He owned up to his wrapping paper faults as he handed over the present. Anne smiled at the uneven folds as he hesitated over handing over the gift. “It’s not that bad,” she giggled, her eyes glancing over the messy tape work. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“I wanted to,” Derek mumbled, waiting impatiently for Anne to open the gift.
Grinning, Anne ripped the packaging down the middle, pulling both sides away until the blue sketchbook was staring up at her. Drawing in a gasp, she shook her head in surprise. “Oh, Derek!” Pulling the book to her chest, she started to cry, “You didn’t have to buy this for me!”
“I wanted to,” he repeated. “Why are you crying?”
Dropping the book on the table in front of them, she threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Thank you!” she cried. “It’s beautiful.”
“I had your initials stamped on the cover,” he pointed out, showing her the little swirly A and E in the bottom right-hand corner. “I know you really wanted it.”
Tears of happiness still rolling down her face, Anne stroked her fingers over the cover as she smiled up at her amazing boyfriend. “This is just incredible. You really didn’t have to buy this for me.”
Leaning forward, he whispered, “If you still want to go back and look at the store’s other art supplies, we can go back later. I don’t mind buying you things; you appreciate them.”
Chapter Eight
“You are sick,” Anne sighed, handing over a tissue.
“I don’t get sick,” Derek protested as he sneezed.
“Your immune system is horrible,” she added, handing over the box of tissues this time as Derek blew his nose.
“My immune system is awesome.”
“You’ve been sick for almost two weeks. Who gets a cold in the middle of summer?”
“Me, apparently,” Derek answered before letting out yet another honking nose blow.
“I told you to stay away from those germ breeders,” Anne grinned, joking.
“My nieces are not germ breeders.”
“And just how did you get sick again?”
“I was babysitting.”
“And were they sick?”
“Not when I was watching them.”
“But the day before they had been…”
“Yes,” Derek replied, not struggling to see her point. “Both of them had been sick the day before, but they were bouncing around later that afternoon.” He took her teasing as it was meant and was already plotting his revenge.
“Oh, to have the immune systems of our youth,” Anne sighed while shaking her head.
Derek took a minute – a sneezing fit had struck him – before he could reply. “You aren’t sick,” he pointed out.
“I have a better immune system than you do.”
“Apparently.”
“I also didn’t have a niece sneezing in my face,” she added, unable to resist. “Here’s some orange juice.”
“I had some this morning.”
“You need some more.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Anne rolled her eyes in response. “Do I really look like your mom?”
Derek looked her over before shaking his head. “Thankfully, no.” He kept his real thoughts to himself.
Chapter Nine
Shaking her head, Anne hid the grin beneath her hair. Once again Derek had stolen the hair tie she had tried to use to keep her flyaway curls from blowing into her face and getting caught on her lip gloss.
Maybe when she was back at home, she would ask Beth how she tamed her own, almost as unruly, curls.
“Batman is not a superhero,” she stated.
Derek blinked. It took him a moment to figure out how to react to her crazy opinion. “Batman is too a superhero. You just angered every single comic book geek with that blasphemous opinion.”
“It’s merely an opinion and there is only one comic book geek that has ever heard me say that Batman is not a superhero, and he’s sitting in front of me.”
“I… that… That makes no sense. Are you saying that Batman is not a hero?”
“No,” she shook her head, daring to look up from her ice cream cone, the threat of dripping chocolate momentarily forgotten. “Batman is a hero.”
“But not a superhero.”
“Well, for starters, he has no superpowers,” she explained, quickly grasping at straws to cover up on an opinion she didn’t actually maintain. “He has powers, yes, but not superpowers.”
“He can…”
“Can what?” Anne interjected. “Fly?” Shaking her head, “Batman can’t fly. He has tools that have retractable grappling hooks and probably steel-enforced cable that can assist him in the appearance of flying through the air.”
“By that standard, Iron Man isn’t a superhero.”
Gulping, Anne’s eyes widened. “Ummm…” she bit her lower lip as she thought.
Leaning back, Derek returned to his own ice cream cone that was so close to dripping down his hand. The smug expression on his face annoyed her.
“Iron Man has better technological advances,” Anne finally stated. “They are built into his suit. Unless that suit experiences some damages, he will be able to fly. Batman cannot fly and if he lost any of his tools on his handy little… tool belt…” she smirked.
Derek sensed that she wanted to call that tool belt a fanny pack.
“… then all he can do is run until he can get to one of his multiple, impressively upgraded vehicles. Goodness, even Dare Devil is more impressive than Batman. He does everything blind, relying on his other senses.” Drawing back, Anne’s eyes widened as she realized just how far she had taken things.
“Are you serious?” was all Derek asked.
“I’m just saying…” she scrambled to explain, “that Batman does not have superpowers like Superman or Spiderman or… or some of the others. He has power thanks to his money, position, and intellect, but not that extra little super part… umm…” she got nervous as Derek watched her. “You know, like supernatural powers. Super. Supernatural.”
