B0075M2D1U EBOK (13 page)

Before long, I was back in my bedroom, painting my nails in Strawberry Bubblegum polish. It matched my v-neck pink t-shirt, denim shorts and pink Converse. Duh. Of course I have a pair of pink Converse.

I put on my favorite silver hoop earrings and went downstairs to wait for Nick. I wandered into the living room where my Dad was sitting on one end of the couch, reading the newspaper. He glanced up and asked, “Ready for your date?”

“
Yep,” I said as I sat down on the arm of the couch near my dad, staring at the Discovery Channel show that nobody seemed to be watching. Mom was in the kitchen making dinner, and Leo was setting the table. “So, where is the young man taking you?” my dad asked, peering at me over his reading glasses. “Rebecca’s,” I answered. My dad nodded and directed his attention back to his newspaper.

“
Hey,” my brother called from the kitchen, “That’s good. I heard that place gives out doggie bags, Scooby,” he snickered.

“
Shut up LeoNORA. Why don’t you go play with dolls or something, little Leonora!” I huffed back. Not my best retort, but it was the first thing that popped into my head. “Now, now,” my dad warned as he flicked his newspapers. Just then, there was a knock at the front door. I jumped up from the couch to answer it. “I’m outta here,” I called out, and rushed to the door before my parents or Leo could ask any more questions or tease me about my date.

I opened the door and was struck still at the gorgeous sight in front of my eyes. Nick was standing on my front porch, hands in his pockets, looking more handsome than I remembered him to be. His broad shoulders filled out his fitted yellow polo shirt that brought out his golden tan that seemed to match his khaki cargo shorts. His bright emerald green eyes sparkled at me and his trademark smile welcomed me out onto the porch. I sucked in a quick, deep breath as my heart started racing again. Why does he always do this to me? I swear he’s going to notice how loud my chest was pounding. The butterflies in my stomach made their appearance and I felt them fluttering all over the place making me jittery with nervous, excited energy.

“
Hi Nick!” I brightly smiled at him and pulled the door shut behind me.

“
You ready?” he asked as he reached out his hand to hold mine and lead me to his car.

I nodded, and stepped off the porch, to have my fourth date with Mr. Hotness. I barely thought of fairies and dragons all evening.

Until
it
happened.

Chapter 15

Dinner out with Nick was phenomenal. As I said, I hadn’t thought of fairies or dragons all evening…until Nick suggested we go to Paddletime on the lake and rent a rowboat to float around in for an hour. It was during our evening cruise around the lake when it happened.

Paddletime rented out all kinds of stuff…row boats, kayaks, canoes, tubes, you name it, they had it. Nick thought it would be fun to get a boat and take a row around the lake to watch the sunset. (How romantic is that?!?) Well, I should clarify. He would be doing the rowing. I’d be sitting there watching his big, strong arms row me around the lake. Sounded like a great idea to me!

Nick held my hand as he helped me into one of the aluminum row boats tied up to the docks. I carefully stepped in, squatted down and grabbed the sides for support so I could ease myself onto the bench in the boat. Once I was securely seated, Nick untied the boat and carefully climbed in. We sat facing each other, and he unfastened the oars and began to maneuver our boat out onto the lake. He made some small talk, and we chatted about our various boating experience. He had lots, as he grew up fishing with his dad and brothers (I hated fishing) and had also spent a lot of time water skiing and wake boarding because his Uncle had a pretty cool speedboat. Other than tubing and my occasional stint at waterskiing off friends’ pontoon boats, I didn’t have much boating experience. And row boats, canoes and kayaks just seemed like too much physical work to me. Blech. Of course, Nick could row me around Lake Michigan and I wouldn’t mind watching him flex those sexy muscles of his…

The lake was pretty quiet because it was a Monday night…not too many people out for an evening cruise. The water was calm and the sun was beginning to set. It was absolutely perfect.

Because there were no big cities or bright lights nearby, the sunsets over the lake were absolutely amazing. The sky would turn at least six different shades of yellow, orange, pink and lavender. It glowed in a rainbow of horizontal sunburst hues, beautifully reflecting off the water until it sank down beneath the tree line. We sat mostly in silence, with just the sounds of the oars quietly swishing through the water, as we watched the setting sun.

