Quinton was a smart boy.
He knew how to do smart things and he had a lot of smart classes where he got smart people grades. If he wanted to, he could easily get into the same smart people colleges that his brother had applied to and been accepted to. He was just that kind of person. But there was this thing with smart people, this stereotypical remark that I was slowly beginning to realize was entirely true.
Quinton might be one of the smartest people I've ever known, but this boy had no common sense.
"Mini-golf," I muttered to myself as Quinton grabbed us putters and golf balls—a plain blue one for him and a psychedelic tie-dyed one for me—and I grimaced, knowing that I was potentially staring my death in the face. I wiped my expression blank when Quinton turned around, so invigorated that if he was a small dog, he would have been shaking like a Chihuahua. He eagerly handed me my putter and my ball, grinning so widely that I felt my lips immediately tugging up in response.
Damn. I just couldn't say no to that face.
"Ready?" he asked me, nearly bouncing. "I haven't been mini-golfing in a while, so I might be a tad rusty."
"I don't think you should be worrying about your skill level," I told him honestly, smiling despite myself, unable to frown when he looked so happy. "The last time I played, I nearly committed homicide."
He was too busy chuckling to realize that I was being completely and deathly serious.
"Come on," he said, entwining our hands and making my face heat up as he dragged me over to the first hole, taking the lead when I gestured for him to go first. I drifted back a couple of steps, holding the putter away from my body worriedly, like I might be able to do damage just having it in my hands, feeling my cheeks aching to smile as I watched him, thinking about tonight.
I had never had more fun in my life.
We had sat in Pinkberry for longer than we had expected, just talking about everything in the world. He told me how excited he was to get his acceptance to Dartmouth and I had stared at him in awe because that was an Ivy League school and he was shrugging it off like six month old babies could get in or something. I told him about all of the pranks I used to play on my brother and he told me about the ones he had tried on his and how he was a lot less likely to be successful. We talked about how excited he was to graduate and how much I missed Florida. I watched the look on his face waver only slightly when I confessed to him that I wanted with all of my heart to go to a Florida school and then felt my heart soar when the happy look washed onto his face when I admitted that I was going to be sticking around. He told me about his interest in medicine and became one of the few people who hadn't laughed when I told him that I wanted to go into a major that centered around English. When I told him that I considered being a journalist, he told me that he could see me taking on the world, and I didn't know how it had taken me so long to realize how much I cared about this boy.
He hadn't told me what we were doing until we were walking up the entry way to the mini-golfing course, and if it would have been anyone else I would have immediately switched to brooding. But since it was Quinton, I couldn't stop smiling.
I didn't know if I had ever laughed so much in my entire life—even when Norma and I stole all of Colonel's pants when he was in the shower and watched him run around his house screaming, "DON'T LOOK AT ME!"
"Lena," Quinton called, and I shocked back into my body to find him grinning at me, leaning against his golf club. His ball was down the green patch of fake grass by the hole. The first hole looked easy, the only major obstacle a big plastic rock, but I winced just looking at it, seeing out of the corner of my eye that there were going to be a lot of trees, waterfalls, and a windmill later on. Quinton was smiling, amused, the dimple on his cheek showing more than it ever had before, like his cheeks might be hurting from smiling so much, too. "You going to go?"
"Yeah," I said slowly, cautiously, awarding him a smile before letting the ball drop onto the green turf, watching as it bounced twice before settling down. I shot him one last look, hoping this would be the moment where he confessed it was all a joke, that Aubrey had told him how much I sucked and he was just messing with me, but he was still smiling like always. I took a deep breath.
I swung.
The ball soared at least six feet over the hole, and then over the fence behind it, and I heard the distinct plop of the ball landing into the fake river beyond it, landing loudly. Quinton blinked, his face blank as he looked at the space of air my ball had disappeared into.
And then he threw his head back and laughed.
"Aubrey told me you were bad," he laughed, "but that's a whole other level."
I hit him as hard as I could in the arm, my face so red that my head was actually started to spin a little bit. "Why did you take me here if she told you that, then?"
"I thought that she had to be exaggerating," he said, still giggling like some kind of school girl. "Oh, Lena, you're too funny."
I scowled at him.
