“You’re not serious?” Hannah and I were sitting together at the lunch table.
“I am,” I had just told her about what had gone down yesterday at Ryan’s house. She couldn’t believe it; she said it had happened so fast.
“It was crazy; I didn’t know what to do!” I exclaimed.
“Okay, wait, so did he take his shirt off first?” she contemplated.
“Hannah!” I couldn’t believe her.
“What?” she acted like it was a big deal at all.
“Mandy, I’m serious. But, you guys didn’t-“she stopped in her tracks.
“Oh, no, of course not,” I reassured her.
“Whew,” she pretended to wipe the sweat off of her forehead.
“It’s like he’s doing the exact opposite of what he said he wanted in the first place. Before, he didn’t even want us to be together so I told him ‘let’s take it slow’ and now what is this; we’re taking each other’s clothes off already?” I sighed.
“You know what they say: nobody can stop two lovers,” she slurped her lemonade.
“Who said that?” I asked.
“You know, people,” she shrugged.
I turned my attention back to my burger which remained untouched.
“You guys should really sort this out, Mandy. I mean, if you guys were supposedly ‘together’,” she made air quotes with her fingers, “why wouldn’t Ryan want anyone to know?”
“I asked him that. He just said he didn’t know how people would react,” I explained.
“Here’s the thing: if you guys are so in like with each other, then why would you care so much of what other people thought?” she questioned.
“I don’t know,” I was very confused. I had mixed feelings about Ryan and I wasn’t sure if I should confront him about it again. If I didn’t though, what would we be? We’d be nothing, and we didn’t want that, right?
“That’s okay,” Hannah patted my hand. “Just think about it, but don’t stress.”
I didn’t know how that was going to be possible since thinking more about it got me even more stressed.
The bell rang signaling the end of lunch. “I’ll see you tonight!” Hannah called after me.
“See you,” we had band practice today and since Hannah was a great photographer (she’d shown me some of her pictures), we decided to have her take some pictures of the band to put on posters for the holiday show.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder.
“Nicole!” I exclaimed. I was happy to see her.
“Hey,” her voice was cool as usual. “So, practice tonight at five?” she asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“Awesome, I learned the song so it should sound pretty good,” she assured me-at least something was going right for once.
“That’s great, I’ll see you later,” I rounded the corner and headed to my last period of the day.
I was about to walk in when someone pulled my arm. I probably would’ve screamed but I looked up and realized that it was just Ryan.
“Hey sexy,” he smiled at me.
I grinned back; he was such a flirt.
“I’ve got to ask you something,” I stared at the ground.
“What is it?” he asked and I lifted my head up.
“Uh, about last night,” I started off.
“Oh yeah,” he remembered.
“The thing is, I thought about it a lot and, I think we should just take it slow, you know? Get to know each other some more besides the kissing and stuff. And, if we’re sure from there, then we should D.T.R.”
He had a puzzled look on his face. “What’s DTR again?”
“Define the relationship,” we both started laughing. “I’m not sure why I said that, it was stupid,” I felt myself blushing.
“In that case, I think it sounds okay, it’ll be hard for me though,” his brown eyes stared into my green ones.
“To keep my hands off of you, I mean,” she grinned and slipped his hands around my waist.
“You wuss,” I punched him playfully.
“Oh, Blake alert,” I had glanced over my shoulder.
“Alright, I’ll see you later,” Ryan gave me a quick hug and I went to go catch up with Blake.
“You and Ryan seem to be getting along pretty well lately,” he commented. At the very least, he didn’t sound like he was suspicious of anything so I was grateful.
“Yeah, just being friendly,” I assured him with a smile.
* * *
After school, Hannah and I went through the drive-through at McDonald’s and we bought one of those 20 pc. McNugget meals.
I dug into the box and pulled out a nugget-I was starved.
“So, Ryan’s house is the first stop I’m assuming?” Hannah asked as we pulled away from the window.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I replied.
“Cool.” I was glad she hadn’t asked me if I’d talked to him yet because I wasn’t sure what I would have said.
We got to Ryan’s house quickly, and even managed to pick up Nicole on the way there.
Hannah rang the doorbell but nobody answered.
“God, where could he be?” she tapped her foot impatiently.
