Completely (Un)expected

It had been a while since the boys had ventured off into the water. I'd since taken off my tee and shorts so that my tan lines wouldn’t look funny and I had made a pretty decent dent in my book. I could still hear Mikey begging Bob to stop getting salt water in his eyes and Bob responding by calling Mikey a baby.

It was still really bright outside, the sun not having any plans to go down any time soon, so I found it rather odd when there was a sudden change in the light. I looked up to a figure standing above me and upon further adjustment to the brightness, Frank's face came into view. "Can I sit?" he asked simply with a slight air of caution as if I'd tell him 'no.'

I nodded my head, unable to find real words to speak to him, and he dropped down next to me, barely leaving space between us. His bare arm brushed against my own and I pulled away quickly hoping it didn’t seem too urgent; I was shy around Frank, but I didn’t hate him and I didn’t want him to think I did.

"So," Frank started just as I blurted out, "I'm sorry-"

"Sorry?" he questioned, turning his face toward me and meeting my eyes directly.

"You know," I paused, hoping he'd catch my drift. He gave me a questioning look instead and I was forced to explain. "For . . . kissing you and running off at the show."

"That," he let out, the weight of my apology falling upon him.

"Yeah, that." I didn’t know what else to say, I just felt that I needed to at least try and clear the air between Frank and me.

"That," he said after a beat, and I was relieved that he'd finally spoken up. The last thing I wanted was to endure another silence between us. "That wasn’t totally your fault. I led you on, let's be real here."

"Well," I began, trying to find something to defend him with, but ultimately agreeing with him. He had been flirting that night, a lot, and it wasn’t surprising that I fell for it. I mean, just look at him.

"I did," he finished for me when I was unable to think of a counter-argument that made him seem like less of a player, which I wasn’t even sure if he was at this point. It was one stupid night, he let go of his inhibitions; hell, so had I. To judge him would make me a hypocrite.

"A little," I agreed, crinkling my nose a little unintentionally. That had always been my 'cute face' as my dad had called it. I used it to get him to do things with me and it had become so automatic that I didn’t even think about it anymore, until now, because now I felt a little silly for pulling it out.

Frank smiled at this and I took it as a good sign. He'd finally begun to lighten up a little, and that smirk was getting to me again, just like it had the first night I'd met him in New York. It was alluring and sexy, but I tried my best to resist in an effort to conserve whatever chance of friendship we had left.

"Do you think we can maybe," Frank began, searching for his words. "I don’t know, forget it and move on?"

"I'm willing to if you are."

"Deal." He extended his hand out to me to finalize and solidify our agreement to move on and get passed the awkwardness of being around each other. It was one dumb kiss fueled by hormones and endorphins and based on the premise of never seeing each other again. It backfired, but the least we could do was forget it and stay friends.

I grabbed onto Franks hand and repeated, "Deal." The air was clear, I was cool with Frank and Frank was cool with me. There would be no more awkwardness between us; after all, we'd been the ones to make it awkward in the first place, so we just had to suck it up and get over it.

Frank went to stand up, but hadn't let go of my hand yet and ended up yanking me to a standing position with him. I stumbled slightly and he caught me before anything too tragic happened and I found my cheeks warming slightly. Just because I had agreed to keep things normal between me and Frank, didn't mean that I didn’t still think he was cute.

"Wha-?" I started as I steadied my footing.

"Come here," he said, still keeping a firm hold on my hand and starting his way over to the water. NO! This wasn’t going to happen.

"No, no, no," I protested and dug my feet into the sand to keep him from taking me any further.

"Yes, yes, yes," he shot back. "We're going to get you to swim."

I wasn’t having it. I fought him to stay where I was, but he soon grew impatient with trying to drag me to the water and instead wrapped his arms around my waist and picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder as I screamed for him to put me down, and walked me over to the shore where Mikey and Bob were.

The water was slightly warm from having had the sun beaming down into it all day. Frank threw me into the chest deep water once we'd gotten out far enough and I struggled for a moment to find the floor beneath my feet. I instinctively reached out for Frank, the closest person to me and the one who'd brought me over there in the first place.

He kept a protective grasp around my waist the whole time as I gradually learned to steady myself in the water and find my balance against the crashing waves.

We spent the rest of the afternoon like this, pushing water at each other and goofing around until the sun started to set. The light was dimming and it was starting to become a better and better idea to get out of the water and back to the beach.

We all settled down around each other as Bob went off to his car to retrieve something. I'd put my shirt and shorts back on, and sadly for me, Frank had covered himself once again as well. Bob came back a moment later, box in hands along with a pack of smokes. God, how I wanted one.

He set down the box along with himself and pulled out a cigg, handing the pack to Frank who also took one. Bob held out the smokes to me and I hesitated for a second. I wanted one, badly, but I also didn’t want to do it around Mikey.

"Go ahead," he said, just as I thought this. "I won't tell my mom." I smiled to Mikey and, modestly as I could, took a cigarette from Bob.

"Thanks," I said as he gave me a light and opened up the box he'd brought with him.

"Just don't tell her about this either," Mikey said, pulling out a can of beer from the box and cracking it open. I didn’t take Mikey for the type to drink, but he probably also didn’t take me for the type to smoke.

Half the box downed, we'd started to open up a bit more. We weren't drunk, tipsy at most, after all we still had to drive home.

Occasionally, I'd feel Frank's arm brush against me. He was sitting a little closer than expected and I triedmy best to move away from him without seeming rude or that I didn’t want to be around him. I just didn’t want to fall for him again, not after we'd cleared things up. I just hoped it was the alcohol and that he'd forget it by the next day.

The beach was empty and dark, us being the only ones still out. It was the kind of night you never wanted to have end, where the sound of a ringing cell phone was the ultimate crusher of dreams.

"Hello?" Mikey answered, doing a good job of hiding the slur the alcohol had given him.

A few moments passed and a few words were exchanged, and once he'd hung up the phone, Mikey turned to me and said, "Mom wants us home."

We packed away all of our things and went back over to Bob and Mikey's car. I told Bob how nice it was to meet him and that I couldn’t wait to have some classes with him, though having no classes at all probably would have been better.

Frank and I exchanged a look for a moment, a longing and a curiosity. Not knowing where to go from here, but not being scared in the least by the ambiguity of the future. I averted my gaze quickly as not make obvious the fact that something was there between Frank and me. I didn’t want Mikey or Bob to know anything about our short past together; here I was trying to forget it myself.

Mikey drove home slowly, the alcohol working its way out of his system, and when we got home, Donna sat in the living room, waiting up for us with a novel on her lap and a glass of wine in her hand. She didn’t seemed to notice Mikey's or my tipsiness and I was glad, otherwise we'd have to explain ourselves to her and that would be more awkward than anything that could happened between Frank and me.

"How was your night?" she asked as she took a sip from her glass. Ironic.

In an effort not to get caught by Mikey slurring out an answer, I held onto his arm, halting him from any speech and gave aunt Donna my best response: "Better than expected."

Notes

Hey hey, I hope you all had a good Memorial Day!! I was in a parade and I had to march while playing a French Horn which is super hard, so it wasn't all that fun, but still kinda nice ^.^

Anyway, I got an internship over the summer and I may not have as much time as I'd like to write more stories (though it's mostly office clerical work so I might actually be on a computer a lot with nothing to do...*hint hint*)

Enjoy the reading, leave a comment if you like, send me a message and all that jazz! Have a good morning, afternoon, evening, night, day!! (I don't know what time it is where you are...)