rarely go out, I never take risks, I don’t warm up quickly to new people. I’m kind of a huge stick-in-the-mud.” And I’m a nobody. “I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t know you well enough to make global statements about your life.”
David angled himself toward me, having listened intently to my rant without any interruption. “Want to know what I think?”
“Sure,” I said with a casual shrug. Although on the inside, I felt like I was having a major identity crisis at a super untimely moment.
“I think you should stop apologizing for being yourself.” The lights of the carousel raced over his black aviators. “You have a remarkable authentic quality about you, Faith. You’re honest.
Honesty might disguise itself as a monster when people don’t want to receive it, but for people like me—we need the truth to remember who we are.”
After watching the carousel unload, David and I headed back to the game booths to play Soda Pop Toss. The vendor plopped down two green plastic buckets with pink plastic rings. Empty soda bottles were lined in neat row after row on a raised platform. At first, David and I were back in our competitive zones and aiming for the gold bottle, but at some point, I gave up, flinging them blindly into the pit of bottles. Then there was a catastrophe. One of my rings ricocheted off the bottle and nailed me right in the boob. David stood behind me and jokingly showed me the “correct” way to toss the rings.
I swear it should have been an Olympic sport to pull all my focus onto his instructions, rather than the press of his strong hand around my waist or his sinful lips a breath away from my ear.
“Tension is thick in the air,” David said, rolling a baseball around in his fingers at the baseball toss. “Two outs, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded and up one run.”
I pinched his shoulders, pretending to massage. “What’s the count?”
“Full count. This is the payoff pitch. If I knock down the tower, you get that stuffed penguin you keep eyeballing.”
“Woop-woop! Get that penguin!”
He smirked for a second and then fixated on the stack of blocks ahead of him. “Watch and learn, grasshopper.”
He adjusted his baseball cap and wound up like a professional pitcher. The muscles in his back tightened at release as the baseball flew through the air in a blur. It knocked off two out of three of the blocks, before slamming into the backboard with a thud. The last block spun a few times, teetering precariously over the edge of the platform, before finally tumbling off with the others, as if scripted for maximum suspense. A buzzer went off.
David pivoted, surprise all over his face. He threw out his arms in triumph. “PENGUIN!”
“PENGUIN!” I echoed.
I jumped into his embrace without a second thought. Our bodies molded together, and his chiseled arms swept me off the ground in a spin. When he set me down, our smiles fell away. His gaze lowered to my lips and the tender heat of attraction blooming within me sparked to a fierce magnetism. Whoa.
“I have a great idea,” David said in a calm, unhurried voice.
“Earlier, you said you wanted to know more about me. Why don’t we discuss me over food and make this date official?”
I hesitated. Of course, I did. This night was bizarre, yet perfect and too good to be true.
“I’d like that,” I whispered, “although I think you’re forgetting something . . . ”
“How bad is it?” David asked for the third time. The terms of my Skee-Ball victory were he had to get a temporary tat of my choosing. “There better not be any pink. I’m not kidding, Faith.”
The tattoo artist handed him a mirror. He got a look-see at the sparkly pink butterfly on his tan cheek and lunged out of the chair to chase me.
Luckily, the line went fast at the food court because I was starving. David took my order of one slice of pepperoni pizza, cheese fries, and an ice-cold root beer and got in line at a concession stand.
Searching for a place for us to eat, I scoped out a red picnic table away from everyone else and sat down with my penguin. Sometime later, David came over with our trays of food and sat down across from me. My mouth fell open at the smorgasbord he’d ordered for himself: four hot dogs, two large cheese fries, onion rings, and funnel cake.
“Holy crap!” I laughed out. “Do you have ten stomachs?”
“Why yes, yes I do.” He patted his flat stomach, and I imagined the six-pack abs beneath.
His white cotton T-shirt left little to the imagination. For the thousandth time that night, I immersed myself in the sight of his hard biceps, wide shoulders, and the tight ridges of his abdominals.
“I was going to get a double cheeseburger, too, but I didn’t want to gross you out. You’re welcome.”
“You’re such a dork.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “What’d you name your penguin?”
“Maddox,” I said.
“Maddox? Does he carry a switchblade around his penguin cankle?”
“No, but if you make fun of Maddox’s cankles, you’ll get the flipper.” I lifted the penguin’s arm and swatted the air for emphasis.
“He’s crazy.” David tore the wrapper off his straw. “So what do you want to know about me?”
“Hmm.” I picked at my cheese fries with a cute little plastic fork.
“In one word, how would you describe yourself?”
“Extremelysexy.”
I rolled my eyes and we both fell into a fit of laughter. “And humble.”
“What’s your favorite food?” David asked, before biting into a hot dog.
“Tie between mac and cheese and tacos.” I was going to say cupcakes, although that was more of a dessert, at least to “normals.”
“I respect that.”
“What about you? You look like a steak and potatoes kind of guy.”
“Great,” David replied sarcastically, “I’m supposed to give off the lobster and chardonnay vibe.”
“Maybe from a distance. I don’t like lobster, do you?”
“Nah, they scream way too loud when you kill them.”
I stifled a laugh at his dark humor. “It’s awful. My grandpa used to cook bunches of live lobster in this huge stockpot at his house for family parties. Totally traumatizing.”
David shuddered. “If my grandfather had a lobster Jacuzzi in his house it would freak me out too.” He finished off his current hot dog and wiped his mouth with a napkin as he contemplated.
