Ask Me Anything

Chapter 9

"You're just mad because you lost," I said, walking ahead of him and onto the sand, feeling it sink in between my toes. It was nice and cool now that the sun had set.

"If you think I was doing my best to win, you're crazy," Lucas shot back playfully, following me onto the beach, his ice cream cone in hand.

"Oh, how gentlemanly of you," I fawned sarcastically, laughing at his feeble attempt to shelter his ego.

I didn't think he let me win at mini golf, but I didn't really care. We had had a great time and now, each with our own ice cream cone, were finishing the night on the beach. As we wandered the empty sands, the sound of the boardwalk grew quieter and quieter, making us feel more isolated than we'd been together all evening. 

"You want to go up on the lifeguard stand?" he asked, standing next to me on the top of the dune as I put the last piece of my cone in my mouth and crunched happily.

I nodded, smiling widely. "Yeah," I said, as he lead the way to the nearest one. "At the beach my family goes to, they take these in at the end of the night, so we couldn't sit on them even if we wanted to, and of course they wouldn't let us on them during the day."

We made it to the stand, and he held out his hand to help me up onto the the tiny little rungs of the ladder to climb on. I climbed and reached the top, sitting down with a sigh and pulling the hair out of my face that the wind just blew right back. He joined me, the two of us fitting snugly on the white, wooden bench.

"Are we even allowed to be up here?" I asked through a sneaky laugh. I looked around at the empty beach, as if someone was going to come and yell at us for being up there after hours. 

Lucas laughed at me, shaking his head at my paranoia. "I'm a lifeguard, remember?" he said. "I can't get in trouble for being up on here." He pushed me a little. "You, however, could be hauled away in handcuffs any second now."

I pushed him back, giggling at his lame answer. 

The tide in front of us was on it's way out and it seemed like a long distance from the stand to the water now. I sighed contentedly. Good food, good company, good night. Maybe this was going to work out.

"Can I ask you something?" I asked, sitting forward a little, rubbing my hands together while the wind blew my hair wildly in front of my face no matter how many times I kept tucking it behind my ears.

He put the last tiny piece of cone in his mouth and swallowed. "You can ask me anything," he replied. I glared at him, thinking he was making this into a joke. He laughed, seeing my facial expression. "I'm serious," he insisted. "If we're going to be friends, the best way is to just get all of the information about ourselves out there. I mean, we don't have all summer to be awkwardly getting to know each other. Let's get through all that. Hold nothing back so we can skip to the fun part."

I laughed and ran my fingers through my hair in a last ditch attempt to free up my vision. No cigar.

"Okay, fine," I said, sitting back, folding my arms and narrowing my eyes at him. "We'll get it all out right now. No lies, no hesitations, nothing. Just straight up honest answers and then we'll move on. Got it?"

He nodded. "Shoot," he said with a playful smirk.

"I'm Connor, from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 21, two parents, one brother (younger), just finished college at Lehigh University as a journalism major, and I'm here this summer to work at the pier while I'm staying with my best friends."

He sat back, raising his eyebrows with an impressed look in his eyes. "A journalism major, huh?" he mused. "I never would have guessed, despite the fact that I've seen you more with a book in your hand than talking to another human being."