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He glanced behind him, accelerating on the throttle. “Put your seatbelt on,” was all he said, keeping his intense gaze on the road in front of him, not saying another word. The uncomfortable silence hammered all around me, tearing into my insecurities that this was a bad idea. I shouldn’t be in his Jeep. I shouldn’t be talking to him. I shouldn’t be feeling anything for him other than what I’m supposed to.
What was good for me…
I think he sensed I wanted him to say something.
Anything.
Instead he turned the radio back up. Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” assaulted my senses, shocking the shit out of me, and clouding any doubt. Before I opened my mouth to call him out on it, he put his finger up to my lips and rasped, “Don’t.”
We locked eyes for a few seconds, but he quickly broke our connection. I decided to look out the window. It was easier that way, to pretend this little encounter didn’t mean something.
To the both of us.
I listened to the lyrics of the song, trying like hell not to read too much into it, while he tapped his fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the music. When you’re fifteen you feel everything so passionately, so deeply, it burned all around, leaving behind a wake of ashes that you gathered near your heart.
Making it all that much more real.
Chalk it up to hormones, or maybe it was me, desperately wanting to form a connection with anyone. In that moment, sitting beside him with nothing but my thoughts and the lyrics of the song, I felt like he was showing me a piece of who he was. Letting me in the only way he knew how, by exposing a side to him that no one knew about, possibly not even him. Something told me that this gesture was his way of extending the olive branch.
The question was, would I take it?
I already knew he didn’t have any friends outside of the boys and that girl Half-Pint, but for whatever the reason…
He liked me.
We drove in silence for what seemed like forever, lost in our own thoughts that were shattering with the turmoil on our minds. When he pulled up to my house, I realized that I never told him where I lived.
“Stalk much?” I teased, not being able to help myself as he parked in my driveway.
He visibly took a deep breath as he shut off the Jeep. Wanting no sounds to interrupt what he was about to share with me. It seemed as though he needed to get out whatever he wanted to say before he lost the courage, but he didn’t falter. He shifted in his seat to look deep into my eyes, searching for something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
A war was raging in his eyes. He was becoming undone.
An internal battle took place as if what was right and what was wrong had been sitting directly in front of him this whole time.
Me.
The serious expression on his face captivated me in a way I had never experienced before. Which only added to the plaguing emotions that were placed in between us.
Then he admitted, “Been thinkin’ about you, suga’. Ever think about me?”
Just. Like. That.
So forward.
So direct.
So unforgiving.
I learned right then and there that there was no gray area when it came to Dylan McGraw, only black and white. He got right to the point, it was yes or it was no. Never maybe. Never somewhere in between. The crazy thing about it was I had only gotten to the tip of the iceberg when it came to him, and like the Titanic, I was sinking fast.
So, I shrugged in response because I couldn’t say what I was really thinking. What I really wanted to.
I. Like. You. Too.
“Go out with me,” he followed up with as a statement, sensing my reserve. I didn’t know what bothered me more, the fact that he could read my mind, or the fact that I could read his. From everything I heard about him at school, I knew one thing for sure, I was definitely the first girl he ever asked out. He chose me over every other girl.
That simple fact overwhelmed me more than it should.