“Back to your question though, steak and potatoes are great and all, but I have a major sweet tooth. Is it weird to say my favorite food is frosting? If it is, then I’ll lie and say my favorite food is cake.”
“Frosting is the best creation since sliced bread!”
A slow, lazy grin. “Easily the hottest thing a girl has ever said to me.”
“Morning person or night owl?” I asked.
“Night owl.” His head inclined. “It’s when I get the most work done. You?”
“I’m the same way. We’ve now reached the point of the date where you have to tell me your zodiac sign before we can take this any further.”
Now he rolled his eyes. It was criminally hot. “Sagittarius.”
“I’m a Libra.” I formed an angel halo over my head with my fingers. “The most gentle and cooperative of the signs.”
He snorted. “Gentle, maybe, but cooperative?”
I chucked a dry french fry at his chest, which he caught and happily ate.
“How serious are you about astrology?” David inquired, leaning his forearms onto the table as he sipped his soda through a straw.
“I like to believe it holds some truth. I’ve always loved anything celestial. Look at the complexity of planet Earth alone and the endless universe our little world is surrounded by. We must have some connection to the stars, to other galaxies, to each other. Don’t you think?”
“I think I can get on board with some of it. The concept of the zodiac is as old as Babylonian times. Ever hear about Ptolemaic astrology?”
“Of course! He’s a famous Greek astrologist. I have this huge astrology book in my room that has Ptolemy in it. My aunt owns a bookstore and gave it to me for Christmas a few years ago. I used to read it late at night with a flashlight under my comforter and take notes.” Heat crept up to my face. “I’m rambling, sorry. That all sounded a lot less geeky in my head . . . ”
“I’ll have to show you my consciousness and determinism book collection one day. You’ll quickly reconsider who’s the bigger nerd between us.”
I smiled a little at the thought of him wanting to see me again.
“Now I know for sure I’m in good company. Shall we return to simplistic discussion before we get in a heated debate over whether or not fate and free will exist?”
“Yes, let us go back to unsophistication,” David agreed, matching my jokingly haughty tone. “A debate might end with one of us marked by another pink airbrushed tattoo.”
Gazing at his cheek, I tucked my lips inward to repress my amusement. “Oh . . . ” I unzipped my bag. “Before I forget, I won these bad boys while you were on the phone.” I handed him the blue sunglasses from the dart game. There was a change in his demeanor that flickered by so fast I almost missed it. “I figured you could always use a spare. They’re too cool, I know . . . ”
David flashed his famous Star smile and swapped his sunglasses for mine. “I feel pretty. Do they go with my tattoo?”
“It’s meant to be. Now get ready for the extra-special surprise.”
My teeth tugged at my bottom lip as I presented the tiny stuffed frog in a dramatic display. “Ta-da! Your very own bog frog!”
David’s mouth drew into a straight line.
Wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d expected.
“You don’t like it?” I asked.
He scratched the back of his head. “No, no I like it, but I think you should take him home instead. You love stuffed animals.”
“Oh, okay.” I slipped the frog back into my bag, wondering if I’d done something wrong. I felt a little pathetic for feeling hurt. It was just a stupid stuffed frog.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said carefully.
“No, no it’s totally fine. I have a perfect spot for him.” I picked at another fry and strained a little to smile.
Neither of us talked for an uncomfortable minute.
“You must have more questions,” David urged, and I was convinced he’d mastered the art of lithely changing topics.
I rubbed at my arms. “Have any weird fears?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Oh, come on.”
He smirked, although it was a little forced. “I get afraid on occasion. But fears? No. I always prove them to be nonsensical.”
“You’re getting all macho on me.”
He shrugged a broad shoulder. “I can tell you something that makes me a little nervous though.”
“What?”
He stared unflinchingly at me. “You.”
“Me?” A flush swarmed to my cheeks as a smile lifted the corners of my mouth. “How do I make you nervous?”
“You’re a total knockout, for starters. Exceptionally beautiful.”
Even though my heart did skip a beat, I burst out laughing at the corny line. However, when David’s expression dipped down a little, I realized he was serious, and covered my mouth.
“Thank you,” I said, as heat crept up my neck.
David stared at me for a prolonged amount of time. His mouth hung open slightly, midword. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or something behind me, because of his sunglasses, so I turned around.
Blood pulsed in my ears.
To my horror, everything and everyone was frozen in time.
Unmoving, as if someone had pressed Pause on a remote. It was dead silent too. I turned back to David in disbelief and waved my hand in front of his face. I leaned across the table, slid off his glasses, and stared him in the eyes, desperately hoping that this was a prank.
“David?” I dashed around the table and tried to shake his shoulders, but he wouldn’t budge out of his locked position. “David, what’s going on?”
As my chest constricted with each sharp intake of oxygen, I took in my surroundings. The people, the bright lights, and the numerous rides—they were all motionless.
There was a shift in the air. I wished I hadn’t noticed because now I could feel them. The eyes at the back of my head.
Finding the will within, I turned around. A shudder rang through me like a metal nail grating down my spine. Advancing toward me was a boy with eyes so familiar I instinctively lurched away from them.
He had those eyes. Those violent, otherworldly eyes trapped somewhere between a cat’s and a serpent’s. The ones I drew over and over on my canvases. A thick, jagged scar slashed horizontally through his one eyebrow, directly over the lighter chromatic green eye. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen, yet he had the aura of an adult. His back was perfectly aligned, his strides calculated, his stare sinister.
The boy neared and fear engulfed my brain, clouding out all other thoughts. He strode past me, indicating with a subtle movement of his head to follow him.
I obeyed.
