16. Naomi

CHAPTER 16

Naomi

I 'm going on a date.

A real, live date.

With a real, live girl.

A girl with whom I have already shared a real, live kiss.

With all the literary descriptions of kisses I've read, I should be able to come up with a better description of what happened in the water slide yesterday than ‘real' and ‘live', but I'm learning that when it comes to Andrea King, words often fail me.

I stand in front of the full-length mirror propped in a corner of my guest bedroom and triple-check my outfit for tonight: a pale blue sundress with spaghetti straps and a swishy skirt that flares out from my waist, paired with a pair of brown sandals. The only other time I've worn this dress was to high school graduation. It's not exactly formal, but it's fancy enough that I don't know why I brought it with me to the mansion.

It's not like I expected to be going on the first date of my life when I showed up at this house.

I consider swapping my sandals for some shiny black ballet flats, the only somewhat fancy pair of shoes I have here, but I still don't even know if this is a fancy date. Andrea came down while I was feeding the cats this morning and said she was taking me out tonight but refused to give any details on the location.

I didn't really mind the secrecy when it was paired with the thrill that zinged through me when she said the words, ‘I'm taking you out.'

Bijoux hops down off my bed where he's been cuddled up with Aurora Rose and struts over to twine himself around my legs while he mewls for scratches. I bend over to rub behind his ears and ask if he thinks Andrea will like my dress.

He just head-butts my hand and meows even louder.

"Yeah, I don't know why I expected you to have an opinion on that," I tell him. "Your taste probably aligns more with Sandy's than with Andrea's."

Thinking about Sandy gets me thinking about how I'm officially having a summer fling with my dad's boss's daughter—if you can even call a summer fling official. Whatever I'm doing with Andrea has made me realize dating has even more unspoken social nuances to it than I realized.

I straighten up despite the protests from Bijoux and smooth the dress down before tucking my hair behind my ears. I drop my arms to my sides and stare at my reflection for a few long moments.

I'm not sure who the girl staring back at me is.

This whole summer has felt like one long, twisty ride down the world's craziest water slide. It's knocked me down and flipped me around more times than I can count. I haven't even reached the bottom yet, and I already know I'm too shaken up to be the same person I was at the top.

The version of me who walked into this house would not have swum naked in the pool, but I did it. I got a piercing. I got way too high smoking a joint. I jumped into a van with my friends and went on a road trip that resulted in what I'd consider the first real kiss of my life—and most definitely the best one.

Maybe those things don't mean much on their own, but somewhere along the way, they started stacking up like bricks for me to stand on and tower over all the jeering doubts in my mind that tell me I'll never be brave or cool or normal.

Tonight, I'm doing something even better than normal.

I'm doing something spectacular.

I'm going out with Andrea King, and I'm not letting any of my doubts stop me.

"Naomi! Our chariot awaits!"

I jump to attention like Andrea has burst into the room instead of just knocking on my door.

"Chariot?" I say as my heart leaps into my throat.

I do a few manic laps around the room to search for my purse before I realize it's already slung over my shoulder. I smooth my dress down for probably the tenth time tonight before I step over to open the door.

"I ordered us a ride since I figured the OC Transpo would kind of cramp our style tonight," Andrea is saying on the other side. "Not that this dude's Toyota Corolla is going to be much of a chariot, but—"

She cuts herself off with a gasp when I fling the door open.

Then she swears.

Loudly.

Several times.

The bottom of my stomach drops as I glance down at my dress, certain I must have missed some sort of hideous stain on the front.

Or maybe it's my makeup. I thought I cleaned up all the rogue mascara from my first failed attempt, but maybe I have horrifying raccoon eyes I somehow didn't notice in the mirror.

"What is it?" I demand. "Should I change? I—"

"Naomi."

She clamps her hands down on my shoulders and squeezes hard until I stop babbling and look at her.

Instead of disgust, her eyes are filled with a blazing heat that makes my knees shake.

"You. Look. Incredible ," she hisses, punctuating each word with a shoulder squeeze. "This dress is…wow. Wow . You're just…stunning. I am literally stunned."

My neck and cheeks start to do their usual embarrassing blushing routine, and the only answer I can come up with is, "Oh."

She grins and shakes her head. "God, you're cute."

She huffs a laugh that almost sounds nervous and drops her gaze from mine.

