My Desert Haven (BOYXBOY)

Chapter 26

"Hi."

"Hi... Rory?"

Good guess

.

"I didn’t know if you’d be working or not," I replied, as I sat on my bedroom floor, leaning back against the bed with the phone to my ear. "You said three o’clock."

"I’m on my way there now," Seth replied.

I glanced at the clock. That made sense. It was just past two forty-five. But it seemed much earlier in the day to me. Maybe that was because it was one o’clock before I woke up to Eddie asking me if I wanted to go driving. We didn’t spend too much time out there, though. Just long enough for me to figure out that parking was a lot easier in Jase’s car, and for Eddie to talk me into getting a driver’s manual to study. He insisted that I might as well be ready for the Arizona driver’s license test, just in case I changed my mind and decided to stay. I’d wanted to argue with him, but decided that it wasn’t worth it. If all he wanted me to do was study a little book, I decided that I could give him that.

"Right. I’ll let you go then," I told Seth. I didn’t necessarily want to hang up, but I didn’t exactly see the point of staying on the phone, either. He was on his way to work, and the only reason I’d called him was because last night I’d suggested that I would--okay, there were more reasons than that, but I couldn’t really deal with them when Seth had to go, anyway.

"Okay," Seth replied, sounding a little confused.

"Talk to you later," I said quickly, feeling entirely annoyed with myself. It wasn’t like I’d promised to call him, and it wasn’t like he’d expected it. And yet, that’s exactly what I’d done. "Uh, maybe I’ll see you later," I added, and there was a silence on the other end of the line while I waited for Seth to say goodbye. But it dragged on a little too long, and a moment later I was wondering if he’d hung up on me.

"I get off work at seven tonight," he suddenly said.

Well, that was an opening if I’d ever heard one. Too bad I didn’t have the guts to take it.

"Yeah, cool. So, I’ll talk to you later."

I quickly hung up the phone, and then proceeded to smack myself in the forehead.

I didn’t know what I was doing. Last night, I’d been fairly certain that any attraction I had to Seth was because I was looking for ways to get over Aaron. But after Luke gave me that little kiss, I’d caught myself wondering what kissing Seth would be like on more than one occasion, and when I’d picked up the phone to call Seth, I’d been hopeful that the sound of his voice would either help me realize it was a good thing he hadn’t kissed me, or at least convince me that I still wanted him to. It hadn’t really done either.

..........................................

I don’t know when I started laughing, but I couldn’t seem to stop. It was Jase’s fault, I decided. Just when he was about to start dinner, he discovered that one of his ingredients had passed its expiration date and he tossed the whole thing out. Eddie had been in the middle of reading a magazine, peacefully sipping a soda at the kitchen table, when Jase snatched the magazine out of his hands, smacked him in the head with it, and insisted that Eddie didn’t take us out to dinner nearly enough. Eddie was in shock. Luke and I were amused. And as I soon discovered, it wasn’t beyond Jase to be completely spontaneous like this. We were halfway to finding a restaurant when Luke spotted a goonie golf course, mentioned we should go sometime, and Jase made an abrupt left into the place with no objections. There, we decided to play in teams. Luke automatically claimed Eddie as his partner because Eddie happened to be very good at the game, but Jase and I came out ahead by eight points because Jase was shameless when it came to distracting Eddie from getting his famous hole-in-ones. Once, he even grabbed Eddie’s butt, and the way Eddie actually squealed was so funny that Luke and I agreed that there was no gross-out factor. We made it to dinner around seven o’clock, at which time I was looking at the clock again, thinking of Seth; but that didn’t last very long because I was soon drawn into conversations around our table as we ate.