“
It’s so beautiful. I could look for hours,” I sighed, gazing out at the gorgeous, glowing sunset.

“
I know what you mean,” Nick said, only he wasn’t looking at the sunset. I glanced over at him to find him staring intently at me. Heat rose in my cheeks and I’m sure I started to blush. I smiled and quickly looked back at the sunset, which was fading into the horizon. I could feel his eyes still watching me, and, all of a sudden, I became very aware of every sound around me. My breathing, which seemed to quicken, the swishing of the oars, the water lapping against the boat, the soft sounds of seagulls overhead…and then Nick spoke, “I think you know that I like you, Ruby.” I looked back over at him, biting my lip and smiling, then quickly looked down at my hands, as if I were studying my nail polish. Nick went on, “You are really pretty.” I looked up, surprised at his bold remark and smiled as he went on, “and I am really looking forward to spending the entire summer with you…If you want too.” His gaze never left my face, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This kind of stuff just never happens to me. I’m the regular girl, who likes to garden of all things, and whose best friends are two fairies and probably the one Goth gay kid in our town. And Nick…Nick was the one of the coolest, hottest guys in our entire school, and to top it off, he was actually really nice! The most amazing thing was that he seemed to really like me.

Nick continued to gaze at me, as if he was waiting for me to say something. But what? I had no clue how to do this! I had finally been able to actually speak in complete sentences, and now it seemed like I was somehow supposed to declare my feelings for him. Yikes. I don’t think, “
You make me swoon and get all quivery,”
is exactly the right sentiment I wanted to declare. “I…I…like you too, Nick, a lot.” I managed to get out. He smiled, “Cool.” Well. That would have to do. For now.

“
Let’s just go up towards the island and then we’ll turn back, okay?” he suggested.

“
Sure,” I said, as we both kept stealing glances at each other and sheepishly exchanging smiles. Well, at least I felt sheepish. Nick just looked hot. And I don’t mean because he was rowing us all over the lake. I mean, he looked gorgeous hot. All I could do was think about making out with him again. I was looking at the shoreline and glancing over at the island. The island was really just a small little piece of wooded land towards one side of the lake where it was marshier. Nick was careful not to row too close to the swampy water so we wouldn’t get stuck in all the tall grasses and marshland. Even though it was getting dark now, I saw a bunch of broken trees and branches kind of creating a cave-like structure on one side of the island. I almost missed it, because it was well hidden in the brush, but it was definitely man-made. The recent storms hadn’t blown down the trees into that formation. As I looked more intently at the structure, I had a thought. Maybe it wasn’t man-made after all…

Maybe it was
dragon
made.

Was that Sirrush’s nest? Could I have been so lucky as to stumble across it this easily? I would have to tell Anya and Brennan right away. They would know what a dragon’s nest looks like.

And that’s when it happened.

I saw the big, scaly brownish-green tail come swishing out of the water about fifteen feet behind Nick. Luckily, Nick was facing me, so his back was to the creature’s tail. It barely made a splash as it swooped up and out and then back down into the water. I tried to stay calm and not let my face reveal my shock, but I don’t know how good of a job I did. Luckily, Nick was somewhat distracted with the hard work of rowing the boat, so I quickly tried to start a conversation so if the dragon got any closer, Nick wouldn’t hear it. The fairies were trying to keep their presence and the threat of the dragon a secret. Could you imagine the wide-spread panic that would happen if everyone found out that a dragon was flying around their town? I’m sure more than a few people would freak out and I didn’t need Nick to be the first one. Thankfully, it was getting darker by the minute. I only hoped that old Sirrush would steer clear of us.

“
So, uhhh, Nick! Are you guys going on any vacations this year? Going to the U.P. or anything?” I anxiously asked, probably a lot louder than necessary.

“
Nah. Not this summer. I think my parents said we were gonna go up to Mackinac Island for a weekend though. They like to go every year. And, of course, we’ll head into Traverse City for the Cherry Festival. How ‘bout you?” I didn’t really hear Nick ask the question, because I was too distracted at what just came out of the water behind him.