I tried the doorknob and sure enough, the door opened.
“Oh my goodness, you’ve got to be kidding me! You don’t just leave the door unlocked-idiots,” Nicole and I laughed to ourselves.
“What?” Hannah looked at us, clearly confused.
“They’re probably in the basement and forgot to lock the door,” I told her as we stepped inside.
Sure enough, we found Blake, Caleb, Brian, Ryan and Candace down in the basement.
“Looks like everyone’s here,” Brian said as we all made our way to where they were sitting.
“This is Nicole, guys. She’s gonna sing on the song ‘Old Mexico’,” I introduced her to them and we got to work.
Hannah set up her Canon camera and started snapping shots as soon as one of us started playing. Candace was working on her computer in the corner of the room, designing new merch.
“Oh, and I can’t stay too long, I have pick up my brother from school,” Nicole said.
“Alright, let’s run through Old Mexico first then,” Blake said. He counted us off, and we started the song. It was just acoustic guitar and electric guitar in the beginning.
We had Blake and Nicole singing, Caleb and Brian playing acoustic guitar, Ryan on the electric and all I really did in the beginning was sit there except for the parts where Blake thought we should add jingle bells.
When Nicole came in on the second verse, it sounded perfect. Blake soon joined in with her and their voices meshed together exactly how we’d wanted them to.
It was not until the bridge of the song when I actually got to do something. I played a simple, slow 1 and 2 and beat on my drum set. The song finally ended and for the last part we all cut off, except for Blake who sang the last few words.
“That was beautiful you guys!” Candace stood up and started clapping.
We all bowed to the ‘crowd’ and high fived each other.
“That’s probably the best we’ve ever sounded!” Brian exclaimed.
“No joke,” Caleb chimed in.
“Awesome, well, thank you guys so much, I really have to go,” Nicole said as she gathered her stuff together.
Blake hugged her. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“Sure, no problem, so I’ll see you guys later?” she smiled.
“Yeah, we’ll probably get together next week or so,” he ran his fingers through his hair. I could tell he kind of liked Nicole.
“And I’m giving her a ride,” Hannah added as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder.
“See you later,” I said.
“Alright, kids! Come over here,” Candace motioned us over to her computer, “I thought I’d design some limited edition holiday merch for you guys,” she turned the screen towards us. “Voila!”
It was cute; a white t-shirt with cartoon characters of us in Santa hats.
Ryan laughed. “Wow, that’s so-“
“Adorable,” I finished off for him.
He grinned at me.
“Oh, and that’s not all,” she clicked to the next design. “I was thinking maybe a sweatshirt out of this too?”
It was our band logo tangled up in Christmas lights.
We all nodded in agreement.
“We definitely like these Candace, but what about our other merch?” Blake pointed towards the cardboard boxes in the corner.
“I’m thinking we’ll still sell some of them at the holiday show, but in the meantime, since we’ve got so many extras, maybe hand them out to some of your friends? A little easy promotion?” she waggled her eyebrows.
“Sounds good,” Caleb went over and opened one of the boxes.
We each got ten shirts to give out.
“Cool, thanks sis,” Ryan patted Candace on the back.
“Sure thing,” she seemed very happy with the designs. It was a good thing we had her on our side or else we wouldn’t even have any merch.
We got back to working on some of our other songs and around seven-thirty we called it a night.
I was so bummed out after all the practicing and was ready to go home when Ryan asked me if I wanted to stay for a little bit longer.
“I can’t,” I confessed.
He reached out and grabbed my hand. “You know how much I like you, right?” he asked.
“’Course, I just-“ I paused.
“Need to get to know me more,” he finished. We were always really good at completing each other’s sentences.
“I know, I know. I say it every time, but can we do something for real?”
“Like a date?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m asking for. And you,” I poked his chest, “get to plan it all out.”
“What? Well, what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, surprise me!” I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door.
“But-“
I turned back around. “You heard me. Surprise me; give me something good, something that I will remember.”
“Alright,” he surrendered.
“See ya,” I closed the door behind me feeling accomplished. I wasn’t about to give him all my love if he didn’t give me anything back in return. Yup, I said it. He was going to have to almost win me back in order to get his way.