Chapter Twenty-Six: How Things Work
A week later, I was standing in front of a mirror applying makeup for the first time in a while for Mitchell and my date tonight. I was dressed up more than usual, wearing a dress I'd bought for New Years Eve and then ended up trading for a swim suit just before the party started. I didn't know where we were going, but Mitchell had told me to dress up, so I did.
Mitchell was standing at the bottom of the steps as I walked down, wearing a button down shirt and a pair of khaki pants with loafers. He grinned widely at me once he saw me walking down the stairs, and grabbed me by the waist, pulling me in for a long kiss.
Last week after we came back from our date, Mitchell had less than pure intentions, but our parents were home so he had to stick with a cold shower. We had pretty much ignored the part of the date where Mitchell had punched Connor in the face, and heeding his sister's words I resisted the urge to text him and ask how his nose was.
Instead I had found out from Miles who curiously asked me if I had any idea why Connor had two black eyes and a white strip across his nose. I had shamefully informed him it was because of my boyfriend to which Miles's jaw dropped for a good five seconds. He said nothing, simply nodding for a full minute before asking why.
I still didn't know what had really prompted it.
"Connor threw a glass of water on Mitchell," I had responded with a shoulder shrug.
"But why?" Miles had asked me, but I didn't have an answer. I didn't know what they had been talking about.
I pulled away from Mitchell's kiss to ask him where we were going. "What's the plan for tonight, M?"
"Dinner." He replied with a smirk smug.
"Yes, but where?"
"You'll see, baby." He replied with a self satisfied smirk, "I think you'll like it though."
With that we got into my car and he began to drive us to our destination, and after a series of turns, I began to get a sense of where we were going. "Are we going to Dave's Dive bar?" I asked him curiously, wondering why we needed to be dressed up for a locals bar.
"I forgot that you know everywhere in this town," Mitchell said with a laugh, reaching into his back pocket to grab a flyer that had been folded up into a square.
I glanced at the flyer. It was pink and had hearts all over it with the headline Couples Night in 72 point Comic Sans font across the paper. "Couples Night?" I asked with a little laugh.
"Yep," Mitchell replied.
"This will be fun," I replied with a secret smile. Mitchell had no clue what we were truly in for, especially at Dave's.
+++
Mitchell and I walked in the bar and the hostess simply told us to sit anywhere we wanted. Mitchell led us to a table in the center of the room, and we quickly realized that Lani and Miles were here too.
"Lani and Miles!" I said in recognition, "Let's go say hi!" Mitchell and I got up after dropping our stuff at the table and walked over to where Miles and Lani were sitting.
"Couples Night, huh?" Mitchell asked, wrapping his arm around my waist, "Are you two together?" He asked.
Both of them burst into laughter, causing Mitchell to look at them confused and me to hold in my laughter. Mitchell was certainly in for a surprise. 'Couples Night' wasn't exactly the couples night he was thinking it was going to be.
"We're just here as friends, man." Miles responded, standing up to shake Mitchell's hand and give me a hug. After he went, Lani got up for her turn to greet us.
"Yeah, he's not exactly my type, if you know what I mean." Lani told Mitchell as she sat down.
Mitchell jolted in shock, "You're gay?" He asked.
"Half," she replied with a bit of a smirk, "But after dating the golden boy star quarter back for three years, super testosterone filled guy's guys aren't really my type." She told him with a smile.
"Half?" Mitchell asked, still confused.
"I'm bi." She replied with a laugh, shaking her head at his naiveness.
"Oh," Mitchell replied while nodding in understanding. He wrapped his arm back around my waist and said, "Well we should be getting back to our table,"
"Good to see you guys," Miles said with a wink directed at me and Lani echoed his sentiment.
Once seated back at our table, Mitchell glanced at me, "Did they seem a bit weird tonight?" He asked. I resisted the urge to laugh and tell him that couples night at Dave's Dive was truly about making fun of couples and less about being a romantic night for couples to hang out. It was something Miles and I usually went to when we needed a good laugh.
"They're always weird," I said shrugging my shoulders, and Mitchell accepted it, looking down at his menu.
+++
The bar was one of those places that had signed pictures hanging up on the walls and dollars pinned to the ceiling. They had decent food, not bad but not great, and though the dining area was filled with mostly normal people, the bar part itself was filled with slobs and drunks, specifically the men that came to the beach specifically to ogle the young female lifeguards. Despite their creepy pervy behavior though, they were (mostly) harmless. There was a stage front and center in the bar that usually hosted live music from local bands, only empty on nights like tonight.
Mitchell and I were in the middle of eating dinner when Dave himself went out onto the stage at the front center of the bar with a microphone in hand. "Welcome to Couples Night! I'm Dave, and I'll be your host for tonight. Can I have all the couples in the house raise their hands?"
Besides Mitchell and I, and Miles and Lani who had done it simply for kicks and giggles, there were about four other couples in the bar, probably also tourists who didn't know what couples night was truly about.
"Ah, let's start with you two," Dave said, pointing at a couple who looked like they were in their mid-forties. "What are your names?" He asked and they answered by yelling over the commotion in the rest of the bar. "Ahhh okay, Susan and David, name twin right there, anyway how long have you two been together?"
