The summer I met Charlie

part 5

I managed to answer the door just before Olive did. She was running in front of me down the hall in her favorite blue sun dress. She shrieked and  laughed when I finally had to grab her and swing her over my shoulder. I opened the door and there he was. 

"Hey little miss. I forgot about this little cutie." I set Olive down then, she ran up and gave him a hug. Oh dear.

He then turned to look at me. Olive in his arms. He did another hair brushing back movement, and I was about speechless. Everything about him was perfect, and yet I had spent a ton of time this morning with him,..I was still in shock. We kind of just stared at each other for a while,..till mom had to butt in and just so happen to be passing threw the living room. 

"Hi, you must be..." She of course knew his name,... but i had told her to act as if she had no idea who he was. She did though. I mean I had spent a good ten minutes telling her how mysterious, good looking, and a gentlemen and he was.

"Hello, i'm Charlie."  He then took a hand out of one of his pockets and stretched it out to her. She looked  a little surprised, like it was some new concept. Dad had never been the type of guy to really shake hands. She smiled at me. Oh I was going to regret letting him pick me up for sure. 

After a bit of short chit chat we were walking down the stone path way to the curb to the black machine. "You've ever road a Rice Rocket?" He said while handing me his helmet. 

"Ha,..Iv'e never really road a motorcycle before,..is a Rice Rocket a type of bike or something?" 

He smiled and laughed a bit at that. "You could say that. It's more or less what my friends back home call them." By now I was having a bit of a difficulty "securing" my helmet. So he moved in, he slid the bit of hair out of my face, clicked the clasp, and with a bit of a tug on the strap we were good to go. He gave me a hand to help my clumsy self get on and straddle the huge monster. He then got on with little to no effort. Mom was still standing in the door way with Olive. Charlie waved goodbye to them. Hit the brake back, and we were off. 

"Hold on tight OK, we are going to hit the highway soon." And with that I held on to him as tight as I could. His white shirt fit snug and I had to have been strangling him with my grip. We vrumed off the side streets and soon we were on the highway. Cars honked as we passed by them. Swerving in and out of traffic. Some guys in a jeep flipped us off.  But I didn't care and it was now obvious that he didn't either. This was pure bliss. It only took about five minutes to figure where we were going. We were headed to the end of town. The place where not too many things were going on. A lot of restaurants, and the occasional chain store like Target or the Home Depot. I figured we must be going to something like Olive garden, but then we pulled into Barns and Noble. I was a little suspicious, maybe he had to get something from a friend who worked here? Did he work here? He parked directly in the front. Turning around he said " So how was it?" I thought I should just smile, I didn't know if I was capable of talking yet but then I realized that the helmet was still on and I was still griping on to him.

"Amazing!" By now I had gotten the hang of the helmet thing so I pulled it off.

"That's better." He said, "Now I can see your'e pretty face." 

He grabbed my hand then. "So, worried yet?" 

"Well I am quite curious why we are at a giant book store." 

"Ahh she states the obvious. Well I was planing on taking you out to dinner, and then a stroll on the beach. But I thought that you, being from a beach town she had probably been on many dates like that. So I figured this might be a first." 

"Well your right about one thing." The doors opened then, and a cold shift of air blew right in our faces. 

"He held my hand more tightly then, and started jogging to the back of the store. "So what is one of your favorite things to do, or maybe a dream place you'd like to go Mrs. Lena?"