One minute I was standing there feeling three seconds tick by, and the next . . . and the next, a warm hand was snaking through my hair to the back of my head and drawing me in. I had a moment of panic right before his lips touched mine, because it felt so conclusive somehow—in a what-are-you-doing-for-the-rest-of-my-life? kind of way. But then his lips were on mine and his breath was on my face and my hands were clinging to the front of his jacket because my legs were doing a limp-noodle imitation.
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, quadruple axel, knotted-up toes, tap-a-tap-tap, and all that stuff.
It was nice, in other words.
He pulled away just enough to take a look at my eyes—like he expected me to have fallen asleep or something.
“Still here,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“For the record?”
“Uh-huh?”
“I haven’t stopped liking you yet . . . or wanting to pursue you.”
“Oh.” My turn to blush. “Well . . . give yourself some time. It might still happen.”
“See you tomorrow, Shelby.” He said it against my lips, and my innards did a twist.
“Shut—your—mouth,” Trey said with so much pent-up impatience that I clamped my jaw shut and ordered myself to be quiet. Apparently he wanted his surprise to be a silent one.
I’d never been into surprises. Maybe because they were by definition something I couldn’t prepare for, and preparing was a critical issue for me. I blamed it on the drama of my seventh birthday, when Mom had asked a few girls from my class to my house for a party. I hadn’t expected it. Trey and I had gone to the library to return some books and pick new ones for the weekend, and the house had seemed really quiet when we’d returned. Right up until we’d walked into the living room and Vira Snurdly had popped up from behind the couch yelling, “Happy birthday!” loudly enough to scare the crows out of the tree in the yard. I was so surprised that I fell backward over the La-Z-Boy’s footrest, legs in the air, and exposed my Tuesday undies to the assembled guests. It wasn’t showing my Tuesday undies that had humiliated me so much as the fact that it was Saturday. My day-of-the-week panties were a big deal at the time.
So when Trey had insisted on covering my eyes with a scarf several minutes ago, then shoved me into the passenger seat of his car and driven around town for a while, I’d had flashbacks to that fateful birthday party.
“I don’t like surprises.”
“You’ll like this one.” He sounded sure of himself, and that scared me even more.
“Just give me a hint.”
“Nope.”
“Is Vira Snurdly involved?”
“Be quiet, Shell.”
“Well, at least I’m not wearing day-of-the-week panties.”
“Huh?”
“Remember the day we got books at the library and then went home and Vira Snurdly was hiding behind the couch with Jocelyn Hicks and Carrie Smith and they jumped out at me and yelled, ‘Happy birthday!’ and I fell over the footrest and they saw my panties and—”
“Shell.” There was a warning in his tone. A kindhearted warning, but a warning nonetheless.
“Wait, you don’t understand—they were my Tuesday panties!”
There was a pause before a reluctant “And?”
“And it was Saturday! Saturday, Trey! They saw my Tuesday panties and it was Saturday, and I’m telling you, I just knew that Vira would never let it drop because she never let anything drop, like the time Corrie split her pants and—”
That was when Trey told me to shut my mouth. Which I did. But I opened it again to explain to him that surprises scared me and that blabbing soothed me, at which point he said a “Shell!” that crackled a little too much for my own good. So I shut my mouth and sat there in silence while we drove around long enough to make me sick to my stomach. He eventually parked, turned off the engine, helped me out of the car, and ushered me through a door into some sort of resonant room.
“You ready?”
I was standing there blindfolded, trying not to throw up, but yes, I was ready.
“Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them,” he said, his fingers fiddling with the scarf’s knot. “Okay—open.”
I opened my eyes and found myself standing in an empty room with unpainted walls, a semifinished tile floor, plastic-covered windows, and dangling wires where light fixtures should have been. Trey was looking at me with so much expectation that I didn’t dare react.