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9

Charlie grabbed my hand, pulling me out the door and into the sun. I immediately squinted because as a person with light blue eyes, any form of light was way too bright. I lifted my hand to the top of my head hoping I had remembered my sunglasses. As I felt nothing but hair, I groaned causing Charlie to turn around. "Forgot sunglasses?" A wide grin was on his face and he laughed as I scrunched up my nose in frustration.

We walked over to the Mustang and got in. I kept asking Charlie where we were going but he said it was a surprise. I shook my head, giving up. I knew no matter how many times I asked him, he wasn't going to tell me so I decided to just go with it.

The car ride was mostly quiet, with the exception of music playing in the background. We would be talking, but Charlie was mad at me because I forced him to put the country station on. Charlie hated country music. I on the other hand, loved it. And of course it was the station I listened to all the time so of course I knew all the words to every song.

With every song that came on, I sang along. I was gonna get Charlie to crack. He wasn't smiling and kept his eyes on the road, trying to ignore my singing. I knew he couldn't take it for that much longer which only encouraged me to sing louder.

I had a triumphant smirk playing on my lips as I knew he was about to give up on trying to ignore me. What I didn't know was that he had his own plan.

The next song that came on just happened to be my favorite country song on earth by Luke Bryan. It was called, "Play It Again". I listened to the intro preparing to sing along to the song but as the first set of lyrics were sung, I didn't hear my voice, I heard Charlie's.

"She was sittin' all alone over on the tailgate" I whipped my head towards him, my mouth hung open in disbelief. "Tan legs swingin' by a Georgia plate" Charlie caught my gaze on him and looked over at me with a smirk on his face.

"I was lookin' for her boyfriend
Thinkin', no way she ain't got one"

I couldn't help but get mesmerized by his singing. I continued to watch him bust out the lyrics when one of my favorite lines from the song came on. "Soon as I sat down I was fallin' in love" Charlie took his focus off the road to look at me and wink. My face became a deep shade of scarlet and all I wanted to do was turn away and hide my face. Why was he making me so nervous today?

After listening to him sing the rest of the song, I couldn't help but wonder if he learned that specific song on purpose. He really didn't like country but when I forced him to listen to it every so often when we were in his car and "Play It Again" came on, I always sang along, telling him this was my all time favorite country song.

I didn't have time to think about it though as Charlie put the car into park and shut off the engine. As I stepped out of the car, I took a few seconds to look at my surroundings. There was a farm, pumpkins, apples, and a corn maze in the distance.

I couldn't hide the smile that was forming on my face as I looked at Charlie. "I know it's the end of October and pretty late for this kind of stuff, but I know you love Fall and I figured it would be something fun to do." He had a small and almost embarrassed smile on his face when he looked at me. "Charlie this is a great idea! I always wanted to go and do all this stuff but my mom was always too busy and Alyssa never had time to come with me." I didn't think my smile could grow any bigger but when Charlie spoke again, I was wrong. "So what do you want to do first?" My eyes lit up. I couldn't contain my excitement as I ran over to Charlie, giving him a hug. He laughed, replacing his embarrassed smile with a happy one.

Three hours later, we had picked a few mini pumpkins, gotten two baskets full of apples and were on our way to do the corn maze. It was almost dark out as it was around six o'clock. We'd probably still be in the maze well into the dark and thinking about that made my skin crawl. I brushed the thought to the back of my mind as I knew I had to focus on finding our way through the maze.

Not long after taking turn after turn down different paths outlined by stalks of corn, it was completely dark out. The only thing letting us see what was in front of us was the lights that were attached to poles located in different parts of the maze. I had nothing to worry about. It wasn't even that dark out now that we had these lights.

I thought too soon as suddenly all the lights shut off. There was nothing in sight and the only reassurance I had to know I wasn't alone, was hearing the breathing of Charlie next to me. Charlie grabbed my hand almost as fast as the lights in the maze turned off.

"Are you okay?" I could hear the worry apparent in his voice as he squeezed my hand a little tighter. Before I could reply, we heard rustling in the row of corn stalks behind us.

I moved my body as close as I could get to Charlie and stared into the darkness, hoping that I would be able to make out what was making all the noise.

After a few minutes of silence and nothing happening, we figured it was probably just the wind. After all, it was October and it did tend to get fairly windy at night.

We didn't know whether to stay put in hopes that the power would return or to try and find our way out of here in complete darkness. Suddenly hearing the sound of a barking dog, we assumed there must have still been other people trapped in the maze. We just hoped that if the came upon us, they were friendly.