“To do the opposite?” I repeated.
“Yeah.” He exhaled, shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “I thought it would be cool to do this nice gesture while I sat you down and told you…” He paused. “November, I don’t want you to go home at the end of the summer. I want you to stay here with me and be my girlfriend officially. I want you to move in, try this shit for real and see it through.”
“You want me to move in?”
“And officially be my girlfriend.”
A smile flew across my face. He smiled in return.
“Okay. Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm.” I nodded and Kaleo moved his chair closer to mine so we could kiss.
“Is that an mhm that you’re going to be my girlfriend or that you’re going to move in?”
“Both.” I grinned against his mouth and kissed him again.
I found myself just looking at him and smiling while we ate dinner. The food tasted amazing and I had three glasses of wine before the night was over. I kicked my shoes off and Kaleo carried me back to the car.
He helped me inside then jogged around to get in the driver’s seat.
“You want to get a hotel or you want to go home?”
“Do you feel like driving home?”
“I’m good with whatever.”
“Then, lets go home.”
“Okay.”
Kaleo let me pick out the music so I threw on some R&B and found myself just staring at this fine ass man that I got to call mine. I held his face while he drove, running my thumb along his jaw.
I was very much in love with this man, with my man and I couldn’t wait to see what life had in store for us.
I finally peeled my hand off him thirty minutes into the drive. I turned my attention to my phone and scrolled through some jobs to see if something caught my eye. I had enough money saved up to do what I wanted for the summer and probably enough to last a few more months but if I was going to be staying here I needed to tell the job I’d left on pause that I wouldn’t be coming back and find something new too.
I had my resume already saved on my phone so I applied for a few jobs with the quick application button.
Kaleo reached over and set his hand on my knee. He squeezed and I placed a hand over his.
We rode the rest of the way home like that.
When we got there, Kaleo threw the car in park but didn’t cut the engine. He looked over at me.
“I’m excited,” he said. “About us starting this next chapter together.”
“Me too. I can’t wait to start decorating your spot with all my little girly shit,” I teased.
“That’s fine with me, shawty. You can-”
Kaleo’s sentence was cut short when a loud boom echoed through the otherwise silent parking lot. It took the next two sounds for me to realize that it was gunshots. A scream ripped from me and I ducked in my seat.
Kaleo threw his door open. I reached for his arm but was too slow. He hopped out and I pushed my seat back to duck further down while he returned fire. I could hear the sound of tires peeling off but it took several minutes for me to realize that the shooting had stopped and Kaleo was dragging me out of the car.
I felt like my chest was going to burst. My ears were ringing and I was light headed. I pushed Kaleo lightly away from me, stumbled toward the grass and collapsed to my knees.