"You look stunning too," I tell her.

She's wearing a black, silky romper with a keyhole cutout in the front that reveals a hint of cleavage I can't look at without my mouth going dry. There are more cutouts showing off a couple glimpses of the smooth skin of her sides.

She's got some low, strappy black heels on, and her eye makeup is darker than I've ever seen it before. Combined with some burgundy lipstick and a twisty up-do that somehow comes off sophisticated and effortless at the same time, she looks downright dangerous tonight.

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" I blurt before cringing at how very not smooth that was.

She smiles again and then does a little twirl.

"I'd like to keep you alive long enough to get you downtown. Speaking of, we really do have to go before this car drives off without us."

We rush downstairs and out of the house to where the driver is waiting just outside the gate. We pile into the backseat of the car, and I squint at the driver's phone screen for any hint of where we're going, but I don't recognize the address listed as our destination.

"Are you sure I'm dressed up enough?" I murmur to Andrea.

She nods. "More than enough. It's really not that fancy, or at least not as far as I can tell."

"You've never been there before?"

She shakes her head. "I was looking for places to take you tonight and saw they had an…interesting menu item we really cannot miss out on."

I give her a curious look, but she just smirks at me and then pretends to be engrossed in staring out the window.

I do the same and watch as the sprawling properties of Mansionland morph into the packed streets of downtown. We drive all the way to the heart of the ByWard Market. The sun has only just started streaking the sky with orange and pink, but the streets are already filled with tourists and locals heading out for dinner and drinks.

"This good?" the driver asks as he pulls up to an empty strip of curb.

Andrea scans the collection of restaurants and bars lining the street before nodding. "Yeah, thanks. It's right up there."

She slides out on the side closest to the road, and I pause in the middle of climbing out of my seat when she reappears to hold my door open and offer me one of her arms.

"I feel bad," I say as she helps me to my feet on the sidewalk and then swings the door shut so the driver can take off. "You're the one wearing heels, so shouldn't I be the one helping you out of the car?"

She shrugs. "I have no idea. You probably understand sapphic dating etiquette more than me. This is, uh…well, this is my first date with a girl."

She slides her arm out from under mine and presses her lips together while she shifts her weight from foot to foot like she's nervous.

Like I make her nervous.

The idea of me making someone like her nervous is so wild I almost laugh, but instead I reach to grab hold of her arm again and tuck it back in place.

"Well, this is my first date ever ," I tell her, "so I think we're just going to have to fumble our way through it together."

"So it would appear." She drops her voice low, and I'm suddenly very aware of every single place where her skin is touching mine. "Somehow, I think we'll manage."

I can't stop myself from glancing at her lips, those lips that felt like flower petals and velvet ribbons and silky-soft feathers when they moved against mine in the water slide.

She leads us down the sidewalk, and as we weave around groups of people wearing everything from formalwear to ‘I love Canada' t-shirts and hats shaped like maple leaves, my head spins with a combination of hope and anticipation that's more intoxicating than any of the liquors Shal has ever persuaded me to take a sip of.

I'm walking around with my arm linked through Andrea's for the whole city to see, and not even a dozen shots of gross tequila could make me feel braver than I do in this moment.

"You sure didn't waste time getting this date set up," I tease.

She brings us to a halt in front of a restaurant door and swings me around so I'm facing her, her eyes sparking with that same heat from back in the house.

"I sure didn't," she answers, her tone matching mine as she arches an eyebrow. "This might be a summer fling, but I wanted to at least take you out for a meal before I kissed you again, and do you really think I could have made it longer than tonight without doing that?"

She leans in so close my eyes start to flutter closed as the rest of me braces for her to kiss me again, but all she does is hover over my lips before pulling back and grabbing the door's handle.

"Dinner first," she says with another smirk.

I'm seconds away from passing out in the middle of the sidewalk, but she tugs on my arm to guide me in after her. I didn't get a look at the restaurant's name outside, but the interior has me turning to ask her if she's sure this is the right place.

The restaurant looks like an old European spinster's cottage. The walls are bare stone with eerie black and white family portraits hung alongside some shelves housing a collection of creepy dolls in what I think is traditional Bavarian clothing. Old-timey brass band music plays softly overhead, and the few occupied tables are filled with a middle-aged couple drinking from huge beer steins and a family with a toddler munching on a giant pretzel.

