How Hailey Met Cullen

Installment III

   The drive to the country was pure torture. Hailey was squashed with four strangers into the three-seater backseat of Jake Timm’s tiny sportscar with the wound of her amazing new love gone wrong still fresh in her heart, while Alexa sat up front with Jake and laughed and flirted as though nothing was wrong. It took them a whole half an hour to find Wyatt’s farm in the dark, and the whole time the guy who was grinding Hailey into the door of the car, a muscley hockey player named Jared, kept shooting her flirtatious looks and “accidentally” playing a one-sided game of footsie with her.

   When they finally got there, it was no relief. Though Hailey was no longer being pulverized and violated, the pain was still too great, and she was stuck in the middle of a party that only seemed to spite her, dangling orange and black balloons and streamers in her face; it was lemon juice on a paper cut times ten to the ten thousandth power. Hailey slipped her hand into the pocket of her jeans for her phone, wanting to be anywhere but here. Her mother would understand; Tammi would come get her and bring her home to her cozy bed and her stash of Friends DVDs, where she could figure things out in peace.

   But there was no phone. Where before there had been a solid piece of technology ready to connect her with anyone at any time, there were now only candy wrappers and pocket lint, mocking her. Where had it gone? A shock of fear hit Hailey’s stomach like lightning. She must have dropped it somewhere, probably in the rink, because she remembered cramming it into her pocket on her way out the door before the game. Well, this meant two things: one, she was stuck here for the rest of the party, and, two, she was going to have to find a way to get to the rink as soon as possible to retrieve it.

   Desperately, Hailey looked around the early-spring-infused farm, searching among the laughing, chatting, jacket-clad revelers and taunting Winona decorations for a place to hide from all the lemon juice. A giant barn in the distance caught her eye. It wasn’t too far away from the party, but it was far enough that Hailey knew it would be empty. It would probably be too cold for a make-out session, and she couldn’t see any light coming out of it. As Hailey got closer, she could see in the soft, cold glow of the moon that its red paint was peeling. It looked like the perfect place for her to curl up and hide from life.

   Inside the barn, it was a lot warmer than Hailey thought it would be. It was pitch black but for the moonlight that managed to squeeze through the few cracks in the walls, and the light from the distant campfire and the headlights of another car pulling up that came in through the open door. She climbed an old wooden ladder and settled down in the corner of an empty hayloft, listening to the floorboards creak softly as she moved.

   The place was filled with a kind of quiet, serene energy that swelled inside Hailey like a balloon, calming her. The pale moonlight caressed her face, cooing silently to her and soothing the hurt in her heart. She could just faintly hear the happy noises of the party-goers, and from here the lemon juice turned to lullabies. It wasn’t long before Hailey felt herself begin to drift into the wispy edges of sleep.

   But suddenly, the silence was broken by a noise, and Hailey shot bolt upright. It was close, this noise--too close. Slowly, Hailey crept to the edge of her hayloft and peeked over. She sensed his presence just moments before he stepped into view below, his dark hair illuminated in a mix of fire and ice. “Hailey?” he said, nice and quiet. “I know you’re in here.”

   Hailey froze for a moment, soaking it in. He was here! He had followed her! “I’m here,” she whispered, so soft she could barely hear herself. But Cullen heard, and he looked up. He smiled at her when he saw her, and her heart filled with joy. He was here! He was really here!

   With the grace of a monkey climbing a tree, he ascended the ladder and was with her in the blink of an eye. “I’m sorry if I’m being too creeperish,” he said, grinning at her again, shyly this time, “you know, following you here and everything. But I just couldn’t stand seeing you go like that. I couldn’t stand seeing you go at all. I...” There was a pause, in which he silently watched his hands working at each other in his lap, and a giggle rose in Hailey’s throat at the adorableness of it. But then his eyes flicked back up to hers, and the intensity of their green depths sent a thrill through her body. “I think I love you, Hailey.”

   “You can’t imagine how glad i am that you came,” she told him, reaching over to still his nervous hands with her own. “I know I love you too.” She could feel his lis smiling beneath hers as they kissed. His arms snaked around her and pulled her down with him to the floor of they hayloft and then curled her close against him. They traced each other with their fingers, learning every curve, every muscle, every soft patch of skin, trying hard not to think about what waited for them in the days ahead.

   It turned out that the barn retained a lot more heat than Hailey had ever thought it could. She woke in the morning to the grainy sounds of “Cosmic Love,” by Florence and the Machine coming from Cullen’s jeans which were lying in a thin patch of sunlight a few feet away. Huh. Who would have thought Cullen would have the same ring tone as her? Hailey looked over at the boy’s sleeping face, so peaceful and unmoved. She couldn’t wake him, but she was curious. She slipped out from underneath his coat and crawled over to the pants. Reaching into the pocket, she pulled out her very own phone.

   The caller ID said, “Alexa.”

   The world came crashing down on Hailey’s head like a gihugic bucket of ice-cold water. She looked up, at the sun-filled barn around her, at the little pile of clothes right next to her, and then back at the phone, the one with the little green telephone on it. She couldn’t do it. She was in enough trouble as it was, she couldn’t deal with Alexa, too.

   “Oh, yeah, I found that last night. It was on the floor in the lobby. You msut have dropped it.” Hailey looked over at Cullen, who was sitting up, the coat draped across his lap. There were a few pieces of straw sticking out of his hair at odd angles, and his eyelids were droopy with sleep. He reminded Hailey of a little puppy, sweet and innocent. She sighed.

   Cullen’s eyes widened, and he looked around. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, man.” His gaze met hers again. “We are in a lot of trouble.”