He jogged over to the front desk to get me a replacement golf ball before handing it back to me, the grin on his face a permanent fixture, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
It took about an hour and six balls sinking to the bottom of the faux river, but eventually we made it to the tenth hole, more than halfway through. Quinton was laughing so hard that it looked like he was about to fall over dead, like one of these times he might just totally forget how to breathe or something. I stared at him without showing emotion, trying to appear annoyed when more than once I had given in and started to laugh right along with him.
"Stop," I snapped, pouting. "I'm not that bad."
"You're right," he said. "You're not bad; you're terrible."
I shot him a venomous glare. It just made him laugh harder.
"You're a horrible person," I tried to tell him, but I ruined it by laughing. "Are you going to instruct me on your golfing guru ways, or are you having too much fun making fun of me?"
"That last one," he told me, smirking when I glared up at him again. "You want me to teach you?"
"You're actually pretty good at this game," I said, pouting. "I suck rotten eggs."
He was still smirking when he closed the distance between us, reaching out and putting his hands over mine on the golf club, closing the remaining space between us until his arms were laying against mine and his back was pressed against me and I could actually hear the beating of his heart as he folded himself around me. I could feel his breath across the top of my head and I felt the softest of pressure on the top of it, and my stomach flipped because I thought that the pressure could have been his lips. I wanted to turn around and see if that was the case, but I didn't want him to see how red my face had to have been right then.
"Don't swing so high," he murmured into my ear, and my skin crawled. In a good way. "You're swinging like you're on the last hole of the Master's. Just relax."
His hands moved mine softly, coaxing me to putt, but I think I was too busy having a heart attack to do much of anything. All I could think of was him pressed against me, his hands on mine, his arms around me, his breath on the back of my neck, his voice humming like a lullaby in my ear. I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply, before I opened them again.
Something about his voice told me that he was smiling when he guided me to hit the ball softly, and I barely could even watch the ball roll across the turf, hardly even understood what happened when it sank neatly into the hole. Quinton let go of me and I nearly fell over, too weak at the knees. He beamed down at me with this wicked look in his eyes, looking at me like he knew something I didn't.
"Perfect," he said.
I let myself believe that he wasn't talking about the putt.
I wished that he wasn't.
But I knew he was, and I came down a little from the high he gave me.
I smiled over at him, hoping that I didn't look too wobbly. "Hey, thanks. What's my score now?"
He dug the piece of paper out of his pocket and looked at it, adding silently in his head. "Fifty-four you, twenty me."
"I'm winning!" I cheered, smiling at him gloatingly. He burst out laughing before doing something I didn't expect—he closed the space between us again to take me into his arms, holding me close to his chest, squeezing me tightly. It took me a moment before I relaxed against him, smiling to myself as his body shook with laughter, his hands gripping at me like he didn't want to let go just as much as I wanted him to—which was not at all.
"Lena," he chuckled fondly, "the lower number wins."
I frowned up at him, my heartbeat picking up significantly when I noticed how close his face was to mine, whether on purpose or not. "Oh," I muttered, frowning even deeper as I thought about it. "Well, that's a stupid rule. I put a lot of effort into that high score."
He was still smiling. He should have been backing away from me slowly by now, pushing me away, counting down the minutes until he dropped me back off at my doorsteps and planned to walk out of my life forever.
But he was still here.
He was looking at me like he always would be.
And I couldn't believe that. If I let myself believe something like that and he broke my heart, it would break me apart like glass shattering on impact with a baseball bat.
"Lena," he murmured, and I wondered why he kept saying my name. "You are too cute."
I rolled my eyes.
His arms tightened around me, if only slightly. I could feel his body heat—it was March, so not exactly cold, but I knew the distinct difference between Quinton and the atmosphere in a hyperactive sense I didn't know belonged to my brain. He looked down into my eyes, looking at me so carefully that I wondered what he was looking at, and my heart was beating so quickly that I was sure it was going to fail. I did one thing—I glanced down at his lips.
That was about all he needed.
He leaned down slowly, keeping his eyes on mine, waiting to see something to make him back away but I knew that he wouldn't. I knew that I wanted to kiss this boy more than I have ever craved peanut butter M&Ms, and that is impressive. I knew that I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world but here in his arms, his face edging closer to mine, getting so, so close to my first kiss.
I could feel him breathing against my lips. That was how close we were. I closed my eyes.
His forehead rested against mine, and he breathed in deeply.