"So…Google said it was a German restaurant," Andrea says as I took a second look at the dolls. "It actually has great reviews! Plus, I really only picked it for this one appetizer they have, so we can just get that and then go somewhere else if you want."

Despite the concerning decor, I'm still flying high enough on the thrill of walking down the street with her that I work up the nerve to bump her shoulder with mine and joke, "Wow, Andrea, you sure know how to treat a girl."

She bumps me back and is about to say something when a grey-haired woman in black pants and a black t-shirt with an apron tied around her waist comes over and asks if we'd like a table for two. I was expecting all the servers to be in full-on dirndls, but the menus she places in front of us after getting us a seat make up for the lack of German attire. The laminated pages have illustrations of little cartoon mice in lederhosen adorning the corners.

"They really went all out, didn't they?" I ask once our waitress has headed off to another table. I tap on one of the mice as I hold the menu up for Andrea to see.

"Okay, so maybe Google also described it as a ‘quirky, no frills hole in the wall,' but did you see the appetizers?"

She taps on her own menu, and I place mine back on the table to scan through the options. I get halfway through the appetizers section before I burst out laughing at the same time my heart swells to twice its size in my chest.

"Oh my god, no way," I choke out. "A pickle platter?"

"Featuring a dozen different flavors of the finest quality gherkins!" Andrea sing-songs as she reads off the menu before looking up to beam at me. "Pretty impressive, right?"

"Wow, yeah. I didn't even know pickles came in a dozen different flavors."

She taps her chin. "Yeah, we'll see about that. That's a pretty bold claim. You're the expert, so you'll have to let me know what your official assessment is once we're done."

I chuckle before dropping my gaze back down to the menu. It's definitely not very cool of me, but the corners of my eyes prick with heat as the impact of her doing this for me sinks in.

Sure, it's not some huge romantic gesture. It's just a silly little joke about my weird affinity for pickles, but she saw that weird piece of me and ran with it. She saw me and decided I was worth getting to know.

"Hey, um…" I say as I reach up to tuck my hair back behind my ears. "Thanks. This was…this was really nice of you, thinking of me like this. I know it's just, um, pickles, but you remembered that about me, and that's…really nice."

My face heats up, but I still force myself to look up from the menu. Andrea's eyes have gone all soft as she stares at me. Her mouth curves into a slight smile as she slides her foot over to nudge mine under the table.

"I don't think there's much about you I could forget, Naomi."

My breath catches, and before I realize what's happening, we're both leaning over the table. Her makeup looks even more smokey and seductive in the dim light of the restaurant, and all I want is to watch her burgundy painted lips say my name again before she kisses me.

"Are we ready to order, dears?"

We spring apart as our waitress walks back up to our table. My back slams into my chair so hard it's a miracle I don't tip over.

"Um, yes, I think so," Andrea says, her voice a little higher-pitched than usual.

"Any appetizers?" the waitress asks.

Andrea clears her throat. "Yes, we will have the, um, the pickle platter, please."

I can't help it. The phrase ‘pickle platter' is just too good. I try to hold back the laugh building inside me, but it bursts out as a snort.

Of course, that makes Andrea start laughing too, which makes the waitress look at us like we're crazy, but for once, I don't care about anyone in the room thinking I'm weird.

I'm soaring above all my worries now, waving down at them like I'm watching the tiny specks of a bustling city from the window of a plane way, way up in the air.

I don't want to land in that city tonight, with its blaring sirens and choking fumes.

Tonight, I just want to fly through an orange-streaked sky with Andrea King.

We end up getting a full meal at the German restaurant, after I've decided there were about five distinct pickle flavors on the platter and the rest just seemed to be a variety of cuts and shapes.

We decide to wander through the ByWard Market to grab something for dessert. The sky has shifted to an inky purple now, and most of the stalls selling crafts and maple-flavored treats in the main market square have been packed up for the night. People swarm the sidewalks and pile into the pubs and bars lining the streets to fight for good patio spots where they can enjoy the summer night.

Andrea grabbed my hand as soon as we left the restaurant, and the warmth of her palm against mine feels like it's shooting straight to my brain to turn all my thoughts hazy and slow. My feet glide over the pavement. Even if all we did was stroll around the city like this for the next couple hours, I'd still call this one of the best nights of my life.

"Do you want to get ice cream?"

