Imaginary Grace (26 page)

She didn’t say anything to that, and a stony silence fell on the room.

“Listen,” I said after a few minutes. “I could be wrong, but I kind of get the feeling that maybe you’re never done this before…am I right?”

I waited, but still she didn’t say anything.

“I just don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret later.”

“I…I wouldn’t regret it,” she said. She was making this very difficult. I didn’t know what else to say. I’d never had a conversation like this before and I decided today was not the time to start.

“Are you hungry, cause I’m starving? Do you want to go get something to eat?”

“Sure,” she said, blowing out a deep breath, obviously annoyed that I had changed the subject.

Knowing I needed to lighten the mood, I playfully pounced on her and planted a chaste kiss on her lips. “Hey, listen…it’s not that I don’t want to…as I’m
sure
you could probably tell.” She giggled nervously. “I just think we should take it slow, that’s all.”

She didn’t say anything at first. “Okay, maybe you’re right.” Then she reached up and put her hands on either side of my face. “You’re so sweet…”

Sweet?
I thought as she kissed me,
What’s going on here?
I gently pulled away from her and leaned over the edge of the bed to grab her shirt and bra. “Here,” I said, handing them to her, “now get dressed before I try to have my way with you again.”

She laughed as she quickly slipped into her bra. I pulled on my own shirt and made sure she was dressed before flipping on the light on the nightstand. Just as I asked, “What do you feel like eating?”, I heard Scott come in the front door, and he wasn’t alone. I silently swore. Leave it to Scott to pick up someone at the laundromat! All I could tell from the muffled voices was that it was a girl, maybe two.

Shit.
I didn’t want to walk out there with Grace on the off chance that he was with Amber or Kristen – or both.

“How about pizza?” she suggested, and I could tell from her voice that she’d heard it too.

“Pizza. Yeah, pizza sounds good,” I said as I walked closer to the door to see if I could tell who Scott was with.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Scott’s home,” I said, “and someone’s with him. If we go out there, they’re going to want to come with us.”

“Oh, I don’t mind if they come.”

“But I do,” I replied. “Sometimes Scott can be a pain in the ass.” I thought for a minute and then said, “Hey, I have an idea. How do you feel about climbing out the window?”

“The window?” she said with her eyes wide. Then she smiled bravely. “Uh, okay!”

I walked over to my closet and grabbed two sweatshirts, handing one of them to her. “Here, wear this. Your coat’s out in the living room, and it’s cold out.”

She put the sweatshirt on and I smiled to myself. I liked the idea of her wearing my clothes. The two of us crossed the room to the window, then I opened it and easily climbed out. Our apartment was ground level so it was no problem even for Grace, who slid out in no time. I carefully shut the window and turned to leave.

“Are you okay with leaving it unlocked?” She jerked her head toward the window.

“The lock’s broken anyway, so it’s never locked, but shhh, don’t tell anyone,” I whispered conspiratorially as I put my arm around her shoulder.

She leaned in and hugged me for a minute, then grabbed my hand as we walked around to the front of the house and headed downtown.

“There’s a place, Reggie & Pete’s, that’s not too far from here,” I told her, “and it’s pretty good.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that place, but I’ve never been.”

We made the ten-minute walk hand in hand, talking about nothing in particular. When we arrived I held the door open for her – something I rarely did since I rarely went on dates that required opening anything other than a condom wrapper. The place wasn’t too crowded, so we took a booth in the back and waited for Danielle, the waitress I knew took care of this section. She showed up a minute later, grinning ear to ear.

“Tanner! Long time no see.”

“Hey, Danielle, I know it’s been a while. How are you?” Danielle had worked there ever since Scott and I got the apartment, and we often came in for take-out. She also lived in the area and occasionally went to J.D.’s. I knew Scott had slept with her a couple of times, but she’d never struck me as the kind of girl that freaked out and got all possessive, which is why Scott still went in there for pizza.

“What have you guys been up to?” she asked as she flipped her hair around, obviously flirting and obviously ignoring Grace. Maybe she wasn’t so cool after all.

“Nothing much,” I said, hoping she’d take the hint, and our order.

