Rich said nothing .... 'Sometimes what people say they want you to do and what they really want you to do are two different things.
Sometimes you have to feel what's happening and not just listen to the words. Sometimes you have to dig beneath the surface to find the meaning. You've never understood that. I keep waiting for you to take the initiative, to understand how I feel without me having to spell everything out for you, but you never do.' She slammed the Dr. Pepper can down on the counter. 'That's why I didn't tell you about Jesus!'
She shoved him against the door frame and strode through the living room into the hall. He heard the door to their bedroom slam shut.
He stared after her, unmoving. He felt cold and empty inside. It was obvious to him that she bought Wheeler's story, that she really believed Jesus had talked to the preacher, but he wondered how that was possible. Corrie was neither stupid nor gullible; she had always been more of a leader than a follower, and she was not easily persuaded by smooth talkers. She was religious, but her faith had always been based on the Bible, not the words interpretations of others.
Until ' now.
Was he partially responsible for pushing her into religious zealousness, into Wheeler's church? The thou disturbed him. He didn't want to think about it, but could not push it from his mind and could not disco its possibility. The things she'd said hit close to the be and the anger he'd felt at her had fled, leaving him feel curiously drained.
He hoped Anna hadn't heard their argument.
But he knew that she had.
Walking slowly, feeling fired, he moved through the ing room and into the hallway, where he opened the closet. He took out a pillow and two sheets and walked back into the living room to make up the couch for bed.
Aaron looked over at his date, the perfect smoott skinned features of her beautiful face lit in soft focus the bluish moon and the green dashboard lights, and realized that this was at once his biggest triumph and h biggest mistake.
He looked in the rearview mirror, tried to see his ow face, but from this angle could only make out the hug slab that was his nose and the dark spot in the center his nose that was a pimple.
What had ever made him think that Cheri Stever would go out-with him?
She had gone out with him, though.
That was the weird part.
He had admired Cheri from afar for years. Since se' enth grade, to be exact, when he'd first started to girls. She'd been in his beginning band class, had played aye the clarinet, and even then had had that sophisticate sort of sexiness that, until that point, Aaron and h friends had seen only in girls on the screen. He'd watche her become a Song-And-Yell girl, a cheerleader, and the head cheerleader. She was smart, too, in the high achievement classes, and it was in those classes, which they share together, that he got an opportunity to view her close u! Of course she had not noticed him at all. From the ginning, her interest had been in older boys, ninth graders, and her appeal soon spread beyond that. As an eighth grader, she'd gone out with a senior in high school. The captain of the basketball team, no less. Aaron still could not believe that she had agreed to go out with him. She'd gone through a lot of guys over the years, from jocks to cool kids, all of them studs, and he had only asked her out because she was between boyfriends, and he had been dared to do so. Phil Harte, the friend who had dared him, who had promised to fork over fifty bucks if he asked her out and she said yes, had tried to convince him that most beautiful girls spent their Friday nights alone because guys were too intimidated by them to ask them out. Aaron knew that was not the case with Cheri--he'd heard the bragging of jocks in the locker room who had gone out with her--but he'd gathered up his courage anyway, licked his lips and ignored his pounding heart, and asked if she'd like to go to a movie with him .... She'd turned those eyes on him, that smile, and said yes.
Now they'd gone to the movie, and the time had come to decide what to do next. He was beginning to think he'd made a big mistake. Of course, the evening had been great so far. His friends, sitting together in a group in the movie theater, dateless, had seen him with Cheri, hand in hand, arms around each other. And a lot of people he didn't like, boys and girls, had seen them together as well.
But now the movie was over, the crowds were gone, and they were alone, cruising. He found himself wondering if he wasn't being set up, if Cheri was only going out with him in order to humiliate him, perhaps as part of a dare by her own friends. He'd seen it before, in movies.
Beautiful girl goes out with nerdy guy, gets him in a compromising position, takes pictures or videotape, friends jump out laughing. An extended practical joke. April Fool's in October. : .: , :
Was that what was going to happen here?
He didn't know, but somehow he didn't think so. He was scared, nervous, but he had to admit that the relationship between them had seemed pretty natural so far.
She hadn't treated him like God's gift to girls (the way she would if she was planning to set him up), and she hadn't acted like he was a charity case either. The two them might be social unequals, but mentally they were fairly compatible, and they had found plenty to talk about, the long and awkward silences he'd feared and dreaded never materializing.
He turned to her now, tried to make his voice casual.
'So what do you want to do now? The night's still young.
We don't have to go home yet. We could grab a bite to eat orw'
'The river,' she said. 'Let's go to the river..... The river? This was better than he had hoped for in even his most wildly optimistic moments. He studied face out of the corner of his eye. Was this for real?
It looked like it was.
,
'Okay,' he said. He turned around in the Radio Shack parking lot and headed back through town, passing the theater, passin her street, passing the turnoff to his house. In a few rain. minutes the lights of Rio Verde were behind them, only darkened trailers and occasional run-down houses discernible in the darkness along the highway. Just before the bridge. he turned onto the dirt road that led to the river.
The car bumped over ruts and potholes, the road slopin sharply down to the water. There were other cars and pick. ups parked here, between the trees and bushes, the ange glow of cigarettes visible through some of the windows, and Aaron continued on until he found a secluded spot far past the last parked car.
He shut off the car engine, the radio and air-condifionin dying at the same time, and suddenly there was silence. H, could hear his own breathing in the closed car. And hers. He rolled down his window, smelled the skunkweed, heard the water, the cicadas.
He was not sure what to say, what to do, so he looked over at Cheri.
She was leaning her head back, her eyes closed, breathing deeply. 'I love the water,' she said.
He tried to talk, couldn't, cleared his throat. 'Me, too.' She opened her eyes. 'Let's go skinny-dipping.'
He blinked, thinking that she was joking, quickly realizing that she was not. Panicked, he tried to think of an excuse, a way to get out of it, but he had never been good at thinking on his feet, and he could only stammer, 'I, uh, don't think we should.'
'Why not?' she said teasingly. 'Embarrassed?'
Yes, he thought, but only smiled wanly.
She opened the car door, got out. 'Come on. It'll he fun.' She began making her way through the brush and down the low bank to the water.
He got out of the car and followed her. He started down the slope, and his shoes slipped on the dirt. He grabbed a branch to keep from falling, and lowered himself to the shore.
Cheri was standing in front of the river, facing him, smiling, her features soft and clear in the moonlight. 'Let's do it.'
This is where they come out laughing, he thought. I take off my pants, and the football team rushes out and grabs them, and I have to go home in my underwear.
But no one emerged from the bushes as Cheri pulled the T-shirt over her head, and he could hear only his own breathing and the rush of the water as she reached around to unfasten her bra.
'Are you sure?' he began.
'Come on. It'll be fun. Don't worry.' :