Andrea lifts her free hand to point at a stall painted in bright pinks and blues, where a small line of people peruse the list of ice cream flavors written on a sign above the counter.

"That sounds perfect," I say, which is probably what I would have said to anything she suggested, but I can't deny there's a particular perfection to eating an ice cream cone on a hot summer night.

The line moves quickly, and it's only a few minutes before we've found a bench in the square to sit down on while we do our best to get through the ice cream before it drips onto our hands.

We both got double scoop cones. I went with coconut, and Andrea got chocolate raspberry. I'm concentrating so hard on not staring at her mouth while she licks the ice cream streaked with pink swirls that I don't realize she's asked me something until she gives me a light jab with her elbow.

"Well?" she says.

I make the mistake of looking at her in the middle of dragging my tongue up the side of my ice cream and then freezing mid-lick when our eyes lock.

She raises an eyebrow.

I blink.

Then the whole top scoop of my ice cream slides to the pavement with a plop.

"Oh no!" Andrea shrieks before she starts cackling. "Your poor ice cream."

I clutch what's left of my dessert in one hand and use the stack of napkins the girl behind the counter gave us to wipe an ice cream splatter off my shin—and to use the excuse of bending over to hide my flaming cheeks from Andrea.

"I asked if this was living up to your first date expectations," she says, "but now that I've made you drop your ice cream, I'm scared to hear your answer."

I straighten up and use another napkin to wipe a bit of melted ice cream off my hand.

"Even after losing half my ice cream, it's definitely exceeding expectations," I tell her. "It's…perfect."

I wince as I wonder if that was too much, but I don't take it back, either. For once, I don't give in to the urge second-guess myself. I push up even higher above the doubts telling me I'm reading things wrong.

Even if it's only for one night, I want to believe I can just be myself with her. I want to trust that's enough.

She slides closer until the side of her leg is pressed to mine, and my body hums like a generator coming to life.

"Good," she says. "I don't think I could forgive myself if I messed up your first first date."

I dab at my hand with the napkin again as another trickle of ice cream drips down the side of the cone.

"Well, there's not much pressure on you since I have nothing to compare it to," I tell her. "I'm the one who should be worried. You're probably a first date pro compared to me."

Her shoulder nudges mine as she shrugs. "Actually, I didn't go on any real dates in high school either."

I jerk upright on the bench and turn to gawk at her. "You're joking."

She lets out a nervous laugh. "I'm not. I messed around with guys at parties and stuff, but I never actually dated. My ex was my first and only boyfriend. I always told everyone I thought all the high school guys were too boring to date, but…"

She shrugs again and focuses back on her ice cream cone. We sit there eating in silence for a few moments. I can tell she wants to say more, but I don't push her. I've almost gotten to the bottom of my cone when she speaks again.

"I think maybe I was worried I wasn't good enough for them." Her voice is low enough that I have to lean my head closer to hear over the din of passing cars and shouting pedestrians. "I didn't go to private school or anything, but my high school had this whole reputation for academic excellence or whatever. Everybody had a ten year life plan figured out by the start of ninth grade. I thought I did too. but as I got older, everything my mom and I had planned for my life started to feel so…heavy, like I wasn't good enough to hold it anymore."

For a moment, it's like I can see past all the sultry makeup and purple hair dye to stare straight at a younger version of her, a smaller version of her—a version of her who felt like she was being shoved into a box she'd never fit.

"I know what it's like to feel like you're not good enough," I say. "I know what it's like to think you just keep getting things wrong."

My free hand twitches with the urge to touch her, and I don't give myself a chance to hesitate. I reach over to lay my palm on the top of her thigh. After a second, she places her hand flat on top of mine.

"Thanks," she murmurs.

We stay quiet for so long the final few bites of my ice cream melt into a sugary soup, but I don't care. The last purple traces of twilight are fading from the sky when I decide to speak again.

"Your ex…" I say, trailing off as I try to figure out how to word the question. "Were things different with him?"

She barks a laugh. "You could say that. I thought I…I mean, I guess at some point I thought I loved him, but I think really I just wanted a break from it all. He didn't want much from me. He didn't need the ten year plan or the achievements."

She stares into space before she shakes her head and continues.

"I think maybe I swung too far the other way, because in the end, I was the one who got frustrated and bored. That's what makes it so confusing. Like, there has to be something in the middle of all that, right? Something like…well, honestly, something like you and your friends have."

