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Fate’s Temptation
“Are you absolutely sure we should be doing this?” I ask. I know that this is the perfect time, the perfect place, and all that, but I’m still not positive that he thinks so, too. I still think that he might still doubt the leap we’re about to take, and its possible effects.
“Now, Miss Holladay, why are you suddenly so apprehensive about what we’re about to do? A few hours ago you seemed totally and utterly into this little idea of mine, and now you want to back out? Is it the thrill in finally breaking the law, the excitement of trespassing a little, that’s got you scared?” he replies.
So I guess that he’s still into it after all. “Because I just realized that I have to get up at three in the morning to get to URI before orientation starts, and I know for a fact that you’ve got to get up early, too.” I don’t mention the fact that I’m secretly afraid that we will get caught being on the cliff. Not because the police will most likely arrest us, if not get us in huge trouble with our parents; I don’t want them to ruin the mood of the night.
“Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy the night?” he replies. “We’ve got scenery, we’ve got tunes, hell, we even have chicken wings!”
Of course Jake would think to bring chicken wings. All he ever thinks about is chicken: wings, nuggets, stir-fry; sometimes I’m surprised that he hasn’t started to lay eggs yet. It adds to his natural charm, I guess. Something else that makes me fall so hard and never seem to be able to get back up.
“Just you, me, and one last night without worrying about anything having to do with college, growing up, and anything about the future, okay?” What kind of worrying do I really mean, I think. I’m not sure if it’s the kind about going to college the next day, or the kind that is worrying about what we will become when I leave for college the next day.
Tonight, we've got a bucket of greasy chicken wings, an iPod full of Jake's eccentric taste in music, and a whole cliffside sunset. How could it be any more perfect than this?
Sitting on the hood of my beat-up Dodge Shadow, tonight is the night I’ve been looking forward to, and dreading, for the past few years. Some people say that one night can make or break a relationship, and I’m beginning to believe them.
This is it. Now or never.
Or at least so I hope.
To this day, I can still remember how we met. We were the first two to get to class the first afternoon, Mrs. Braverman, I can remember, was one of the strangest teachers I had ever had; she figured made the seating arrangement by the order in which we came into the class.
The moment Mara walked in, I knew there was something special about that girl. The way she walked, and the way her auburn hair flowed to and fro, I knew she was someone I should get to know. Smiling, but still shy on the inside (newly-discovered hormones were not something I was used to yet), I turned around in my seat. “Jake Andrews. Pleasure to meet you. What’s your name?”
She stared, and I swear that her icy blue eyes could have penetrated a hole through my skull. After about ten seconds, she finally muttered “Mara Holladay.” I can remember thinking that it was quite an odd last name, but it was music to my ears all the same.
Myself having been in my wisecrack phase at the time, I just couldn’t resist poking fun at her name. “Just imagine if your parents decided to name you Happy! Happy Holladay, get it?” I regretted it as soon as I said it.
It took a week or so until she started to lighten up. I eventually learned to shut up, and she learned to smile a little.
As the year progressed, small talk in math class turned into longer conversations before and after school, and during that boring time in between. We became inseparable. Whenever one of us was alone, people would wonder if the other one was sick.
Little did I know that our eventual closeness would have to be tested, and tested so soon.
“Colonel Andrews, I hope you are aware that I’ve gotten so used to your fetish--” he chucks a balled-up napkin towards my head “--that the idea of a bucket of cholesterol actually seems appealing. You are one bad influence,” I say as I throw the napkin back at him.
“Just don’t speak, Happy. Sit back and enjoy the night,” Jake says. My heart skips a beat as he utters his special nickname for me. On the outside, it may seem like it annoys the hell out of me, but it secretly has the power to turn me into a babbling pile of mush. He leans back on my window, and stares out at the sunset. “Remember when we used to camp out in your backyard during the summer?”
“Yeah. We would always try to stay out there the whole night, but then you’d hear something, and we’d end up going into my living room and watching movies all night.”
Ah, the memories. During the summer before eighth grade, my parents asked us to stop having all the sleepovers we used to. You’re both getting older now, they would say, and we don’t think it’s acceptable for you two to sleep so close to each other anymore. I guess they thought that the real reason we’d go out into the makeshift tent in my backyard was to make out, when in reality all we did was trade campfire stories and make shadow puppets against the sheet.
