“I’m completely up for that.”
I laughed as I saw him smirk in the dim light from the dashboard.
“Thank you for tonight,” I said, taking a deep breath and looking back down at my lap. “I really appreciate it.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Anna. I had a good time.”
I inspected the back of my hands. “Okay. So . . . I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Do you want me to call before I come over just in case you go out or something?” He laughed. “Christina mentioned something about seeing you tomorrow.”
“Ah.”
“I’ll call you.”
“You better.”
He grabbed my hand, bringing it up to his lips, and his eyes never looked away from mine the entire time as he pressed a gentle kiss against my knuckles.
“Promise.”
“Then I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay.” I squeezed his hand before he let go and got out to open my door, my legs not altogether steady as I let him help me up.
I’d never had anyone open my door for me before. I’d never had anyone kiss my hand at the end of the night before. Hell, I’d never believed that Evan Drake would be the one to do any of that in the first place, and I’d never had the chance to really feel like maybe I wasn’t such a social outcast.
I jumped down the last of the stairs, bypassing my dad as I lunged for the door and looked at him over my shoulder. He held his hands up and walked back into the living room, mumbling something I was sure I didn’t want to hear to begin with.
It was Sunday, and last night when I’d talked to him on the phone, Evan had said that he would be coming over early the next morning so that we could hang out for the whole day. We would’ve done something on Saturday, as we’d planned, except that Christina had held me prisoner all day yesterday and wouldn’t let me out of her sight until her mother called her home at eight thirty.
“Hi,” I said to him as I pulled open the door.
“Hey.” He grinned, shoving his hands in his pockets. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad, I guess. You?”
“Better now.”
I rolled my eyes and he laughed, pushing hair off my forehead. I turned to look as Dad yelled something at the television, and I laughed nervously and grabbed my keys.
“Going for a walk, Dad!” I yelled.
He grunted in response, and I slipped out the door.
“So, we’re walking?”
“Would you rather stay in the house while my father screams at the television?”
“We could always go up to your room . . .”
“Excuse you?”
“Not for . . . I didn’t mean . . .” He laughed nervously and cleared his throat, looking away. I tried not to laugh at him. “Just to hang out.”
“Not a good idea,” I said. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
I hopped down the porch stairs, rounded the side of the house, and waited for him at the fence that blocked off the backyard from the neighbors that didn’t exist.
“For a walk.”
“In your backyard?”
“Maybe.”
I pushed through the gate and looked over my shoulder to make sure that he was still following, and I smiled brightly as he closed the gate behind him.
“Is this a top secret thing, Anna?”
“It could be if you wanted it to.”
“You’re . . . kind of nuts, you know that?”
I reached the back end of the fence, waiting for him to catch up to me. I pulled back two of the wooden boards, motioning for him to go first.
He stared, then blinked. “We couldn’t have just walked around?”
“You wanted to know if it was a top secret mission. What’s a top secret mission without a secret passageway?”
“I . . . guess you have a point.” He laughed, bending down and crawling through the open boards.
I followed him, replacing the boards before standing by his side and motioning to a well-worn path that I hadn’t used for some time.
“Seriously, where are we going?”
“It’s just a shortcut to a place where I go when I need some time to myself.”
“Oh, well then.” He grabbed my hand, interlocked our fingers, and waved in front of us. “By all means.”
I laughed and then walked ahead of him, pulling him along with me. A few minutes and one hilarious episode later when Evan screamed like a little girl when he thought he saw a snake, we came upon the local playground. Kids were scattered on the jungle gym or the merry-go-round and ran around the slide to go down one more time, and their parents sat on the benches closest to the entrance to talk about the things their children did on a daily basis.
“You come here to think?”
I pulled him toward the entrance and led him over to a second set of unused swings in the back, letting go of his hand as I plopped into one and pushed myself off.
“There’s something about hanging around kids that clears my mind. Everything is so innocent with them.”
He plopped down into the swing next to me and gripped the chains as he looked around. Most of the kids had congregated around the wooden playhouse in the middle of the playground. They screamed and laughed as they ran from one end to the other using the swinging bridge.
“It was so much easier when we were kids, wasn’t it?”
“It sure was.” I swung as I watched a little blond-haired boy run in our direction as a redheaded girl chased him with her arms stretched out.
“I’m gonna kiss you!” she screeched, laughing.
“That’s gross! Girls have cooties!” he yelled back, ducking underneath a portion of the playhouse and catching her off-guard.
“Yeah. If that was our only problem, life would be a cakewalk.”
“I wonder where that expression came from,” he said, looking over at me. “Who really wants to walk on a cake?”
“Well, that’s like saying something is as easy as pie. Making pie from scratch