Suddenly he started laughing. Loudly. His ice cream cone dropped forgotten on the table.
Looking around them, Anne added her own messy cone to the mess. Grabbing some napkins to wipe off the sticky runs, she gave up and licked her hand. It took a moment of her carefully ignoring Derek to realize that he had stopped laughing to watch her clean up her hand.
Leaning forward, he kissed her suddenly.
Pulling back, he mumbled, “I never realized that you could be so full of it.” Giving her another quick peck on the lips, he added, “You almost had me going.”
“I did have some good points at the very end though,” she insisted.
“Yes. Batman does not have any supernatural powers,” he concluded, agreeing with the point she had attempted to make. “But neither does Iron Man.”
“I never said that Iron Man had any superpowers. Just that he was better than Batman. Arya Stark is better than Batman and she doesn’t have any gadgets.”
Laughing again, Derek scooped up the messy cones and told Anne to go wash her hands. “I’ll meet you over there by the pretzel cart. I think I owe you a pretzel dog.”
“What for?” Anne asked, glad that he was cleaning up the ice cream puddle between them.
“Because you just masterfully attempted to bullshit your way through a topic you obviously know very little about.” Giving her another quick kiss, he nodded his head towards the restrooms. “I’ll finish clearing this away, wash my own hands, and I’ll meet you over there.” Leaning forward, he whispered that he didn’t want his sticky hands to get caught in her hair.
Cassandra watched as her niece floated into the rental house after her date with Derek. She couldn’t recall ever seeing her niece so happy and, well, floaty. She was thrilled to see her often overlooked middle niece being so happy and teenagerish.
But she still had some reservations. They would be leaving soon – her business had already been extended a
few times -, returning to their southern drawls and private school politics. And he would be heading off for whatever the Navy’s form of basic training was. She really should look that up. Despite being told multiple times, she never could remember the specifics Derek gave.
She didn’t care to remember them.
But Cassandra feared what the end of her niece’s summer romance would mean. She suspected that Anne might need Derek as her mother’s illness got worse. She didn’t want to tell Anne that her mother had decided to stop with the chemo treatments that didn’t seem to be working. It wasn’t her place to tell Anne.
She worried over what would happen as soon as they returned and Anne would return to her assumed role of caretaker in hopes that she could help her mother with some of the many tasks that Eliza did on a daily basis.
Cassandra was not disillusioned about how her other nieces behaved. She was there that day when Mary had attempted to wash a load of whites with a new pair of red pants. She had even warned Mary against her actions, but her words had gone unheeded and the laundry was ruined.
She hated to know that things were going to fall apart as soon as Derek was off for training and they wouldn’t be able to communicate every single day. She’d seen it happen too many times to not be able to predict what would happen.
But, for the next week at least, she would be content that Anne could happily have a summer romance while they were in North Carolina.
She’d worry about things after they had to return.
“Have a good outing?” she asked from her place at the table where she was working.
“We ended up arguing over superheroes and wasting our ice cream,” Anne smiled distractedly.
“What do you know about superheroes?” Cassandra asked her.
“Absolutely nothing,” Anne admitted. “I fudged my entire argument and as soon as he caught on to what I was doing he started laughing. Apparently, I faked it pretty well.”
“As long as that is the only thing that you are faking.”
“Aunt!” Anne exclaimed, slightly scandalized.
“Sweetheart,” Cassandra turned to address her niece. “This is a summer romance. Don’t do something that you might regret later.”
Narrowing her eyes, Anne countered with, “Shouldn’t you have given me this advice earlier.”
“Have you…”
“No!” Anne exclaimed. “We haven’t. But…”
“But you want to,” Cassandra finished for her niece. “Remember, we are leaving next week and there is no guarantee that you will ever see Derek Worth again, even if we return to this charming neighborhood.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know what the odds are when it comes to summer romances,” she sighed, recalling one ill-fated romance of her own.
“And what if this is different?” Anne honestly asked. “What if he’s ‘It’ and I just happened to meet him randomly on a beach trip when I was seventeen? That doesn’t mean that I have to marry him right out of high school.”
“He’s older than you are.”
“Only by a year!” Anne reminded both of them.
“He’s about to go into the Navy,” Cassandra stated.
“And there is plenty of time for us to deal with the logistics of a long-distance relationship while he’s stationed wherever he’ll be stationed and I’m in college.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I know it’s not that easy!”
“I’m not certain that you do.”
Taking a step back, Anne shook her head. “Then it is something that will have to be figured out later. Right now, I’m more than comfortable enjoying the week that I have left here, with Derek. We can deal with the long-distance stuff afterward.”
“I’m not certain you know what you are doing.”
