Chapter Thirteen
Ocean
“When I’m gone, Tennie, I want you to make sure that you’re sending me happy, fun vibes.” I made him nod and then set him down on the bed.
I wore sneakers and jeans and layered a button-down shirt over a T-shirt, unsure if we were going to be inside or out.
And then I was doing what any little would do in my situation…
I was pacing and staring at the clock, as if somehow I could will it to move faster.
It didn’t work. If anything, time had slowed to a near standstill.
Finally, I gave up, took up my phone, and typed away. I’m excited about our date. I’ve been ready for hours. I’m pacing. Can we go now?
Blunt and forward? Yes. Necessary? Also, yes.
I’ll be right there, sweet boy.
I checked that I had everything I needed and then opened the door and waited for him to get off the elevator. I wasn’t even pretending to play it cool, but that was the thing with Duncan. I didn’t need to pretend to do anything. I could just be me.
He stepped off the elevator, saw me, and shook his head with a smile. “You should have texted me earlier.” He pulled me in for a hug.
“But if I did, you might not have been ready, and you’d have felt rushed.”
He tapped the tip of my nose. “Or I could have said, ‘Come on down and hang out here while I get ready.’”
Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. “Next time, I’ll call you.”
“Now, how come my sweet boy is so excited today? We’ve gone on lots of dates before.”
“But this one’s gonna be little-ish fun. You said so!” And now, I was bouncing on the balls of my feet, my ability to contain any of my excitement long gone.
“That I did. All right, let’s get going.” He pulled the door shut, and off we went.
We drove outside the city, and, at first, I wasn’t sure where he could be taking us. I’d assumed we were doing something like bowling or miniature golf, possibly the zoo, but we were getting farther and farther outside the city and all of those things.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“It depends. Does my sweet boy want me to ruin the surprise?”
I gave that some serious thought. Much more than it deserved considering there was no right answer and it would be a surprise if I heard it now or saw it later.
“No.” I let out a long breath. “I like surprises.”
“Excellent.”
We ended up in a fairly large town about a half hour away and pulled into a strip mall.
I looked at all the different places. There were a few clothing stores and a phone repair shop…
nothing that looked particularly fun. Until I saw it—an indoor trampoline park.
Not that I’ve ever seen an outdoor one, but they called it an indoor one, so there must be.
“We’re gonna go jump?” I asked.
“What do you think? Does that sound like fun?”
“That’s not just fun, that’s superty duperty much fun!”
We got there shortly after they opened, and it was already chaotic.
Daddy got us the official socks you needed to wear and helped me get them on.
Then we went jumping. We jumped on one for height and one to do flips.
We jumped into huge pits of foam. You name it, we did it.
including basketball, which I learned very quickly I was no better at when I could jump up for those shots than I was when I was shooting from the ground. But what a blast we had.
“I’d never done that before, Duncan. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. This was stop number one.” He pressed a kiss to my lips, helped me with my shoes, and then back into the car we went.
This time, we stopped at a food truck, one that I had seen on a food-channel show where they traveled around to different mobile food eateries. Not all of them trucks. Some were stands that moved from fair to fair, but none with brick-and-mortar stores.
This particular truck specialized in all kinds of grilled cheese. I had one that was supposed to be reminiscent of apple pie. Duncan chose a more traditional ham and cheese. We sat at the picnic tables to enjoy them with a huge plate of fries to share.
“This is oddly delicious,” I said.
“Why did you pick it?” He laughed. “If you weren’t thinking it was gonna be good, I mean.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t think it was good, but ‘delicious’ had been a stretch. I wanted to try it, though. I’d never heard of anything like it.”
And if it was awful, I could easily get something else.
“Here.” I held it out for him, and he took a bite.
“Oh, I see what you mean,” he said. “I would eat this again.” Then it was my turn to try his. Also extremely good, but in a different way. It wasn’t unique in flavor but had excellent execution.
I thought maybe that was it for the day…that our date was done. We had food, we had playtime, and we had good conversation. By all accounts, it was a fabulous date. But no, he had one more trick up his sleeve.
He took me to a builder lab that specialized in making things out of recycled and or broken items. It had bins of parts from random items, everything from old Barbie dolls to electronics to caps from old laundry soap bottles and CDs.
You name it, they had it. They had specialized classes you could take to learn how to make particular items, but we didn’t do that.
Instead, we made cool things from nothing.
When he was done, Duncan’s looked like a robot.
Mine didn’t look like anything in particular.
I chose to call it Random Sculpture, and Daddy swore it was one of the best pieces he’d ever seen.
No, not Daddy. Duncan. There, I was getting ahead of myself again. Or was I? I’d slipped a few times and called him that, and he didn’t say anything, not like in the beginning.
“Let’s go home and take a nap and then maybe we can go out and catch some dinner or make some dinner together.”
“That sounds great.” I kissed his cheek and spoke a little softer so the others in the place didn’t hear. “I’m assuming by ‘nap,’ you mean a nap?” I tried to infuse the innuendo into it, and for a second, I thought it came out flat. It didn’t.
“We can do that. I love both kinds of naps.” He nibbled on my jaw. “I vote for both.”