She did neither. Instead, she proceeded to give me every last bit of the latest gossip about the regulars, as if I cared. She continued to ignore Grace, except for giving her the bitchy once-over. I glanced over at Grace but she didn’t seem to notice.

“What can I get you?” she finally asked after about ten minutes of agony.

“
We’ll
take a large cheese pie and I’ll have a Coke. Grace, what would you like to drink?”

“Oh, I’ll have a root beer,” she said.

“That sounds good,” I said. “Make it two root beers.”

“Coming right up,” she said, her smile gone, and then disappeared behind the counter.

“Jeez, I thought she’d never leave,” I said, making Grace laugh. As we waited for our food to come, I asked Grace how her family was doing and how her sister and brother liked high school.

She was obviously very close to her family and she liked to talk about them. “Oh, Jagger and Ryder love high school. I spoke to Ryder the other day and she said she has another new boyfriend and that Jagger’s still holed up in the basement with his Xbox, and he still can’t find his way to the school library for some reason. She says he still sometimes gets lost because it’s so big.”

“Were you able to take them around the high school before you left so they’d be able to find all their classes?”

“Oh, uh, no, I actually went to a different high school. I’m not sure if I ever mentioned that.”

I vaguely remembered her mentioning that at some point, but, I reminded myself guiltily, I hadn’t been all that interested at the time. “Why did you go to a different school?” I asked now with genuine curiosity.

“Oh, well, it’s really stupid, but I was involved in a bit of an ‘indiscretion’ as my parent’s called it, and they kind of overreacted.”

“An ‘indiscretion,’” I said, imitating her air quotes. “Sounds interesting. Let’s hear it.”

“It’s really stupid,” she said again, “but I’ll tell you if you
really
want to hear it.”

“Oh yeah, I
really
want to hear it,” I said as I leaned back in my seat, grinning.

She blushed. “Okay, well, it was back in the summer just after eighth grade. Two friends and I were going to the town carnival and on the way we met up with a guy from our class, Spencer, who said he was on his way to a party that his older brother had told him about. He asked us if we wanted to go, so we all agreed to ditch the carnival and go with him.”

I watched her as she told the story and I knew the ‘indiscretion’ would probably turn out to be nothing, but I didn’t care. I just loved listening to her talk. It was fun seeing her so animated as she told the story.

“He ended up taking us downtown to the back of some abandoned warehouse that I didn’t even know was there. There were all these kids back there drinking and smoking pot and we just tried to blend in with the crowd. Someone gave us each a beer and the three of us just stood there holding the beers, not even drinking them. We were there for about a half-hour when out of nowhere two cop cars pulled up and everyone scattered – everyone except the three of us, who stood there like three deer in the headlights. All together there were maybe eight of us who were taken down to the station.”

“Were you arrested?” I asked, trying to picture the scene of a young, scared Grace being hauled “downtown”.

“No, they just called our parents, but my folks freaked out. They thought I was on the road to becoming a teenage alcoholic or something, even though I swore up and down to them that I didn’t even take a sip.”

“That sounds like a minor infraction to ship you off to boarding school,” I said.

“It wasn’t boarding school, it was just a small private school two towns over and yes, I agree, in the grand scheme of things it was minor. I actually finally convinced them that the punishment hardly fit the crime, but then a few weeks later there was another ‘indiscretion.’”

“Another one!” I exclaimed. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

But by this time Danielle had returned with our order.” “Here you go, Tanner,” she said, as if Grace wasn’t even there, then she began another conversation. I felt my face getting a little hot.

This was bullshit! She was totally dissing Grace.
I reached across the table as she was talking and grabbed both of Grace’s hands in mine. “Uh, Danielle, I don’t think you’ve met Grace. Grace, this is Danielle.”

“Nice to meet you,” Grace politely said.

“Oh, hi,” she said, like she just now noticed that someone was sitting across from me.

“Will you excuse us, we were right in the middle of something,” I told her, then turned to Grace. “Go ahead, you were saying?”

Clearly dismissed, Danielle could do nothing more than walk away. It was great.