I gawk at her. "Huh?"

She chuckles. "Yeah, you heard me. You, Shal, and Priya are the first people I've met who have all these goals and things you're serious about, but you're also fun and awesome and weird in the best way possible. You're pretty amazing, you know that?"

She sounds so serious it makes me squirm on the bench.

"Oh. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, Shal and Priya are great. I…"

I trail off when she leans her head in closer to mine, all the words whooshing out of my head.

"They are," she says, her eyes boring into mine, "but I specifically meant that you, Naomi, are amazing, and maybe this is a lot to say, but I'm really glad I met you."

I can count every one of her freckles now. She presses my hand even harder against her thigh, and this time neither of us even blinks when what's left of my ice cream cone slips out of my hand to splatter on the ground.

In fact, Andrea drops her cone too, or at least I think she must, because one second she's staring at me, and the next she's cupping my face with both her hands as her mouth hovers over mine.

"Can I kiss you?" she whispers.

All I can do is nod, and then my whole world explodes with the sweet taste of raspberries, chocolate, and her.

She tilts my head back, kissing me way harder than she did in the water slide, and my hand slides up from her leg to her waist. My fingers curl around the silky fabric of her romper. When my pinkie brushes a strip of her bare skin revealed by the side cutouts, she makes a soft sound in the back of her throat that reverberates through my whole body.

She pulls her head back to break the kiss but her hands stay cupping my jaw. We're both panting. My heart is slamming against my ribs, and my skin feels like it's on fire.

"Wow," I breathe, not caring how dorky I sound.

"Wow," she echoes.

I'm about to ask her to do it again when the strum of a guitar makes us both turn to look over at the center of the square, where a busker must have set himself up sometimes in the past few minutes.

He's only a few meters away from us, which should probably have me feeling embarrassed about him potentially seeing us kiss, but I'm too exhilarated to do anything but squeeze Andrea's hand and grin at the gathering crowd.

The busker looks like he's in his thirties. He's wearing jeans and a t-shirt with the name of a band I don't recognize printed on the front. He spends a couple minutes tuning the guitar. A handful of people have gathered to wait for the show to start, and he gives them a wave once he's ready.

"Hey there, folks. We're gonna start things off with an oldie but a goodie. Anyone heard of Neutral Milk Hotel?"

There's some shrugging and mumbling from the group in front of him. I glance at Andrea to see if she knows the band, but she shrugs too.

"Tough crowd, tough crowd," the busker says with a laugh. "Well, allow me to introduce you. This is their song, ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.'"

He strums the guitar, and Andrea's grip on my hand tightens. After a few bars, he begins singing. He's got a clear and earnest voice, the kind that makes you believe every word he says is pouring straight out of his heart even if someone else wrote the song.

Combined with the chords of the guitar, the lyrics paint a picture of hope mixed with melancholy, kind of like those last few moments before the sunset slips out of view, or the final days before summer shifts into fall.

I shiver against Andrea like a gust of September wind just blew through the square even though we're not even halfway through August.

She lets go of my hand, and I see her eyes light up with the spark of an idea before she jumps off the bench and tells me to stay where I am. I watch as she scoops up the remains of our ice cream cones and then jogs over to dump them in the nearest garbage bin. When she gets back, she stands in front of me and pulls her phone out of her purse before grabbing my arm and hauling me up to my feet.

"Are we taking a selfie?" I ask as she bends over to set the phone on the bench with the camera facing us.

She straightens up and shakes her head. "No, we're knocking another item off the bucket list."

She holds one of her hands out towards me.

"Naomi Waters," she says, already swaying to the rhythm of the song, "I challenge you to dance with me."

A few strands of purple hair slip out of her elegant up-do to fall in reckless curls around her face. She lifts an eyebrow while she waits for me. Her grin starts to falter as she mistakes my pause for hesitation.

I'm not hesitating.

I'm just soaking up the sight of this perfect girl on this perfect night, ready to sweep me up into yet another perfect moment.

At the start of this summer, I would have turned away. I would have sat this one out. I would have laughed and told her she's crazy for thinking I'd ever dance in front of a whole crowd of people in one of the busiest spots in Ottawa. I might have even admitted I have no idea how to dance.

Instead, I step forward and take her hand in mine.