A new song comes on Jake's iPod, and I instantly know that I'm in for it. His head suddenly perks up, as if he's a prairie dog that's just caught the scent of rare prey out in the desert. He gives me a wicked grin as he starts to sing along. "Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, Bananaphone!" he screams as loud as humanly possible into my ear. "Cut it out, Jake," I grumble. He may believe that this song annoys the hell out of me, but what he doesn't know it that it's secretly music to my ears, one of the many facets of his personality that made me fall for him.
“I can’t believe this is all going to be over in a couple of hours,” Jake cries. “How long is it until Christmas Break, or whatever the Hell it is they call it there?”
“You know I’ll be home before then,” I say. “We’ve just got to make it until Columbus Day Weekend. I’m sure you’ll survive without me for a few months.”
“You might be coming home, but I’m not,” he mumbles. “My parents told me that they bet I’ll need a few weekends to get settled, and therefore that they won’t be expecting to see me until Christmas.”
I don’t make my remorse clearly visible. Of course I'm sad, but I don’t want Jake to know just how sad I am.
Sensing my sadness, Jake leans over and brushes stray chicken off my cheek. “Cheer up, Happy,” he says, with a sticky-sweet, fake-cheerful, how-may-I-take-your-order façade that I think he secretly wants me to see right through.
This charade has been going strong for years, and I don’t see it ending anytime soon. I think it will destroy our friendship.
I don’t want it to stop.
I couldn’t exactly pinpoint a date, week, or even month, really, when these feelings started to arrive. They were all so nice, with their long hair swaying in the breeze, but it was the spark in her icy blue eyes that made me fall in love with her.
She couldn’t know that, though.
She couldn’t know that I was this close to asking her to homecoming sophomore year, and that that stupid jock Mike Forsberg beat me to it by five minutes. Ever since then, I’ve wondered what would have happened if I had gone to her locker before chem instead of after, or if Forsberg hadn’t been in school that day. I had considered running up to her and asking her to choose me over him, but I somehow decided against doing it. What happened did so for a reason, I thought, and I mustn’t tempt fate, right?
She couldn’t know that she was all that made me survive those hardest times in my life. When I almost failed freshman history, when our local KFC was shut down for health code violations last year, she was with me no matter what; I don’t want her to know that I’d absolutely die if she weren’t.
It’d destroy our friendship if she did.
I think about what used to be. The times when we were care-free, when there was nobody telling us what we had to be when we grow up, what jobs would make the most money, what we had to do in order to get into the best colleges.
I want to tell him what’s been bothering me for the past two years, but something in my heart tells me to wait. It tells me stop trying to tempt fate.
We sit in utter silence for a few minutes, listening to the crickets and other summer noises (Jake finally figured out that I had enough with his iPod when 'Bananaphone' came on for the third time), when out of nowhere Jake pulls me into him, draping his arm around my shoulder.
“Won’t it be sad when we won’t be able to be like this anymore? Mark my word, at Christmas you’ll come back with some large muscular guy names Lars, and I’ll have nobody.” I look up at his face, and see a familiar emotion flicker through it. Maybe it’s the moonlight reflected in his eyes, or maybe I guess that that’s what my face must look like right about now. Maybe fate has finally made up its mind and has let me decide that it’s time to take things into my own hands.
Just maybe, fate has decided that it's finally time for us to do something about the tension that's been our constant companion these past few months.
“Jake,” I say. “Did you ever wonder what it would be like if it was like this every day? You know, you and me tog—“
But I can’t finish my sentence. All thoughts explode out of my head. I swear that sirens scream somewhere off in the distance. I'm on fire. Jake's lips are suddenly attached to mine. I can feel a touch of nervousness, or could it be hesitance? When we finally break for breath he whispers, “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to do that.”
“How long?” I manage to whisper as our foreheads press together.
“What?” he replies. Typical Jake.
“What do you think?”
“Oh, that. You don’t really want to know, it’ll only make you mad at me. ” He leans in to kiss again, this time more assertive than the last. Yet I still feel a trace of hesitance in the way our lips move against each other's, but is it in me?
A/N: this is a total rewrite of Playing with Fate, a story I posted up here almost a year ago. I submitted this version to a writing contest today, so we'll see how it goes!
