you are in love

JUNE EIGHTH, part three -- Out of My League

JUNE EIGHTH- THE FIRST DATE - PART THREE

I followed Levi out of the house towards the base of the water tower. I looked up at it as we approached. The massive, rounded tank and all of the steel beams holding it up were painted in light blue and white geometric patterns. It was stunning. There was a spiral staircase in the very center of all of the beams. Levi ducked underneath a beam and I followed him to where he stopped at the base of the staircase. Each step was painted a different shade of blue. I glanced at him.

"You built this?"

"Yeah..."

"How good are you at building?"

"I promise it's safe."

"Okay. I believe you. Did you paint it too?"

"My mom painted the tower years ago. I wanted the staircase to blend in with it as much as possible, but I'm not the artist she was, so I just used similar colors..." his voice faded, inspecting his work, his head tilting up.

I stepped in front of him, taking the first steps, before turning to look back at where he still stood, watching me from the base of the staircase. His face was oddly wistful, nearly happy.

"Are you coming?"

"Do you, uh, do you mind if I take a picture of you? I want to remember this."

I smiled. "Sure."

I stood on the steps, facing him, smiling at the cute way his tongue poked out of the side of his mouth as he pointed his phone's camera at me. I turned after a few seconds, continuing up the stairs. I think he kept taking pictures. I looked up at the top of the tower. It was far up there. I took a deep breath, pausing, waiting for Levi to catch up to me. He stopped on the stair right below me.

"Nora?"

"Can you go first? I'm a little nervous," I said, reaching out to pull his hand, making him step past me.

He laughed. "Okay, okay. Let's play a game while we climb. Get ya mind off the height and all that."

"Yeah, please."

"Okay. It's called dinner party. We're going to create an ideal celebrity dinner party for us to join in on. Let's say we each get, uh, three picks, and the setting is the top of my water tower."

I laughed. "I like it."

"But you have to have a reason for all of the celebrities to be there, like he's a good cook or she'll be hilarious drama or something like that, and like they all have to have a reason to be at the same dinner party."

"I get it. I like it. What's your first pick?" I laughed again, at him, and his mind, and I wanted to know more.

Levi paused his steps. We were about a third of the way up the stairs.
"Shoot. Going first is hard. Okay. I've got it. First is Julianne Hough, because we can tell her the story about how on our first date a song from her movie made us feel like someone understood what we were feeling right then," he said, glancing down at me, blushing, and then continuing up the stairs.

Oh. My. God.

"Levi, I really like that."

"Go ahead, make your first pick," he said, clearly a little uncomfortable.

"Okay. Then I pick Tom Waits."

"Why?"

"Because he wrote a song we both loved without knowing each other, yet. That's something. To me that's something. Something that gets him a seat at the table, or the tower, so to speak."