“I’m not certain that any of us know what we are doing,” Anne countered. “But I’m not about to let doubt and fear cloud my judgment. Happiness isn’t guaranteed, Aunt. I might wake up tomorrow and notice some red flags about Derek and break up with him then and there. Maybe a girlfriend comes crawling out of the sand dunes and I realize that I’ve been a game he’s been playing all along. I can’t predict the future any more than you can.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“If getting hurt is a lesson that I’m meant to learn, then I’m going to learn it, even if you try to protect me from it.”
Chapter Ten
Leaving North Carolina was even more difficult than Derek or Anne ever anticipated.
Derek planned on staying with his brother and sister-in-law until he left for Navy Boot Camp. With the exception of a planned trip to visit Anne before he left for training, they would be separated until after he graduated from his various camps and schools.
“Okay,” Anne sighed one afternoon as he explained what would be happening in greater detail than before. “So, after basic training…”
“Boot camp,” he interrupted.
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes,” was all that he said. “And Navy Boot Camp takes place in Great Lakes, Illinois.”
“Right. It’ll be cold.”
“And I’ll be there for nine weeks.”
“Nine?”
“One week for processing and eight for training.”
Nodding her head, Anne continued, showing that she mostly understood his explanations. “After that, you go to an additional training school.”
“Right.” Again, he didn’t bother going into more detail. Anne didn’t realize that it was difficult for him to think about life apart from her, even though they had only spent every day of almost two months together.
“Which is, at the minimum, ten weeks.”
“Correct,” Derek replied, leaning his head against hers.
“So, that’s nineteen weeks apart.”
“With only e-mail, letters, and the occasional phone call,” he whispered.
“That’s almost five months.”
“I know.”
Turning around in his arms, Anne looked up at Derek. “We can do it. That’s only half of my school year. We can do this.”
“There is a lot of things that we can’t guarantee,” Derek tried to explain to her. “I don’t know what will happen after Boot Camp and ‘A’ school. I don’t know when or where I’ll end up on a base or a ship or anything.”
“It’ll be fine,” Anne repeated. She felt as if somebody had to be the reassuring person in their relationship.
“We don’t know that,” he whispered.
“Have a little faith,” Anne scolded him. “We have e-mail and letters and the occasional phone call. You can come by for Christmas…”
“I’ll see if Ed and Ava are visiting her parents this year. They live near you and they don’t mind if I tag along.
“Okay then,” she gave him a look at his interruption. “And there is still your leave between A-School and your first placement.”
“There is that,” he agreed, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I just wish I could be there for your things like prom and graduation and everything else.”
“I do too,” she sighed. “But this is only part of our lives. If we can make it through this, then we can make it through anything,” Anne reassured him. “Have some faith in us.”
Anne closed her eyes as she returned home. The first thing she noticed was the silence. It was completely different than the silence she felt when she was with Derek and they sat together in comfortable silence.
There was no screaming across the hallways between Mary and Beth.
“Hello?” she called out into the empty entryway.
“Anne?” Mary’s voice called out from the dining room. “Hurry up and help me split up the school supplies!”
“School supplies?” Anne asked, mostly to herself, as she dropped her suitcase on the floor.
“School supplies?” she asked again, this time to her sister.
“Mom took me shopping!” Mary bou
nced up and down on the balls of her feet. “She made certain I grabbed enough for you. It’s just the stuff like pens and pencils and paper and highlighters and…” Mary rambled. “You know, the basics.”
“Then why haven’t you already divided them up?” Beth’s voice sounded from the kitchen where she was consuming a bowl of cereal.
“Because Anne might want something like all blue highlighters.”
“But you need a set of all colors,” Beth replied, her eye roll evident in the tone of her response even if nobody could see it.
“Anne?”
“She’s right,” Anne whispered back, not wanting Beth to hear her agreement. In a more normal voice, she added, “Just divide the paper and notebooks up evenly.”
“But the colors,” Mary pointed out, waving her hand over at the stack of twelve notebooks that her mother had stocked them up on.
“Just give me one of each color so I can color code my classes,” Anne started to say before Beth interrupted her with a snide, “I told you Anne would want to color code her classes.”
Shaking her head, Anne closed her eyes for a moment before adding, “And we’ll stash the spares somewhere for when we need them.”
“And the pencils?”
Looking down, she noticed that there were two mechanical pencils of different colors. “I’ll take the blue one,” she answered. She didn’t say that the color reminded her of Derek’s eyes.
“Told you she’d take a blue one,” Mary smugly grinned in Beth’s direction.
Derek, unfortunately, didn’t have the luck that Anne had. His father had summoned Derek home for training before Boot Camp. He found himself running five to ten miles a day depending on Mr. Worth’s schedule and the weather. Mostly Mr. Worth’s schedule. As much as he wanted to complain, he knew his father’s plan was for his own benefit.
Chapter Eleven
Drawing in a deep breath, Anne scanned the cafeteria on her first day of school. She had yet to see her best friend, Robin, at school. Even though they had met up shortly after Anne had returned from North Carolina, they hadn’t compared schedules.
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