We both laughed.
Yardley said, “Let’s get it on!”
I wanted to get it on all right, but not the way he had in mind.
Yardley beat my ass in laser tag. I was highly disappointed but I realized that if he was the typical man, he probably had at least three video game systems at home that had much wear and tear and was about to wet himself waiting for the next one to come out. After laser tag, we moved on to virtual golf. He whipped my ass again. That was when I started getting frustrated. I hated to lose at anything. I did beat him in the water shoot. I knocked down more than a dozen ducks that floated by and he only got two.
“Aha, I beat you,” I boasted, blowing imaginary smoke off the tip of the pistol before pointing it at him and squirting him in the face.
He chuckled. “Lucky shot. If we play it again, I’m sure I’ll beat you.”
I wasn’t willing to take any chances. “Naw, that’s perfectly all right. I think we should move on to something else.”
“Fine, what do you want to try next?”
I picked up a diagram of the amusement center off a nearby table and scanned over the choices. That was a stall. I already knew the place like the back of my hand but I needed a moment to gain some composure. There was something about the way that Yardley asked me the question that had aroused me to the point where my heart had started pounding in my chest. I knew what I wanted to try next, but I wanted to take things slowly. Even so, I imagined pulling him into a quiet corner of the place and feeling him up at the very least.
“So have you decided?” Yardley asked.
“Hmm, how about wall climbing?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Rayne. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
Surely, he was joking. “Me? Get hurt?”
“Yes, you.”
I started walking toward the room where the wall climbing section was located. “You need to be more worried about yourself.”
“Why don’t you give it up?” I yelled across the wall at Yardley, who was struggling to hang on and maintain his footing.
“Not in this lifetime,” he responded, out of breath. The look of frustration on his face was priceless.
I wanted to laugh but was too afraid that I might fall, trying to be cute. I said, “Fine. I’m going to have to make you look like a fool in front of all those people down there watching.”
He glanced down at the onlookers who were laughing and pointing at him. He looked like a puppet dangling from a string.
“This might be a strange time to ask this but Valentine’s Day is coming up,” he said after managing to place his right hand on the next mount.
I waited for him to continue his comment, assuming he wanted to ask me something. When he didn’t, I commented, “That didn’t sound like a question to me. That was more of a statement.”
Yardley lifted another foot and slid it on top of a mount, trying to catch up to me. I was at least three feet ahead of him and still moving swiftly.
“I was wondering if you had any plans,” he said.
I grinned. “Hmm, you’re getting closer to a question, but that was more of a spoken thought.”
“You’re silly, Rayne.” He paused and stopped trying to climb the wall. It was obviously a lost cause. “Would you like to spend Valentine’s Day with me?”
“Now that sounds like a question.”
“Good. This is the point where it’s customary for you to say something that sounds like an answer.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s the general idea.”
We both giggled.