“Oh yeah?” I said, as I gave his leg a playful nudge.
“Yeah,” he said, as he slid across the seat, pulled me in for one more kiss, then he reached up and pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. Then he laced his fingers with mine and smiled with contentment.
We rode all the way home in silence. When he pulled up out front of my house, he put the truck in park, cut the engine, and turned to look at me with our fingers still laced together.
“I hope I’m not dreaming,” he said, as he let go of my hand and slid an arm behind my back to pull me across the bench seat. Then his hand raised to my cheek, and he leaned down to kiss me softly. I liked that he was taller than me.
“I’ll call you later,” he said as his fingertips slowly melted down the side of my face, then floated back to the steering wheel.
Through closed lips, I took a deep breath through my nose, exhaled, then looked back at him one more time and smiled.
“I’ll see you,” I said sarcastically this time, as I shook my head and smiled, then hopped down onto the driveway and shut the heavy door of his truck.
“Yeah, you will!” he yelled over the roar of the engine as he pulled away.
As soon as I stepped inside the foyer, I closed my eyes and leaned my back against the front door, sure to realize that when I opened them again, none of this would be real. When my eyelids opened once more, I looked up at the top of the stairs, and Amy was standing there looking down at me with an angry expression on her face.
“What?” I asked with an incredulous tone.
She didn’t say anything; she just walked away, and I could hear her slam the door to her room from where I stood at the bottom of the stairs. I raced up the steps, skipping two at a time, but by the time I made it down the hall, I could hear the click of her door lock. I jiggled the handle, just to be sure.
“Are you serious, Amy? What is your problem?
“Go away.”
“Fine. Whatever,” I said, but I was confused by her sudden outburst.
I headed back down the hall to the bathroom, where I stripped down out of my clothes and stepped into the shower. The warm water felt good as I dragged the bar of slippery soap back and forth over my sore quads, wincing at the spots that the muscle had torn before and hadn’t quite healed, but I worked through the pain. I washed my hair, rinsed it out, and then grabbed a towel and stepped out of the shower.
As I pulled the towel around me and headed for my room, the phone rang, and I raced to my room to pick it up, but Amy beat me to it.
“Hello?” I heard her say as I held the receiver quietly to my ear.
“Can I speak to Allie?” Chris’s voice said at the other end of the line.
“She’s not here right now,” Amy lied with a rude tone in her voice.
“What? I just dropped her off half an hour ago,” he began to say, when I quickly cut in.
“Yes, I am here. Get off the phone, Amy,” then I heard the sound of the receiver slam down.
“Whoa. What’s her problem?” Chris asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“How was your shower?”
“It felt so good on my sore muscles. I thought about you.”
“Oh, really? Which part,” he asked eagerly.
“I thought about your hands all over me just like they were this afternoon at school, as I ran the soap all over—” Suddenly I could hear someone gasp on the phone.
“Is there someone else on the phone?” Chris asked.
We both got quiet and listened, then heard a click.
“Oh my God, who was that?” I said, horrified.
