Sliding (The Stone Series) (2 page)

Later that night while I am lying in
bed listening to the radio like I do every night, “She Works Hard for the Money”
is playing when my phone rings and I jump to answer it on the first ring.

“Hello”, I whisper into the phone
trying to be as quiet as possible.

“Hey Brook, its Tate, were you
sleeping?”

Oh, my God, I no longer have the use
of any form of functional communication. I have no words, I cannot speak. Oh
God he’s going to hang up if I don’t say something soon.

“Um…no I’m awake how about you?”

Oh, real smooth. Yeah he’s asleep
that’s why he’s calling me. Some people sleep walk but no, not Tate Taylor.
Instead he sleep calls pathetic girls like me. I’m so stupid!
 
  

Tate and I talk about school, what
teachers we like, which ones we hate. Tate is really smart, he never misses a
day of school and turns in every extra credit assignment he can. He tends to be
a perfectionist; he says it’s because he’s an only child. Tate tells me about
his football, basketball and baseball teams then the conversation turns to music
and movies we like. I tell Tate that I hate being the oldest in my family. I am
always expected to watch my younger brother and sister. My parents think that
because I am a teenager they can just make plans and I’ll watch Katrina and
Michael so they can go out. Tate tells me that being an only child puts way too
much pressure on him. His parents expect him to always do well in school and in
sports; he says the pressure is just too much sometimes
.

When “Tonight, I Celebrate my Love” ends Tate says we should hang up and
get some sleep.

“Ok, you first” I say not wanting to ever hang up.

“No, you first” Tate responds and this goes back and forth until we
decide to hang up at the same time.

“Good night, Brooklynn” is the last thing I hear before the phone line
goes dead and I know I will never be able to sleep.

When I walk into the dance I see
the girls standing in the middle of the school gym.
 
They are all wearing the same outfit. I can’t
figure out why girls do this. Missy is into sports and kind of cool but she’s
not very girly. Asia is beautiful with this fire red hair that is really hot.
Annie is a stick with no body at all but her face is amazing. Then there is
Brooklynn Adams. She is tiny and has all these dark wild curls that make me
want to twist my fingers around them. She is beautiful but seems shy about it,
like she has no idea how beautiful she is.

The girls that used to be cool in
elementary school all started losing it when we hit middle school and now they drive
me nuts, even the ones who never used to bother me before. I can really care
less about girls but they won’t leave me alone. Every day at school a different
girl comes up to me, “My friend thinks you’re so cute.” or, “My friend wants to
go out with you.” I hate it. I just want to play sports and hang out with my
friends. And, okay, maybe look at the girls rapidly changing bodies from afar. So
I am wearing all black tonight, I wear all black a lot; I just want to try to
blend in.

I got an idea the other day that it
would be easier if I just said yes to one of them when they asked me to go out
with them or I should ask someone out myself. That way if I had a girlfriend
maybe the rest of them would leave me alone.
 
That’s when Brooklynn Adams came to mind. She’s by far the prettiest
girl in our class but she doesn’t seem to care. I think she’s probably like me,
I know I’m good looking but I don’t care. What does it really mean anyway? I’m
just glad I’m athletic, now that’s important. Brook and I have never been in
school together until this year but I know she’s a cheerleader, I noticed her
at one of my games so we have something in common.

I came to the dance with my friends.
Jeff has been going out with Missy, Brook’s friend, since the first week of
school. Jeff is my quarter back and a hell of a good one. He and I have this
connection, when he throws the ball I just know where to be to catch it or he
just knows where I am to throw it, either way it just works. Bobby is a
linebacker who I can count on to block for me every day of the week and twice
on Sunday. David plays on the line, blocking for me as well.

I notice Annie staring at David and
I have to follow him as he goes right up to her. She’s standing with Brook. I
make a decision right then and there to make Brooklynn Adams my girlfriend.

“Little Red Corvette” is playing
when I ask her to dance. I notice for the first time that she has nice eyes;
they are kind of green but kind of brown. She is skinny but has curves, not
many of the girls are lucky enough to have a body like her.

I have no clue how to dance and
normally I don’t care but now that I am trying to do it I kind of wish I knew
how.
 
We just stand there swaying from
side to side but as the music changes
I decide to put my arms around her tiny waist and
sway closer. She puts her arms around my neck and follows my lead. She smells
fruity and sweet and I want to inhale deeply with my face in her hair. Her hands
on my neck are making my skin warm and my jeans tight.

We
dance together all night and when the last song comes to an end something makes
me gently kiss her on the cheek and she moans, maybe she thinks I’m stupid for
kissing her or she’s bored with me.
 
I
don’t know what’s happened to me, I don’t want a real girlfriend. I just want
the other girls to leave me alone. But I am never washing my lips that touched
her face again!

The
guys all sleep at my house and we stay up all night watching R rated movies on
HBO. We drink sodas and eat chips and candy all night. I tell the guys that I
think Brook is hot and about my idea to help keep the girls away from me.

“Dude,
you should ask her out, we’ll call her house tomorrow” Jeff says.

The
following day Bobby is the only one who is brave enough to call and ask for
Brook when her mom answers.

“Hey
Brooklynn, its Bobby. What’s up? Yeah, um Tate wants to go out with you, so
what do you say, should I tell him yes?” I hear him ask.

Bobby
hangs up and smiles at me, “You got yourself your first girlfriend Taylor, good
luck man.”