The man, David, replied "Fifteen years,"
"I'm sorry?" Dave asked, cupping his hand to his ear.
"Fifteen-" David began to reply.
"Oh no, I'm just sorry." Dave replied sending a wink toward their table before moving on to the next couple.
Mitchell shot me a confused look though he was laughing as he began to realize what he'd gotten us into.
"I'm kidding," Dave said when the laughter died down, "Now normally as the locals know, I would make fun of the couples, but tonight actually I have something else planned."
I turned around to shoot a surprised but intrigued look at Miles and he simply shrugged at me and mouthed good luck.
"Now I have my staff bringing around numbered sheets of paper and pens to all the ladies. First you're gonna put you're name and you're partner's name at the top, then I'm gonna ask you a series of questions like, what's your favorite color, and you're gonna write down your answer, got it?"
There were a series of nods and got its from all the couples in the house including myself and Mitchell, and once I got my sheet of paper, I wrote both mine and Mitchell's name and got ready to start writing. I had total faith in Mitchell, he knew me better than anyone did. We would surely win this thing.
"No this should go without saying, but you'd be surprised by how many people wouldn't know to do this... do not show your partner your answers." Dave said with a grin which garnered a few laughs from the audience. "Alright, first question, what is the anniversary of the day you first met?"
I cringed as I struggled to remember the exact day and realized that I couldn't, so I just put April 2005 on the paper.
"What is the anniversary of your first date?" Dave asked with a big grin as he heard a couple groans, "Yeah, better make sure you get this one right or you'll be in the dog house."
It took me a second to think, Mitchell and I had been dating for about three weeks now, putting our anniversary at June 13th.
Dave continued to ask questions, though they shifted from being about our relationship to being about us personally, such as our favorite movie or place to go when we're sad. I had total faith that Mitchell would know the answers to these questions.
When we were finished, the staff came to collect our sheets and brought whiteboards and markers to the men.
"Alright now I'm gonna ask you fellas the questions and you're gonna hold up your answers. If you get it right for your lady, I'll give you a point, and at the end whoever has the most points gets the best couple award which is a paper plate with some macaroni glued to it." Dave explained with a smirk and began to ask questions.
"That macaroni plate is ours," Mitchell said, turning to me with a smirk on his face as he leaned over the table to give me a quick kiss.
Not so surprisingly, Mitchell got all the questions about our relationship right.
"What is your partner's favorite television show?" Dave asked. Everything was pretty much tied, except for Miles and Lani who were doing terrible, probably because they weren't an actual couple and didn't have an actual anniversary.
Mitchell held up a board that said Vampire Diaries on it. "Incorrect," Dave said after glancing at the board. Mitchell turned to me with a confused look.
"It's Gossip Girl." I told him with a sheepish smile.
"Since when?" He asked.
"Umm, junior year, I guess."
"Oh," Mitchell replied.
"What is your partner's favorite color?" Dave asked.
Mitchell wrote blue, but the answer was yellow. It had always been yellow, in fact, blue was his favorite color.
"What is your partner's favorite thing to do when they're sad?" Dave questioned.
Mitchell wrote play the piano, but the answer was surf.
"You love playing the piano," Mitchell said turning to me. His voice was slightly agitated as if it were my fault that he kept missing the questions.
"I haven't played since my dad died. And after I came here... I surf when I'm sad." I told him, "I guess I've never told you that," I sighed.
I had been holding onto the idea that Mitchell knew me better than anyone else for so long, but the truth was... he had only been back in my life for about seven weeks now. He had missed a whole two and a half years of my life, which wasn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I had done a lot of maturing in these two and a half years. Truthfully, Miles probably knew all the answers to these questions, even Connor...
It wasn't Mitchell's fault he didn't know the answers to these questions either. Yes, he had effectively ended our friendship by blocking me on everything, but we surely would have grown apart anyway even if he hadn't.
Truth was, I had changed a lot. Maybe he knew me the best three years ago, but that was no longer the case, and that was okay, but it was definitely a bit of a shock to both of us.
"Maybe we should just go," I said to Mitchell, who was deep in thought trying to figure out my favorite song.
"You don't think I can do this?" Mitchell asked defensively, cocking an eyebrow at me.
"You don't need to do this, M. So we don't know each other as well as we thought we did, so what? We can get to know each other again... and this game is stupid."
Mitchell nodded and smiled at me gratefully, then signaled to a waitress to bring us the check, which he insisted on paying for.
As we tapped out of the game and walked out of the restaurant, I noticed that Miles and Lani's score had gone up a considerable amount. I almost wondered how two people who'd just met a little under a month ago knew each other better than two people who had known each other for almost twelve years. It was funny how things worked sometimes.
Mitchell and I got into my car. "What do you say we drive over to the beach and just walk around for a bit?" I asked him, "Maybe get some ice cream?"
"I'd like that," Mitchell said, leaning over to kiss me.
wrote this chapter while listening to folklore. stream folklore by t swift ;)