Slowly emerging from the top of the water was a huge, long, scaly neck, topped off with the meanest, scariest, dragonish-dragon-looking head I’ve ever seen. He was covered in brownish-green scales that looked almost iridescent in the moonlight. His eyes were a bright fiery, glowing orange, and his nostrils flared with steam, sounding like a whale blowing water out of its blowhole.

And he looked right at me.

My blood ran cold and my heart stopped. I was frozen, sitting there staring at the thing that was silently watching us, about ten feet behind Nick. I couldn’t scream if I wanted to.

“
Ruby? I said are you going anywhere this summer?”

“
Oh! Uh! Right. Yeah. Um. No. Not going anywhere this summer,” I said quickly as I watched, not even wanting to blink, as the ugly monster slowly began to silently sink back down under the water. He was watching me with his fiery-orange eyes the entire time, and then he….

No. He did
not
just do that.

Yep. He did.

He…. evilly
smirked
at me.

That little punk, crazyass dragon actually smirked at me as he submerged himself in the water. Ohhhhholyyy crap. What the hell was he gonna do? As far as I knew, nobody had actually seen the dragon up close yet. From a distance, the few townspeople that had seen him mistakenly thought he was a large bird, or small plane. If Sirrush was getting brave and starting to show himself, it would really freak people out. Not only would people end up hurt, but can you imagine the media circus that would converge on the town? Sirrush let his tail splash loudly this time, which, of course, startled Nick and he said, “Whoa! The fish must really be jumping tonight! I didn’t see it, but did you?”

I nervously laughed and started fidgeting in my seat…I had to do something to distract Nick and get us the hell out of this lake as quickly as possible. This dragon was getting a bit too close for comfort. “Oh! Yeah, I think I saw some fish jumping back over there,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant as I waved my hand behind me, forcing Nick to squint and look into the distance beyond my shoulders. As I’m glancing around the sides of the boat, looking for any sign of Sirrush, I could just barely make out his dark, shadowy body slithering underneath our boat, Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. This was worse than
JAWS
. My heart was pounding and I was about to start hyperventilating. I jumped up so I was standing in the boat, which freaked Nick out right away, “Whoa! Watch it Ruby! You’re gonna tip us over! Why are you standing?! Sit down!”

Just then, we felt a knock on the bottom of the boat. To cover up the little nudge that Sirrush gave our boat from underneath, I started shifting my weight and hopping back and forth, making the boat rock more. “Ohmygosh (Gulp, choke) Nick! I, I ...reallyumpfssshh…(Gasp) havetousethebathroom! Like now.” I think I am hyperventilating. Oh geesh. Deep breaths, Ruby, deep breaths. I blew out a deep breath to calm myself a little, but still half-sitting, half-standing and peering around, not quite sure what to do with my antsy myself. “Can we just hurry up and get back to shore?” Nick looked very confused, shaking his head, and grabbing my hand, “Sure, sure, yeah. Relax, Ruby. Just sit back down; I’ll head back right now.” I started to sit back down and tried to jump up again when I felt Sirrush give another huge nudge, rocking the boat so violently that I lost my balance and with my arms flailing, I tumbled backwards.

“
RUBY!” Nick yelled as he dropped the oars and lurched forward to try to grab me and keep me from falling out of the boat. He grabbed at my shirt but didn’t quite get a good hold. I toppled off the boat and splashed into the cold, dark, dragon-infested water.

At least in
JAWS
, they could see the shark coming. Freaking out, I started kicking and screaming wildly, “Get me up! Get me up!” I scrambled to get to the side of the boat and haul myself up. Nick was right there, leaning his arms over the side and helping me back into boat. “Hang on, I gotcha,” he grunted. He hoisted me up and we fell into the boat, rolling over onto our backs, breathing heavily with me soaking wet. The water was freezing, but thank goodness it was a warm night.

I was probably only in the water for about eight seconds – it was that fast – but that was long enough. I had no desire to get any closer to that fire-breathing monster than I had already come. “Are you okay?” Nick asked, totally worried. I was panting and breathing hard. “Yeah,” I managed to gasp out. I blew out some more deep breaths to calm myself, and then sat up on the floor of the boat. “Can we just get outta here now?” I asked, as I looked up at him dripping wet, with teary eyes.