His lips touched mine—
A scream and a splash was all it took to shock us apart. We looked at each other in surprise and part horror before we glanced back at the waterfall of the next hole, taking in the figure jumping up out of the water and shrieking indignantly, whipping their hair back and forth to get it out of their face. The girl was soaked from head to toe, and she didn't look happy.
"Colonel!" she shrieked.
Wait a second.
I knew that name.
And that voice.
Horrified, I stared over at a soaked-to-the-bone Kline, standing in the middle of the fake river, before my eyes automatically shot to where Colonel was laughing hysterically from his perch on top of the waterfall, a pair of binoculars in his hand. Norma was sitting next to him, her head buried in her hands, and Peter was chuckling, grinning like it was Christmas morning. I looked back at Quinton, feeling like I had just stepped into the Twilight Zone, only to find a similar expression on his face as well.
"Oh," I said.
"My," he echoed, wide eyed.
"Cinnamon sticks," we simultaneously muttered, horrified.
"Look at the look on Tomatoes' face!" Colonel giggled, clapping his hands together before he enthusiastically slapped his knee. "She's blushin' like crazy right now! Hey there, Tomatoes!"
"Colonel!" Norma groaned, her face still buried in her hands. "Stop terrorizing her!"
"Tomatoes and Lancaster, sittin' in a tree," Colonel sang, "K-I-S-S-I-N-SPLASH!"
From the water, Kline let out another frustrated scream.
I turned to Quinton, probably looking like that Scream painting. "I didn't know they were following us, I swear."
"Neither did I," he assured me, still not letting me go, but he looked a little peeved. He shot an icy glare at my friends that I probably wasn't supposed to see before he ran a hand soothingly over my hair, trying to calm my nerves but just making them about a thousand times worse. He scowled and leaned forward, ducking down to my ear before he whispered, "And they ruined such a good moment."
Naturally, I blushed.
"Hey!" an unfamiliar voice shouted, and all of our attentions turned to the voice, even Kline, who was still standing in the middle of the fake river and pouting. The man who had been at the front desk was standing at the edge of the river, his face bright red as he looked at them, wagging his finger at them like it was point of a knife. Kline's eyes went wide and Colonel stopped laughing, but Norma seemed to disappear even further into her hands. "Hey, you kids! What are you doing in my river?"
"Uh, oh," Colonel said.
The owner took off running at my friends, his arms flailing as he yelled, and my friends moved a hell of a lot faster than they did when we were confronted with that evil sheep. Before I knew what was going on, Kline was vaulting over the fence and onto the sidewalk, running so fast that only flying droplets of water were left in her wake. Colonel and Peter grabbed Norma and took off, too, disappearing before the man could get there, but he followed behind them, still flailing wildly as he screamed. Meanwhile, Quinton and I just stood there and stared, the both of us probably wondering if this was all make believe or if, more likely, we were dreaming.
I reached out and pinched him.
"Ow," he muttered, rubbing his arm before shooting me a look. "What was that for?"
"Things like that don't happen in real life," I reminded him. "Can't be too careful."
He rolled his eyes before leaning down and pressing his lips against my forehead, making my heart flutter with the sweetness of his gesture. "So are you ready to try not to fail on your own?"
I scowled at him and shoved him away, but all he did was chuckle, smiling at me happily as I picked up my putter, mumbling nonsense to myself as I did. He grinned and leaned against the wooden bench at the beginning of the hole, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched me. I shot him a look before looking down at the ball and then back at the putter in my hands, grimacing slightly.
I took a deep breath and swung.
The ball flew in slow motion. The owner of the mini-golf place appeared back on top of the waterfall, frowning from not having caught my crazy friends, and Quinton and I watched as my tie-dyed ball clocked the guy directly in the forehead, knocking him over, before ricocheting off, hitting one of the propellers of the windmill. I watched its progress as it went directly toward the small building the office was located in.
The window shattered on impact.
I dropped the golf club and took off running, jumping over the fence and running down the sidewalk just as Quinton burst into loud laughter that echoed off of all of the buildings. And as I rounded the corner I grinned, giggling to myself just the same, unable to hold it in any longer, doubling over as I stumbled down the sidewalk. People stared like I was crazy, like I was weird, and none of it even mattered to me. I didn't care. Quinton's laughter was echoing through my ears, and I was running so fast that my hold on gravity was shifting.
It was like I was running into the stars.
Who knew if I would ever come back down.
