Throwback

To All Kinds of Kinds

So you've made it this far. Stick with me? :)

Chapter two:

Throwback- To all kinds of kinds.

Girls. Man, I loved girls. But there are only so many girls in Lincolnton. I’d seen them all. I’d taken plenty of them out.  It usually started with friendship that turned into an attraction, which turned into another boring relationship I felt utterly trapped in.

All kinds of kinds, she had once said. all kinds of kinds but never any one of a kind. 

It’s not that I didn’t like the girls I went out with. It’s just that they were all the same. They dressed alike, they had the same interests, they laughed at the same jokes, they watched the same movies, and they listened to the same music. It was like I had dated the same person over and over again.

It got to a point where I stopped seeing anyone at all. I didn’t want to kiss a girl or touch a girl or even smile at a girl.

My friends thought I was crazy. I thought I was crazy. My mom asked me if I was gay. I knew I wasn’t gay.

At some point this girl thing turned into a people thing. I was tired of everyone. I didn’t care about the gossip and I didn’t care how far my buddies had gone with their girlfriends. When someone spoke to me, the words bounced right off, as if my mind was a giant force field deflecting whatever I didn’t want to hear.

It drove my mother crazy more than anyone else. She was a control freak. The kind of women that attending every PTA meeting at my sisters school, ironed our families underwear, and practically forced me to apply to every college near home. And until that year, I’d been okay with it.

But all of a sudden I felt like a complete stranger in my own life. I didn’t want to go to football practice and I didn’t want to go to the friday night parties. I didn’t want to ask Becky out, even though I’d liked her forever and everyone told me we would be perfect. I especially didn’t want to do my homework at night because I knew it all and I didn’t have to prove anything to anyone.

I did want to leave.

I wanted to leave so bad that the very feeling sat in the pit of my stomach and ached nonstop, begging me to try something different. Go somewhere different. Meet someone different.

So I guess when she came waltzing into that damned restaurant, she was answering an unsaid prayer. Because everything about McCauley Summers screamed different.

…

“Tell me something that’s on your mind,” McCauley said. “Something that you’re afraid to share because of what people will think.”

We had left the restaurant far behind now and the sun was just beginning to sink in the sky in front of us as we walked down the sidewalk, side by side. I was carrying her blank canvas and she was carrying her shoes, her bare feet padding the ground with every step.

“I don’t even know you,” I replied awkwardly.

She shrugged, “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers than the people you’ve known your whole life.”

I couldn’t argue with that one.

“Fine,” I said with a small smile. “How about we make this into a game?”

She grinned, cocking her head to the side, curiosity gleaming in her big green eyes. “Alright.”

I grinned back at her. “So you tell me something on your mind that you wouldn't normally share, then I tell you what that makes me think of, then you tell me what that makes you think of.”