Chapter Sixteen

After the movie was over, Tommy offered to give Melissa a ride home. That was convenient for her, given that her Uncle Martin had no idea where she was as her phone was still not with her, and Olivia had had to flee. She gladly accepted. As Tommy sat down in the driver's seat and buckled up after getting the door for Melissa like the perfect gentleman that he was, he looked at her, hesitantly saying something.

 

"There's something I wanna do before I drop you off" he told her.

 

Assuming he meant to kiss her the way he had earlier, Melissa smiled flirtatiously, asking, "And what would that be?"

 

"I wanna take you to my place." he said.

 

"Oh." she said not having expecting his answer, "Sure?"

 

"When's your curfew?" he asked.

 

She looked even more confused. She had just realized she had never been informed about one. She explained to Tommy that before her father passed away, Melissa would only go over to her friends' houses or vice versa during the day. Her friends from back then being of minimal quantities and not being very social either meant those gatherings were not all that frequent either. Besides, she told him, she was too young to date before. She did not have a clue about the rules about boys.

 

"Then I just won't keep you there for long, alright?" he suggested to her.

 

"Yeah that's a good idea." she said.

 

As Tommy began to drive, doubts started to form in her mind. Uncle Martin's gonna be mad. How long will I be there? What if I lose track of time? I don't even have his number memorized! And the land line got disconnected months ago... But later, her thoughts shifted to where she was going. He wants to take me to his apartment. Where he lives all alone. Where there is a bed! Oh, what does he want with me? I should have just said no. It's too soon for something like this... The thought of Tommy seeing her in her Hello Kitty panties mortified her. She was not prepared for the situation she thought she was getting into.

 

When he opened the door to his apartment, what she saw made her feel much more comfortable about having let Tommy visit her house in the past. Her previous worries having been forgotten, Melissa looked around her environment. There were empty bags of cheetos leaning against a heap of also vacant pizza boxes. A big fat text book was spread wide open on the floor at the foot of a beanbag chair. Melissa smiled. She wondered if this is all that her boyfriend was seeing when he had walked through her door.

 

"I'm sorry, it's uh...a bit of a mess...Was studying for a test before work." he told her, closing the book. He cleared the floor and emptied its unwanted contents somewhere behind the kitchen counter.

 

"Oh no, it's fine." she said to him.

 

Seeing his home as messy as hers made her perfect Tommy feel a lot more human to her. He lived in a small studio apartment. But despite its size and the low maintenance, it was well decorated. He had a good choice of furniture even though those pieces of furniture happened to be holding cans of Red Bull. The bedroom was no cleaner. There was a pile of clothes that Melissa guessed was a collection of what he was wearing before leaving his apartment. And while she guessed, she accidentally stepped on a dirty sock.

 

Tommy rushed passed her to fix the room up as much by as he could.

 

"I really don't mind Tommy!" she laughed.

 

"Just hang on..." he said as he shoved a large bundle of clothes into a drawer, leaving Melissa in wonder of how it all fit in there. Then he straightened out his duvet, and with a grand gesture as if he was opening a new town, he announced, "SIT!" grinning wide.

 

"Gladly." she told him. Which was her polite way of saying "Finally!"

 

She smoothed out her knee length skirt with her hands and then sat with grace.

 

"Sooo...What do you think of my place?" he asked slightly nervous.

 

"I like it. I mean, it kinda smells like sweat and Axe put together, but I like it." she said.

 

Tommy chuckled softly. "Hey, are you okay? You look a little shaken up."

 

"I am, I guess." she replied.

 

"Does it have anything to do with Olivia leaving early? I noticed you've been acting differently since that happened."

 

"Yeah it does. She and her boyfriend kinda had, umm, plans, for tonight. And her parents found out. Her dad sounded FURIOUS. I'm just really worried about her. She's my best friend..." Melissa trailed off.

 

"You don't have to be this worried, you know? Things like these happen all the time. It's no big deal."

 

"Yeah but they don't happen with people like Olivia! Olivia's a good girl. She doesn't break rules. She doesn't even swear! OR DRINK! She doesn't just go around Doing It with people. She and Jack waited 2 years." Melissa started to babble.

 

"Okay I get it! Jeez, sorry...For the record, I'd wait forever if you'd want me to."

 

'Haha...speaking of which, when you first brought me here, I thought that's what you had in mind." Melissa admitted.