~*~
"The look on that guy's face," Quinton was chuckling a half hour later, a giant grin on his face. We eventually found each other again after I took off, Quinton explaining to me that he started running before the woozy owner could follow him, that the guy could barely even stand up straight. Quinton grinned up at the sky, replaying the moment once again in his mind. "Priceless."
I had blushed so many times in the last half hour that I was close to a hundred percent sure that my face was going to be stuck that way. "Stop making fun of me!"
"As you wish, Tiger Woods," he chuckled, shooting me a wink. "I still can't believe you just took off. And left me there, mind you."
"Then you should have been quicker on the uptake, Lancaster," I teased, grinning at him. He snorted and rolled his eyes, looking down at me with something like firelight in his eyes.
He reached out and took my hand. I tried not to smile too widely, but I don't think I did a good enough job, because he suddenly looked a little smug. He led me down the crowded Bostonian streets, filled with people all going in different directions in their entirely different lives, all of them a different story that passes us by in the blink of an eye. I glanced around at the lights and back at the boy I had fallen for so, so easily, relaxing when I noticed that he was lost in the lights, too.
"Shame," he murmured to himself. I looked up.
"What?"
He gestured upwards. "No stars."
I followed his gaze up to see that he was right, and there wasn't a star to be seen in the sky. The sky was a deep black, mysterious and utterly unknown, and a lot more foreboding without a trace of light. I looked over at Quinton and saw a pensive look on his face, as if he was wondering where all the stars had gone.
"That's one of the things I miss about the suburbs," I heard myself saying before I even knew I was going to speak. "You can't see the stars in the city."
He looked at me, his shoulders relaxing. Maybe he believed I would have thought his topic was stupid and that I was going to make a stupid comment back to him, maybe roll my eyes. Maybe I was reading too much into it. I don't know. All I know was I was enchanted that he noticed the stars the same way I had, even if I hadn't had the guts to bring it up.
This boy would never stop surprising me.
"What?" he demanded, his voice low, his eyes on mine, and that was when I realized that I was smiling at him. I shook my head and looked down, down at our tangled fingers, my cheeks burning for the millionth time tonight.
But this was the first time Quinton's fingers took my chin, guiding my face up until I was looking at him. He stopped us in the middle of the sidewalk, not looking away from my eyes. I couldn't look away, either. It was like I was hypnotized.
In that moment, the world stood still.
He leaned forward, and:
Fireworks.
He pulled me so close that I would have passed right through him if he wasn't so secure into the world, his feet planted on the ground as my knees gave way, making me fall into him. He gripped at my back, trying to pull me closer still, everything about my world lighting up and turning into fire. I wrapped my hands around his neck, my fingers sliding into his hair, and one of his hands came up to touch my face.
It didn't last long, but it didn't need to for it to be perfect.
He pulled away from me but not too far, his forehead resting against mine as we took the time to breathe. The world around us spun—the lights of the city looked like the flickering blaze of fireflies, a twinkling burst of starlight. I let him hold me against him for so long that I completely lost track of time, forgetting that time even existed.
He pressed his lips against my forehead and whispered, "I should probably get you home, huh?"
I shrugged, burrowing closer. His chest shook as he chuckled, but his fingers curled even tighter against me, keeping me there, my personal anchor.
Anchoring me down on the ground.
Maybe we should have left. Maybe it was getting late and maybe my parents were starting to worry. But I didn't care. I didn't care about anything other than his arms around me, his lips on my skin, the shining in his eyes as they met mine, the curl of his smile on lips slightly swollen. I didn't care about anything other than the world spinning around us, trapping us in its orbit, making us the center of the universe.
Because, right then, we were it. We were the middle of it all.
I was standing in the middle of the universe with Quinton Lancaster, his arms so tight around me that I knew he would never let go, and I would never want it any other way.
I loved the boy next door.
And maybe, one day, I would tell him.
But it didn't have to be today. No, not today; today, I was just going to live in this moment.
The world always spinning.
I closed my eyes, and I smiled.
This was the only kind of perfect I will ever need.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WAS IT AMAZING?
I slaved over this chapter for nine hours straight after sitting on a plane for two hours just to get this out for you guys on time. You better all love me for this lol
THIS IS ALSO THE LONGEST CHAPTER I’VE EVER WRITTEN FOR THIS STORY!
I’m going to go sleep for a lot of hours now.
x Riley