I
have no idea what to do with a girlfriend. Should I call her and talk to her on
the phone? What are we going to talk about? I hope she likes music, maybe we
can talk about that. Maybe I should just tell her that I don’t want a real
girlfriend, that I just want her to help me keep the girls off my back. But
then I remember what she smelled like when we danced and how it felt when I
kissed her cheek.
 

Later
that night when I’m in bed listening to the radio I work up the nerve to call
her house. Thank God she answers and it’s not one of her parents. We talk for a
while and she’s really kind of cool. I think I like her and she is really hot
so I’m going to give this girlfriend thing a try.

************

I am brought back to the present by a flight attendant. I remove my ear
buds so I can hear her ask if I would like a drink. Does she even have to ask
that question? I am flying to California in the hopes of salvaging my marriage,
I am sitting here listening to my past play in my ears and the feelings and
memories that are surfacing are too overwhelming. A drink is the least of my
needs, but if that’s the strongest option she has to offer than I’ll take it. I
order a vodka and cranberry and tell her to keep them coming as I put my ear
buds back in.

************

As “You Can’t Hurry Love” comes on I begin to remember what it felt like
to go back to school on Monday after the dance as Tate girlfriend. Tate came up
to me in the lunchroom and asked me and my friends to sit at his table with him
and his friends. Tate says he loves the tater tots they serve in the cafeteria
but he still offers to share his with me. I love tater tots too but I can’t eat
in front of Tate, please! If I even tried I would vomit, plus I have a game
this weekend and I need to be skinny so it’s no food for me. We sit side by
side at lunch and talk with our friends more than with each other but I don’t
care, I’m Tate girlfriend and I am sitting at his table…not eating lunch.
 

Later that day my friends and I go to watch the boy’s football practice
and Tate gets hit pretty hard. He’s down on the field for what feels like hours
to me and I want to go to him and check to be sure he’s alright. Finally after
an eternity Tate gets up and comes off the field to sit on the bench. I am
paralyzed because he has his helmet in his hand, he is dirty and sweaty and he
winks at me with a smile to die for and everyone sees.
  

At school on Monday the other girls
are still looking at me and smiling or laughing but none of them try to ask me
out or tell me that I’m cute, thank God so I guess this having a girlfriend
plan has really worked. I ask Brook and her friends to sit with the guys and me
at lunch. I figure that should keep the girls away. Let’s just hope she doesn’t
want to talk to me the whole time, I want to talk with the guys about sports.

Brook turns out to be a really cool
chick and I start to like her for real, I mean really like her. I love that she
has a nickname for me; she calls me “Taters” or “Tater Tot”. I spend every
night on the phone with her and I want to know everything there is to know
about her. The more I get to know her the more I start to like her. I like her
so much that I wish I could hide her away from everyone else. I know these
other guys are just waiting to snatch her away from me.
 

Bobby’s brother, Eric told Tate to keep an eye on me because every year
the senior boys always pick a few freshman girls to try to “conquer” and before
he left for college he said they had their eyes on me. I try to reassure Tate
that I’m not that kind of girl. I’m true to my word and if I say I’m his
girlfriend then I’m his and no one else’s.

I am the only freshman from my group of friends who makes the Varsity
cheerleading team. It’s hard to work with a whole new group of people and trust
them when they are flinging you into the air. The Varsity squad is also the
competition team so our season never ends, we cheer for football and basketball
seasons then we enter into our competition season which leads into summer camps
and conditioning.

Tate is a running back on the JV football team, and he’s pissed that he’s
not playing Varsity. Everyone says he’ll play Varsity basketball, there’s even
some talk of him starting and this is not going over well with the returning
point guard. Tate is well liked by everyone but I know some of the older guys
feel threatened by him.

Fall goes by quickly and football season turns into basketball season.
Tate and I see each other at school every day and we sit together at lunch. I
start calling him “Taters” or “Tater Tot” in part because of his name but also
because he eats them all the time. I spend my weekends either cheering at games
or in New York at dance seminars. Tate and I spend every night on the phone
together and we never run out of things to say. I want to know everything there
is to know about Tate and he says he wants to know everything about me.
 

By the winter Asia and Bobby are going out and we have a Winter Snowfall
Dance, this time I am Tate’s date. Tate and his friends arrive about ten
minutes after my friends and I and Tate comes right up to me and grabs my hand.
He is wearing his standard black t-shirt with jeans. He always looks so perfect
it makes me want to scream. He leads me to the dance floor excited to show off
the new moves I have shown him. He really can dance; he just needed a lesson in
the hallway the other day instead of eating lunch. It was fine with me, I never
eat lunch anyway.

“Beat It” is playing when we make it to the floor and Tate and I cause a
commotion. Everyone makes a circle around us and we dance in the center. At one
point some boy who I don’t even know comes into the circle and tries to dance
with me, taking me away from Tate while some girl does the same to him. I see
Tate charging at me, I realize too late to stop things that it’s not me he’s
charging at but the boy who is trying to dance with me. This causes David, Jeff
and Bobby to also come charging. Thankfully Bobby has the sense about him to
grab Tate off of the kid before he does any real damage or a teacher catches
him starting a fight. He pulls him off the dance floor into the hallway while
Jeff does the same to me. David talks to the boy, telling him that he’d be
smart to just walk away and not pull a stunt like that again with Tate Taylor’s
girlfriend. Once in the hallway Tate raises his voice at me for the first time,
like this was somehow my fault.

“Did that kid touch you?” he screams at me.