“I will,” I said, nodding. “I’ll see you later.” I left her doorway and continued to my room.
“Yale?” Clarke called out when I got to my room.
“Yeah?”
“I hate to admit it, but Berkeley is right,” she yelled. “Please have sex so we can know a few more days of peace!”
The last thing I heard was all three of my sisters’ laughter as I closed my bedroom door.
**
Amethyst and I walked through the park holding hands. I was surprised as hell when we pulled up and got out, but I didn’t ask questions. Instead, I let him lead us through the parking lot and then into the empty field. He was dressed in black Queens ball shorts, a white T-shirt, tall socks, and black-and-white Jordans. His hair was down, and he was wearing his everyday jewelry: an iced-out herringbone necklace, a matching bracelet, his watch, and the necklace I designed for him in college. He smelled good as fuck, too. When he smiled at me, and I saw his open face grill, I knew I was going to be in trouble. He looked too damn sexy.
“Alright,” he said, stopping in the middle of the field. He let go of my hand and set down the duffel bag he was carrying. “So, I didn’t know if we would make it in time, but we did.” He squatted and unzipped the bag. “What color do you want?” he asked, looking up at me and smiling. “White or yellow?”
“What?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“We are about to fly kites.” He pulled two kites from the bag and stood. “What color do you want? White or yellow?” Both the kites were white, so I didn’t understand his question.
“Amethyst, the sun is going down,” I said, looking around. “We won’t be able to see them in about fifteen minutes.”
“Can you just answer my question, please, Sunshine?” he kissed his teeth. “White or Yellow?”
I sighed because even though flying kites sounded like fun, I knew I was right about the sun going down. It’d been windy all day, and earlier today would’ve been perfect for this. Instead of arguing with him, I tapped one of the kites. “That one,” I said, and he nodded.
“Bet,” he said, kicking the bag away, then setting his kite on the ground. I watched as he set up my kite, making sure it was put together correctly, and the string was long enough. The wind picked up, and he tossed the kite into the air. It caught immediately, and Amethyst looked back at me and smiled before handing me the string to hold it. “Be careful and pay attention to where you are walking.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I playfully sassed, and Amethyst popped me on my ass as he passed me. I grabbed my stinging ass cheek and rubbed it. “Shit!”
“Keep talking shit if you want to, Sunshine.” He pointed at me, licked his lips, and shook his head. “I’ma handle that for sure tonight, though, don’t trip off it.” He picked up his kite, checked it, then threw it in the air. Just like with mine, the wind picked it up, and we were flying our kites.
We moved around each other, making sure our kites didn’t get tangled. I was having so much fun, but when the sun was fully set, I started pulling my kite in.
“Ay what are you doing?” Amethyst asked.
“The sun is going down, I can barely see my kite,” I answered. He nodded, then used his free hand to reach into his pocketand pull out a small remote. He aimed it at the kites, and to my amazement, they lit up. I looked over at Amethyst, and my mouth dropped open in surprise. “They have lights on them?”
“Yep,” he nodded. “That’s why I asked you what color you wanted.” I looked back at the kites to see that mine had yellow lights on it and his had white.”
“I didn’t even see the damn lights on it,” I said, shaking my head. I looked over at him to see him watching me with a smile. “How did you think of this?”
“You don’t remember telling me you wanted to do this in college?” he asked, and I shook my head. “It was just some random conversation we had about shit we didn’t do a lot as kids that we wished we had. Yours was flying kites.”
“And yours was building Legos,” I said, nodding. I only remembered the conversation because the following Christmas, I bought him a Lego set. He spent the entire time building anything that he could think of. “That’s why I started buying you Legos.”
“Right,” he laughed. “Even now, you’ll randomly buy me a set, and it dawned on me last night that we did the kite thing a few times. I kept trying to remember why, and then I remembered that we had gone late in the day and how disappointed you were when the sun went down, and we had to stop. You joked about having to get glow-in-the-dark kites because you wanted to see what they would look like at night. It took me a few days to get the kites, and I was scared today wasn’t going to be good weather for it, but I was wrong.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but to me it was. He didn’t have to do this, yet he was, and it meant something that he’d remembered.
We spent the next 30 minutes flying our kites before packing up and walking back to the car.
“Thank you,” I said once we got back inside the car. Amethyst looked over at me. “I had so much fun. I can’t wait to do it again.”
He rested his head against the headrest and licked his lips. “You legit liked it?” he asked. “I was scared you were going to think it was corny or something.”
“No.” I smiled. “This was perfect.” I leaned over the center console and kissed him. When I pulled back, I wiped my lip gloss from his bottom lip.
“You ready for the rest of our date?” he asked, then licked his lips.
“Where are we going now?”
