I closed my eyes and laid my head against the hood of the truck. It let out a hollow thud in reply.

“Beck, he told me that I should go out with him. Trent told me that I should go out with Jacob Yale!”

I watched it all happen in my head again. I saw that one chunk of hair that fell onto Trent’s face as we talked. I felt my palms begin to sweat as he listed off the reasons Jacob would be good for me. Nothing he could say would ever convince me. Jacob Yale was a jerk. Every I ever met was a jerk compared to Trent. I felt myself wiping my hands on my sleeves before I reached out my arm to move that chunk of hair as he babbled.


“Did he say it just like that?” Beck asked. I could hear her voice a few feet above me. I could tell that she had her head up near my legs, against the wind shield.
“Well, Erin passed by me and Trent at the the diner and told me that Jacob was talking about asking me out, and I told her good for him, and she did that whole Erin-eye-roll-thing, and then Trent said I should date him.”

I opened my eyes and pulled my neck up to see her face, she was just looking at me with a blank face. Waiting for me to continue. So I did.

“I told him no because I’m not interested in Jacob. He said I should at least get a free meal out of it and tell then tell him we’re friends. And then, he started listing off all of the “attractive” qualities about Jacob. I yanked my head back up and lifted my arms from the warm truck’s hood. Beckie was giving me that sad face she gets when she looks at roadkill. Just great. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?! I thought--- I thought--- I guess I thought I could speak boy, but I sure as hell cant speak Trent Goodwinn! Ugh!” And with that, I let my head fall back too hard. Instead of a hollow thud, I was rewarded with a heavy thunk and searing pain. I clenched my teeth and waited for that nasty four letter word to roll off my tongue but it didn’t. Instead there was silence and I grunted and thought to myself ‘What is wrong with me?’


I closed my eyes again and forced my self back to the moment on the diner stools. The way my hand lightly touched Trent’s forehead, sweeping off the brown lock, and he stopped for a moment, and just looked at me and I looked back, blushing. He looked at me and asked “what are you doing?” “Sorry” , I said as I felt my ears get hot and I let my hand fall to my side. “You just have that rebel chunk of hair that falls into your eyes all the time....... Somebody had to put it back in its place!” He kept a straight face but I could see that sparkle in his eyes as he said, “It’s my superman curl. you don’t touch a superman curl.” Anyone who had been watching us wouldn’t have understood, but they probably wouldn’t have noticed the way his eyes lit up when he spoke either. I saw it. I knew he was being sarcastic. I smiled. He smiled back. Big and beautiful.


A finger poked the underside of my bare feet and I squealed and sat up. All at once, the black truck, the blue sky, and Becky all swirled in circles like that one Monroe painting.

“What was that for?!” I cried.

Beckie had her arms crossed in a defending manner. “You never told me what happened next!”

“Oh!” I said placing my hand on my achy head “I didn’t think that was worth a heart attack!”

“No, but it was worth seeing you almost faint.” She giggled at the sun pointed her tickle finger at me.

“All right. All right.”

She looked expectably, eyebrows raised.

“Well, it was really nothing.”

You don’t go from not understanding your secret crush of a year to just ‘nothing’. It just doesn’t happen like that. Tell me.”

“As long as you don’t call me stupid.”

Eyebrows still raised.

“Well, I kind of flirted with him. And I don’t really know what happened cause we both just smiled at each other and I know that my smile meant ‘I like you’ but I don’t know what his smile meant.”

Then she leaned in so our heads were only a hand’s length apart., “So what did you do?”

If we had been in a movie, I know that me and Trent would’ve followed up those smiles with a kiss, and I know that’s ridiculous but that possibility gave me butterflies. “We talked about music.”

“No. So what did you do that was flirting?”

“Oh.... I moved a piece of hair out of his face....See, nothing.” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince anymore, Me or her.

She pulled back as if to examine me, “So you ‘Moved a piece of hair off his face’ or you stroked his forehead and claimed there was a hair there?”

“Neither! I don’t know! I mean---what about that smile? I don’t get it!”

Beckie leaned back against the wind shield and took her turn closing her eyes under the warm glow of the sun. “I don’t get it either squirt, he’s a tricky guy to get, but I not a bad guy to like. Not bad at all. If he had an older brother.... Ya know.”

I just looked at her. I wanted to tell me it was wrong to like him or that he was a jerk to try to hook me up with a guy like Jacob or even just assume that I would ever just want to weasel dinner out of a guy. But that wasn’t what I told Beckie all of this for. I honestly don’t even know how this happened. Trent Goodwinn just gave me the sweetest smile in the world and I was mad at him and Beckie and everything in the world at the moment. I wanted to get it out of my system. Out of my head, so I could go back home and forget any of it ever happened.