by Shelly Crane
“Yeah but I want to date him and he wants to date you. I can tell these things.”
“Well then get your radar checked,” I yelled playfully. “Everyone needs to get over it. I’m dating Tate, end of story.”
“We’ll it better be. You already got a hunk!” she chimed. “Well, let me sit next to him when we go out there, ok? I need a little help. Maybe I came on too strong earlier,” she mused and bit her thumb nail.
“You? Never,” I said, my sarcasm dripping.
We laughed as we put up our wares and made our way to the packed bleachers. It seemed the whole town came out for these things. I let Sarah sit next to Eli and other than a quick look from him, I received no reaction. Once we sat down I remembered that I hadn’t had any supper and was going to get a hotdog. I turned to Sarah to say as much but Eli stood and waved me off.
“I’ll get it. I was going anyway.”
“Ok, great, thanks.”
“You want anything, Sarah?” he asked politely.
“Diet Coke, no ice, please.”
“Sure thing.”
As soon as he was gone she leaned over and put her head on my shoulder dreamily.
“His eyes. Oh my gosh, those eyes! Have you seen them? The most gorgeous purple eyes ever.”
Yes, I wanted to say. Yes, I’d seen his gorgeous eyes. In fact, I saw them first. But I held my tongue and looked out to see Tate about to take the mat. As Sarah droned on in my ear about Eli’s accent, Tate looked for me and when he found me he smiled. He made kiss lips at me too, making Sarah produce gagging noises beside me. I punched her arm playfully and she laughed before starting a chant for our team. Eli came back a couple minutes later with our food and drinks and passed them out before taking a seat...next to me.
I heard Sarah huff beside me and I tried not to giggle. I glanced at Eli and he was smiling like he knew a secret.
We watched the match and I finished my hotdog in record time. Sarah was going on and on about the opposing team. About how hot Tate’s wrestling opponent was and how she was going to get his number after the match. Eli was forgotten, just like that.
The match didn’t last long. We won, of course, and Mike and Deidre finally made their way over to us.
“Hey, guys. Snitzy’s right? Let’s go get a burger,” Mike reminded.
“We just ate,” Sarah groaned but then changed her expression to a smile. “But I’d love to go and hang out. Eli, you in?”
“Are you in?” he asked me and I saw Deidre put a hand on her hip in my peripheral.
“Yeah. It’s still early. My curfew’s midnight.”
“Then, I’m in,” he answered and smiled slightly at me.
Deidre pushed Mike aside, squeezed herself towards us and then plopped herself on Eli’s lap. Eli remained still and expressionless as he watched me. When she wound her arms around his neck, I closed my eyes and shook my head as I looked away.
“So,” Dee started, “Clara, why don’t you go get your boyfriend?”
“I’m sure he’s coming.”
“Well then let’s go. I’m riding with Eli.”
Being able to tolerate Dee was getting harder by the minute. So I got up without a word and walked to the locker room. Tate was all showered and changed, checking his phone when I came up. I apparently startled him because he looked shocked at seeing me. He put his phone away quickly, like he’d been waiting for a call or text maybe.
“What’s up? Are you ok?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was about to text you but here you are.” He kissed my cheek and threw an arm around my shoulder. “What’s up with you? You never come to the locker rooms after matches.”
“Everybody wants to go eat, remember? You still wanna come with us?”
“Everybody who?”
“Mike, Dee, Eli-”
“Ok. Cool.”
We all piled into Tate’s truck and Mike’s car and made our way across town. Dee and Eli rode in the back seat of the truck with us and I heard Dee trying to coax him into taking her out this weekend. He didn’t say much but once when I glanced back, she had her lips on his chin, nipping playfully and then kissing it. Eli and my eyes locked for a second before I looked away.
Tate pulled me from the seat out his door once we arrived. He seemed anxious or riled up. Maybe it was the match. He held my hand a little too tightly. I looked at him funny and he smirked and kissed my fingers as we waited for everyone else to order. Tate ordered me an iced coffee and himself a big burger with the works. We sat scattered around two pushed together tables and listened to the country playing on the radio above us screaming some Taylor Swift song.
For some reason my eyes kept drifting to Dee and Eli. He seemed so disinterested so why did he let her touch him and carry on like that? Every time I looked his way, he was already looking at me. You’d think I’d be creeped out or feel weird about it but, it felt almost welcome to me. It was strange why I was so ok with it but I knew I had to let this go...whatever this little attraction to Eli was. So when Tate started touching me, I completely opened myself up to it and tried to feel every sensation it gave me. I wanted to be full of Tate, my boyfriend.
