As if on cue, her own cell rang. It was Dean Barr. Pippa had left her phone backstage at rehearsal. Whenever Pippa had left her phone somewhere safe in the past, Amanda had insisted she wait till the next day to retrieve it. It became a lesson to be more careful with one’s belongings. But this time she was out the door before Pippa could say “hypocrite.” Within seconds of driving away, the sky opened up.
Dean ran out to her car with his jacket propped over his head. He got in and slammed the door behind him.
“I can’t believe you went out in this. You’re such a good mom.”
“It wasn’t like this when I left.”
It was now teeming—the kind of rain that people pull off the highway to wait out.
“I’m just gonna sit here till it lets up,” she decided. Dean looked out the window toward his car.
“I’m gonna do the same, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
Amanda was barely aware of the awkwardness of being alone in a car together, she was so charged up about the play.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about something a little daring,” he said, a playful look on his face.
“Pray tell,” she said, with a Shakespearean vernacular.
Dean got right on the Bard bandwagon. “Word has cometh to me from the other players that your fair offspring, Pippa, is quite adept at the electric harp.”
Amanda laughed. “Methinks that is true, my fine gentleman.”
“Well, if it is so, why doth us not set her soliloquy to song?”
“Hark! No finer idea have I ever heard!”
They both laughed. When they stopped, Amanda made a mental note to have Carson ship Pippa’s electric guitar. Thinking of that interaction dampened her mood and the change registered on her face. Dean noticed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She paused. They had never spoken about much else than the play, but it felt odd not to be truthful with him.
“It’s just, as great as this has all been, sometimes my reality creeps back in. And it’s not pleasant to think about.”
“I’m sorry. It must be awful.”
They both sat back and took in the curtain of water enveloping the car. The lull in conversation filled with the sound of the rain pummeling the windows.
“Should we check the weather to see when it’s supposed to let up?” he asked.
Amanda looked on her phone.
“It should be stopping in ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes,” he repeated aimlessly. “It’s really coming down.”
“It is,” she responded.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you for weeks,” he admitted.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you for years,” she admitted back.
It was impossible to tell who made the first move. It was so different from kissing Carson. Even with Dean’s strong shoulders and squared jawline, it was somehow gentler, more sensuous. Carson was sloppy in the bedroom and selfish. She could tell if this were ever to go further Dean would be the opposite. She stopped herself from thinking about Carson and relished the sensation of kissing Dean Barr. She laughed inside at the memory of her naive eighteen-year-old self and the laugh surprised her as it exited her mouth. He laughed, too. He had never made out in the parking lot of the high school before.
They started up again and the water pounding down on the car in every direction seemed to encourage the frenzy of their kisses. At some point Amanda climbed on top of him, and while they were both very aware of what was stirring beneath, they stuck to only kissing. She thanked God and Norma Kamali for the jumpsuit she was wearing, its chastity-belt-like qualities keeping her from going too far. In a car. In the parking lot of her daughters’ school. Between the outside storm and the inside steam, the windows completely fogged over.
The rain finally stopped, and they took it as a sign that they should stop, too. Amanda climbed off Dean’s lap and blushed as she realized that she didn’t remember climbing on.
It was the most fun either of them had had in forever.
“I should get this phone home to Pippa,” Amanda said, scared to even glance at the time.
He looked at her and smiled before getting out. “Can we do this again?”
“I would like that very much.”
The eighteen-year-old girl inside her playfully drew a heart with her finger on the misted window as she watched him drive out of the high school parking lot, while her current self sadly acknowledged that she hadn’t felt that way in way too long. The wasted years registered in her brain just as Pippa’s phone