Straight-Faced

calm before the storm

"Hey, babe!"

Hearing Luke's voice made me want to grin, but instead, I focused on rolling my eyes at his new favorite pet name for me. "Don't call me that."

Luke shrugged. "Please, you love it and you can't hide it. Now let me in before someone from my school sees us."

I unlocked the passenger door to my truck, and he climbed in.

He nodded at me as he shut the door. "Gracias, novio."

I groaned. "Please don't show off your Spanish when you meet my parents. They'll love you more than they love me."

Luke snickered. "Yeah, I'm sure my two years of school Spanish will impress your Mexican parents."

I started my car. "It's probably more than I know."

"That's kinda sad. Hopefully unlike your day. How are you doing?"

Luke insulted me a lot, but then he would say nice things like that. When he wanted to, he was really good at showing how much he cared about people.

"Okay," I decided. "I mean, it sucked that you didn't text me back, but I'll live. I'm clingy, if you couldn't tell."

"Clingy, brutally honest, and surprisingly self-deprecating, I know." He tossed me a small smile. "If it makes you feel any better, I wasn't ignoring you on purpose. I was teasing two of my friends for having crushes on each other and being too oblivious to realize that the other feels the same way."

"Have either of them admitted it?" I asked.

Luke shook his head. "Nope, both of them are still in denial. It's gonna take them another month to go on a date, I'm calling it now. I'm sorry for not replying to your text. You're not mad, are you?"

I shrugged. "Like I said, I'll live. My insanely busy schedule is starting up again in a couple weeks, so both of us will have to deal with the other not texting back."

"Right, your movie's coming out soon," Luke said, nodding.

"Unlike me, unfortunately."

He sighed. "Being closeted gives you way too many opportunities for those jokes."

"Tell me that wasn't funny, and I'll stop," I challenged.

"Okay, maybe it was a little funny."

"And this is why we're dating." I liked reminding myself that we were actually together. It had been a few days, but it still didn't feel real.

"How good of a driver are you? Because while I'd love to hold your hand, I'd also rather not have you crash the car."

He knew that I could drive well, so I found his way of asking for permission really sweet.

"Your lack of faith in me is disappointing," I said, but I was smiling. I let go of the steering wheel with my right hand and held it out to him.

"Are you nervous?" Luke asked me once our fingers were threaded together.

"About you meeting my parents?" I thought about it. "No, not really. I trust that you won't tell them about your secret life of crime. Are you nervous?"

"No," he answered. "But I thought I would be. Something's about to to wrong, isn't it? Because everything's going so smoothly right now. Calm before the storm and all that."

"Not necessarily," I said. "That's just a writing technique commonly used to spark interest in books and movies. Real life tends to be a lot more boring than that."

Luke nodded slowly. "Okay, yeah, you're probably right."

I wondered if he knew anything that I didn't.