Senior Standoff | RETIRED VERSION

Season 4 - Episode 8 | NOT REVISED

I'd received the strange invitation in a text message earlier that week.

I have to take my grandma for tea for her birthday. Please come and save me from boredom.

One of my eyebrows peaked, the corner of my mouth rising in half a smile.  Asher going to tea.  All dressed up, drinking from a porcelain teacup, eating little sandwiches.  The mental image was amusing.  I had to see the real thing.

Mom thought it was adorable that I was going.  While she helped me pick out a pastel yellow dress and flowers for my hair, she gushed about how she used to go to tea with her mother and grandmother when she was a kid.  I watched her curl my hair and pin it back with the white fabric flowers.  There was no denying that I looked pretty.  But, despite the fact that the dress had come from my own closet, this girl in the mirror no longer felt like me.  She looked like Ky Faust's innocent, loser sister.
I hadn't been her in months.

I waited patiently for Asher to arrive.  The old black car parked at the curb, and I jumped up out of my seat, meeting Asher outside before he could come to my door.  A stupid, lopsided grin curled over his lips when he saw me.

"Well, don't you just look adorable?" he said.

"You're one to talk."  I used my hand to gesture to his entire body, which was a level of neatness I'd never seen.  His pale green shirt and black slacks were perfectly ironed, dark hair slicked back.  It was the athiest's version of Sunday best.

"Once a year," he sighed, holding up one finger.  "I can handle it once a year."

Finn stepped out of the back seat of the car, as cleaned up as Asher.  This was a sight I'd never see again. 

"Hey, Gram is waiting.  We've gotta go," he said.

Asher jerked his head towards his car.  I laid claim to the front seat for now, as long as their grandmother wasn't in the car.

"Think she'll smell it if we light up?" Finn asked.

"Maybe if we keep the windows up," I said.

"Roll them down.  I don't know another way for us to get through this," Asher said.

The scent barely reached me as it was carried away by the breeze.  By the time we reached their grandmother's house, each of us was just a bit baked.  Finn was cracking up over some unexplained joke, and I had lost my focus.  I joined Finn in the back seat. 

For the remainder of the car ride, Finn and I chuckled with each other over the fact that we were blazed, and that Gram didn't have a clue.  Our own dirty little secret. 

"I'm not much of a tea drinker, Gram," Asher said while we were walking through the door.  She had a grip on his forearm to keep her balance.

"Lucky for you, I am," I told him.

"Oh, me too," Gram said.  "It's all I'd drink if I could."

Seated around a four-person table, Asher looked down the menu without much direction.  I watched his confused face for a moment.  I took a glance at my own menu, and then leaned over towards him.

"I think you'd like this one," I said, pointing to a name under the Green Tea list.  Asher nodded. 

As the waitress was walking away with our team orders, Gram asked, "So, Aspen, how long have you been dating my grandson?"

Finn snapped his head up towards me, wide-eyed and apologetic. 

"Oh, no, you misunderstood.  Asher and I aren't together," I said.