“Bye,” I call to my mom before closing the front door and joining Luke on the porch.
This is it: our first date.
I pored through the notes all day, giggling and gasping right up until the moment I started getting ready. That took an hour, and then I spent the next one toning it down to make it look effortless.
He’s late, but I don’t mind. He’s here.
Luke directs me to the maroon minivan in the driveway (which I’m glad my notes warned me about, because otherwise I’d be concerned). He holds the door open for me in a way that’s more natural than forced. He seems to be a gentleman, probably the product of polite parents.
We settle into our seats and strap seat belts across our bodies. “Sorry I’m late,” he says.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“I got caught up in a painting,” he explains as he turns the ignition and adjusts the heat. “I lost track of time.”
Annoyance creeps up on me. He was painting? I take a deep breath and shove it away. He’s here now.
“How are you?” he asks, so intimately that I want to grab him. I’m completely over his lateness.
“I’m fine,” I say, smiling. “How about you?”
“Better now,” he says, expertly backing out of the driveway onto the quiet street.
“Do I smell pizza?” I ask, suddenly salivating. Luke glances in my direction and then forward again.
“Sorry,” he says. “I just picked some up for my family before I left.”
“Oh,” I say, and shrug to myself as Luke shifts the van into drive and accelerates.
The radio plays quietly as Luke navigates the streets of my development like he’s lived here for years. Soon enough, we’re barreling north on one of the two highways that run in and out of town.
“What happened to the movie?” I ask. He had outlined a dinner and movie date for my mom, but I don’t care where we go. I don’t mind if I stare at a blank wall, as long as I do it in Luke’s presence.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t lie to your mom,” he says cryptically.
“I wasn’t worried, and it’s okay if you did,” I say, looking out at the clear, cold night.
Luke drives and I ride north and north and north of town, and for a fleeting second, I wonder whether I’m that girl in horror movies who walks toward the monster instead of running to safety. I’m breezily allowing this cute guy I don’t remember to take me to the boondocks. Then, as quickly as it arrived, I push the thought away. There is nothing monstrous about Luke Henry. There is nothing frightening about the boy I know from my notes. I feel completely safe in this van that smells like pizza.
I watch the sky as we drive, and the farther we get from the city, the more stars appear. “Do you even know where you’re going?” I ask, not minding if we get lost. “Didn’t you just move here?”
“I scoped out our destination this afternoon,” he admits.
“How very organized of you,” I say, settling back into the seat and feeling totally at ease. I’m completely calm as Luke turns off the highway onto a frontage road, takes a right onto a smaller residential street, and turns right onto a dirt road that winds up a small hill into blackness.
I feel the safest I will feel in years as this stranger eases his mother’s minivan off the gravel and drives slowly across the prairie to the edge of a small hill.
Luke parks directly in front of a NO TRESPASSING sign on the barbed-wire fence that keeps us from driving off the incline. He kills the engine and the headlights along with it. I take in the twinkling, scattered town below, sprawling across more than twenty miles of land, just because it can.
“Cool,” I say.
“Yeah, I thought so,” he says, eyes straight ahead. I like that he likes this town. It’s not for everyone, but it will always be a little part of me.
“So, you’ve never been up here before?”
Good question, I think. “Um, no,” I reply. “In fact, I have no idea where we are.”