I ran my hand up his thigh after he did the same to me. I played with his fingers as his thumb caressed my wrist. When he leaned over to peck the side of my neck, as he did often, I leaned back to him and kissed his jaw, my hand gripping his arm. He looked at me with a pleased but surprised face. He pulled me to sit in his lap.
“What’s gotten into you?” he whispered amusedly in my ear.
“What? You don’t want me to?”
“Oh, I want you to. You’re just usually not like this.”
“Well, I want to play tonight,” I said and bit my lip. “Is that wrong?”
He grinned and pulled my face to his, his lips were greedy and I tasted alcohol. Someone had brought a flask with them and the guys had spiked their drinks. Great. I didn’t stop though, there was no point. I ran my hands through his hair and let him kiss me. I stopped him once his hand tried to slide too far up my thigh.
“Clara,” he growled quietly in my ear. “You are such a tease.” I looked at him but he was smiling a little. “One of these days...”
He seemed a little more frustrated with the brakes than usual. I wondered about it but let it go.
When the girl brought our food, I cringed, knowing exactly what was coming.
“Hey, Molly. Nice costume. You know it’s not Halloween yet but you get points for showing up early,” Dee sneered and the expected heckling and laughing followed.
Molly was our school Goth. She worked at this burger joint that we loved to come to and Dee and the rest of them always gave her crap every time we came.
“Bite me, Deidre. You couldn’t pull off black anyway.”
“Oh, you’re right about that. I’m not dead.”
“Yet,” Molly said and smiled brightly before bouncing off.
Dee fumed and huffed.
“Eli, did you hear what she said to me?”
“Yep,” he answered easily.
“Well?” she replied indignantly.
“Well?” he said and drug it out to be sarcastic.
“You’re not going to do anything about it? She practically threatened me!” she yelled and put a hand on her chest to barter some sympathy.
“That sounds like a job for a boyfriend to me.”
She scoffed as Mike and Tom laughed. I saw her turn red but then she switched and smiled, albeit fake.
“Ah, is that your way of asking me to go out with you? So sweet,” she said and kissed his cheek from behind, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He didn’t comment and didn’t look at her, only me. I started to wonder why no one noticed that he’d pretty much stared at me all night.
Before Molly returned, Dee orchestrated revenge, as always. She poured her water glass on the floor next to her chair. When Molly came, Dee specifically complained about her burger and asked her to come view the hair in plain sight. When she
did, she slipped and fell on her butt, right there in front of everyone, including other customers.
“Oopsy! That’s a Workman’s Comp. claim right there,” Dee said seriously then burst out laughing and the minions followed suit.
“Yeah, Molls,” Mike yelled. “I’d watch it. You’re gonna flatten out that back side even more. We’ll have to change your name to no-butt.”
I stayed quiet as I always did as they cackled like hyenas around me, and so did Eli. Molly got up, red faced and embarrassed and stalked behind the counter. When she came to give us our ticket, Mike asked her how her fall had been. It must have hurt, he said, because she had no padding to break it and then he tried to grab her butt…again. Molly just slammed the ticket on the table and left. They didn’t leave a tip, they never did.
I threw a couple dollars down as I walked out but it wasn’t nearly enough for a group our size.
Tate dropped me off at home and Eli got out as well, saying he could walk, it wasn’t far. Tate kissed me and then saluted Eli.
“Go straight in the house, Clara. It’s late, ok?” Tate ordered.
“Sure.”
“Alright. I’m gonna run Dee home. See you tomorrow, babe.”
“Bye.”
Dee climbed over the seat to sit in the front with Tate as he drove off and I turned to Eli.
“They’re fun, huh?” I said sarcastically, knowing he didn’t really have fun.
“Yeah, a blast,” he said wryly.
“Ok, well-”
“So do you guys always hang out like that? Just sitting around different venues...making fun of people?” he said and I thought I heard a bit of an accusation in there.
“Pretty much. That’s all they ever do. I hate it. I wish I’d never went with them at all once I’m there.”
“Then why go?”
“Something to do? Routine? Bored? That’s all I got. Take your pick.”
“Hmm.”
“So you and Dee?” I asked cautiously.
“Nope.”
I was confused.
“But you let her hang all over you? She kissed you,” I said and groaned inside at sounding jealous even to my ears.
“I was testing...someone. To see if they’d react to another girl showing interest in me.”
That sounded cryptic and loony but it almost made sense.
“Well? What did you find out?”
“Oh, she reacts,” he said wryly, pushing his fingers through his hair.
“Is it how you wanted her to?”
“Not quite. She’s made a habit of making out with her boyfriend more often to ward off the attraction. It’s kind of backfiring actually,” he said with a little smile and crossed his arms over his chest.