 

"Melissa, I'd never ask you to do anything you weren't ready for." he said very seriously. Melissa looked up at him with surprise. Such men exist?

 

"That's good to know. I do realize how stupid that was now." she laughed, embarrassed.

 

"You shouldn't. It's natural to think like that." he said, and pulled her into a hug, kissing the top of her head. Melissa felt really safe with him. He had this warmth radiating from his body that always made her feel really comfortable. She just felt his arms around him for a while, and eased up. It was really nice whenever he held her. She just listened to his lungs breathing and his heart beating; and his heart would beat pretty loudly as he'd hold her. She felt the rising of his chest, and then she felt it falling. It was nice. It would be nicer though, she thought, if he hadn't been wearing his uniform, which was a pink and red striped shirt.

"I'm really glad I met you," she said, breaking that harmony, "Staying with you kinda makes me forget about everything that's going wrong with my life. I mean, I used to feel that way about my friends, because they never exactly had any problems in their lives. Or so I thought..."

"Oh come on, Melissa! What happened with Olivia really isn't anything compared to what you have to go through." he cut her off.

"How do you know what I'm going through?" she asked, confused.

"I've been to your house. I know about your mom and dad. You have trust issues. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you're grieving inside." he simply stated matter-of-factly.

"Oh."

"You're different, Melissa. You're holding all of this inside you, and yet sometimes I think you're the happiest person on Earth! It's a little hard to believe you exist."

"Oh please! How am I the one here that's too good to be true?"

"Well, you're beautiful, you're smart-"

"I'm failing in everything. You know I'm failing. Flatterer!" she said rolling her eyes.

"You're not book smart."

"How many kinds of 'smart's are there, then?"

"I've seen your art, Melissa. You're really good!"

"That's talent."

"Not exactly. Your talent is the fact that your images are realistic. But your depth? That's what shows you have the ability to think about and understand a lot of things about the world that many don't. Like that picture of the tree that's in Winter and Spring? That's a complicated concept to grasp. The way you drew my eyes? You said you used your imagination. I think photographic memory isn't the only thing that had a part to play there. You could have colored everything, or nothing. You chose the blue. That's passion."

"You noticed?" she smirked.

"Let me guess. You lay awake at night, worrying about the world, worrying about your family, about yourself until you finally fall asleep."

"How do you-? Okay, I think someone's taking his psychology course a bit too seriously." She joked.

Tommy smiled at her softly.

"You're amazing, Mel. Here you have a girl that has a tough family life, and is guarded. And then with a smile, you just transform into this bubbly, naive little girl. I don't know how you fit it all in one person. And you shouldn't have to. Not when you have me. Look, you can depend on me as much as you want. There's only so much one person can handle. So you can tell me all about everything. Anything from family problems, to nightmares...I wanna hear it all." he said it all cupping each of her hands in one of his. Melissa had been blown away. She had never expected to meet anyone like him, let alone predict Tommy, the guy she flirted with at the movie theater, to turn out to be him.

She opened up to him. She told him about how her father died, about the developments in her mother's health, about the financial problems, her hopes, dreams, fears...This time, she included details of events and how she really felt about everything. There were times when she almost wept, and he shushed her. She had never been able to connect with anybody in such a way. This was rather unusual for our Melissa. After talking for ages, the young couple realized how late it was, and they rushed to the car.

The drive to the Lauren house did not take very long as it was well past 10 and the streets were empty. In the car, he told her his side of the "how they met" story. He thought she was older. That she was probably chaperoning the group of High school teenagers that she had arrived with. "And I thought, hey, she's hot! Might as well take a chance!" he told her. He continued with his sweet talk as he arrived at his stop. It was almost 11pm. Melissa was supposed to be home by 7 from work. When Tommy parked the car, they found, sitting at the doorstep, a very angry Uncle Martin.

Reviews

[BL]

This is hotting up nicely and the relationship is developing well and you are writing it with care and sensitivity. I personally would like to see things turned up a notch in terms of pace and romance and it will be great to see your descriptive powers take on that challenge.Please keep going

[Blue Ivory]

Thank you and yeah I'm pretty much done easing into things. I'm in the middle of the story now. Introductions are done. Thank you for staying with me for so long :)

[BL]

I haven't read it all, but have read enough to know the characters in this very realistic story roll on C17

[Leslie Philibert]

Due to lack of time, I can`t review this in the way it deserves...but I find a well written text here,
well presented !

[Blue Ivory]

Thank you so much!