Goodnight Moon

20- Sogni D'Oro

“So why do I have to wear a dress again?” I wonder into the phone.

“Because I said so,” Lake laughs. “I mean, I guess you don’t really have to wear a dress but you’ll look pretty ridiculous where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?” I ask him.

“You’ll find out tonight,” He assures me, amused at how I don’t know anything. I can’t imagine Lake taking me somewhere fancy for a date but he’s very persistent, saying that I should wear something fancy tonight.

“That’s very mysterious of you,” I comment, sitting on the edge of my bed with Max lying beside me as I pet his head. I’m only wearing a towel around my body and a towel wrapped around my hair for it to dry since I just took a shower and I still don’t know what I’m going to wear tonight.

“I’m a mysterious person,” He jokes.

“Yeah, okay well I’ll see you tonight then,” I sigh before hanging up and getting off of my bed. I have two hours before Lake is coming to pick me up so I have to figure out what I’m going to wear and then I have to go do my hair. As I’m working through my closet to find a dress, I realize how incredibly weird this situation is.

I mean, for the past four years, I have hated Lake Quincy. A lot. He’s always been such a jerk about everything. Especially when he moved into my house a little while ago, we fought constantly. It was terrible. I never even considered looking at him in a friendly way let alone a romantic way. I’ve always thought he was attractive, I’ll admit that, but that’s it. And now, I’m going on a date with him. And I could not be more excited. When did it start though? When did I start liking him? I think it’s when he kissed me on the floor when we were fighting with the whipped cream. Anyway, it’s pointless to think about it. The bottom line is that I like him now.

Just as I pick out a blue dress with gold foil splatter flecked in it with one bare shoulder and the left sleeve is long and flared, my phone starts ringing on my nightstand. Still clutching my towel to my chest, I hurry into the room as I shake the towel off of my head. My hair is still wet but I’ll blow dry it right after this phone call.

“Hello?” I answer it and I’m in such a hurry that I don’t even look at the caller ID.

“You are going on a date tonight and you didn’t even invite me over to help you pick out an outfit?” Leda wonders. Surprisingly, she doesn’t sound mad like I’d expect her to be but she sounds… hurt. “You didn’t even tell me that you were going on a date. What the hell, Ariel?”

I purse my lips as I hold the dress up to my towel clad body to see how short it’ll be. It’s pretty short and kinda tight but it’s really cute and I have gold shoes that’ll look really cute with the dress, so I go with it. “I’m not really your biggest fan right now, Leda.”

“Why?” She wails with a sniffle and I think she’s trying her best not to cry, which makes me feel bad but I’m also stubborn about not forgiving her right now. Especially since I’m about to go on a date and it’s supposed to be a happy time, not a dramatic and sad time. I won’t let her ruin this for me. “Because I told Lake that you like him? It got you two together!”

“No, it didn’t,” I argue. “It humiliated me and it made things so much more complicated. We would have figured things out on our own and when you told him that, you lied. I didn’t even know if I liked him or not.”

“I was just trying to help,” She defends.

“We’ve been over this,” I sigh, not really wanting to go through this all over again. Especially not right now. “Anyway, I already have a dress picked out.”