My mouth opened but no words came. He was talking about me. How had I not seen that one coming? Oh, I know. Because he was ruggedly handsome and exotic and different and he knew I had a boyfriend.
I just smiled shyly and turned to go.
“Bye, Eli. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Clara,” he floated my name on his breath. “Sweet…dreams.”
And sweet dreams was what I had. Even though I wasn’t asleep, when I closed my eyes it was like another world was waiting behind my eyelids. Tonight, the dark boy and I met in the school cafeteria. I should have been scared. The last time we’d met I got a feeling of being terrified but had no reason to be and didn’t understand it. I wasn’t scared now.
I found myself just walking around the dark dreary room, completely pitch black except wide streams of moon and streetlight beaming in. It was funny how our perception of everything changed by just the time of day changing. At night everything seemed so much more mysterious. I was in my sleep clothes this time; a pair of sleep shorts with little penguins on them and a black off the shoulder t-shirt.
I didn’t see him anywhere yet, but I had a feeling he would be here, so I just walked around, thinking about all the times I’d eaten there and all the stupid things my ‘friends’ had done.
“What are you thinking about?” I heard him say behind me. “You’re concentrating pretty hard.”
I turned to see him sitting on the tabletop, half in the shadows a few tables away.
“I’m just wondering who you are, and why I feel strange around you.”
“Strange how?”
“Strange like...I don’t know. Like I should be afraid but I’m not. I trust you but I don’t even know you.”
“What if you did know me? Would that help things?”
“Would you still come to me when I closed my eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t know. I guess I’d feel like I was cheating on my boyfriend. I shouldn’t be thinking about other guys.”
“But it’s not real, right?” he said and his tone indicated he didn’t believe it.
“Why does it feel so real?”
He ignored my question and asked me one.
“Why are you so sad?”
“What?”
“The sorrow...it’s pouring off you.”
I sat down on the table top like him, but I was still a table away.
“My parents died not too long ago. I’m not over it.”
“I’m sorry. That must be tough.”
“It is. Or it was. It’s not so bad now I just miss them. I live with a really great family.”
He seemed to absorb that answer. Then he spoke again and leaned back even further in the shadows.
“I wish I could take it all from you; your sadness, your sorrow. I’d want you to never feel pain again if I had the say in it.”
“Thanks, but everyone has to feel those things at some point. It’s what makes us who we are...makes us human.”
“You are a remarkable person. I can’t wait to get to know you. I want to know everything about you.”
“Everything?” I laughed. “There’s not much to know. So, are you.... are you going to scare me again, like last night?” I asked and felt bold and blunt. I wanted to go to him but knew there was some unspoken boundary there.
“No. No more scaring. That was a mistake, one I regret and apologize for. Had I known then what I know now, things would have gone differently.”
“What do you know now?”
“That I am completely and utterly taken by you. I can’t function without you invading my mind, day and night.”
“I have a boyfriend,” I said though I knew he knew.
“Yes, I know. But can he invade your subconscious?” he said and I heard the smile in his voice.
“No,” I whispered. “Can I see your face?”
“Does it matter what I look like to you?”
“No, but I want to know the face to look at in my mind when I remember this later.”
He chuckled.
“One day,” he promised. “There are a few things I have to take care of first.”
“What’s that?”
I didn’t hear or see him move but I felt his breath on my neck and his voice in my ear saying, “All in good time, Clara.”
~ ~ ~
The next day was a repeat of the first, minus bullies on the way to Menendez. Tate let Eli walk me to class and it was all fine. He talked to Bishop about it and he said it wasn’t his problem. So, begrudged, Tate asked Eli to walk me to class everyday if he didn’t mind.
We all met at the school that night for another match. Dee, Megan, Sarah, Eli, Mike and I sat in the bleachers and watched as the guys warmed up and sparred in preparation.
Dee worked overtime to get Eli’s attention as he and Mike talked about our football team and how Eli should sign up. Eli avoided her a lot more and once, he leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees while he watched the first match start and she rubbed his back. He shrugged her hand off and turned to look at me. It was like he was telling me he was done pretending with her. His case was made and he was waiting on me.
But all was forgotten soon when Tate started acting funny. Even if you didn’t know him you could see someth
ing was wrong. He was shaking his head from side to side furiously when he took his stance and his face was as red and twisted as I ever seen it.
I heard Eli take a deep startled breath beside me and the look was back. This time there was no painful look involved. Eli was just soaking in whatever it was he was doing. Pure ecstasy and goodness was all over his face as he watched the boys face off. It made me stiffen with concern and curiosity, but Tate was taking my focus right then.