“Okay, where were we…? Oh, yes, ‘indiscretion’ number two; let’s hear it,” I said as I grabbed a slice of pizza.

“Okay, this one’s actually so stupid, it’s embarrassing,” she said.

“Oh, embarrassing – this should be good; I’m listening,” I said as I leaned back, taking a bite of pizza.

“Okay,” she began. “A few weeks later, another friend invited me on a trip with the youth group from her church to a dude ranch and…”

“Wait a minute, what’s a dude ranch?” I asked.

“You know,” she said, grabbing a slice and easing it on to her plate, “like where you ride horses and stuff like that.”

“Oh, like a horse farm?” I asked.

She smirked. “Yeah, but it’s called a dude ranch.”

“Are there like a lot of dudes there?”

“Very funny,” she said, smiling. “Anyway, on the second night we were there, some of the guys invited us and a few other girls to hang out in their room and watch a movie, so we went.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, trying to keep a straight face. “These guys who invited you to come over, were they guys from your group or were they ‘dudes’ from the ranch?”

Grace’s face went even redder. “From our group! Now stop interrupting,” she said laughing in spite of herself. “We went to their room and watched a movie- ”

“Let me guess,” I said, interrupting again, “
Blazing Saddles
?”

“No!” she said, still giggling from before. “Now, if you interrupt me again, I’m not going to tell you the rest.”

“Okay, I promise. No more interruptions,” I said, crossing my heart.

She gave me a stern look but I could tell she didn’t really mean it. “To make a long story short, we ended up falling asleep in their room, and when the counselors went around to get everyone at checkout, we were missing. Obviously we were quickly discovered in the other room and our parents were called. Now not only was I accused of being on the verge of being an alcoholic, but a promiscuous, bed-hopping alcoholic at that! As much as I tried to explain that nothing had happened, they were having none of it and that’s how I ended up in the private school.”

“Wow, Grace,” I said, “my image of you is blown. Drunken warehouse parties, indiscriminate sleepovers – what’s next?!”

“Cute guitar players in my dorm room,” she quipped.

“Ah, so you think I’m hot,” I said with a half-smile.

She just shrugged and smiled with her eyes cast down as she sipped her root beer through her straw. When she finished sipping she leaned back and said, “I never called you ‘hot’; I said you were cute.”

“Same difference,” I said, crossing my arms in front of me.

“No, it’s not. Cute guys are nice, but hot guys…aren’t.”

There was that word again – nice – and I smiled at the implied compliment. It was actually kinda cool, being the ‘nice’ guy for a change.

“I guess we should get going,” I said as I signaled for the check, which, thankfully, Danielle dropped off without saying a word. I left the check along with the cash to cover it on the table, and the two of us left.

“Do you want to stay for a while, or do you have to get back?” I asked her.

She looked torn for a moment, then said, “I actually have to get back, I still have a bit more of my paper to finish.”

“I thought you were coming over when it was finished?”

“Well, it took me longer than I thought and…I wanted to see you,” she confessed.

“Oooh, it sounds like I’m corrupting you,” I joked, only maybe it wasn’t so funny.

“Perhaps,” she said with a smile.

“I’ll give you a ride. You shouldn’t be walking alone at night.”

“I don’t mind walking, but I accept your offer.” Luckily I had brought my keys with me so I didn’t have to go back inside and deal with Scott. We got in my car and made the short drive over to her dorm.

“So, I guess I’ll see you in class Tuesday, right?” I said, as I put the car in park.

“Tuesday, yes. Do you want to go to the gym after class?”

“Sounds good,” I said as I leaned over and kissed her. I didn’t want to stop kissing her, and before I knew it I was practically on top of her.

She finally pulled back, saying, “I better get going, or I’ll never get that paper finished.”

“Okay,” I said with my arms still wrapped tightly around her. “See you Tuesday then.”

“Tuesday,” she repeated as she slipped out of my arms and opened the car door. “Bye, I had a really good time.” She closed the door and took a step back, but made no move to go inside.

“Me too. Now let me watch you walk inside.”

A minute later she had disappeared inside the building, but I was still sitting there, my head back, eyes closed.
I never want this to end.