My Skylar

Chapter 6
MITCH
Davey dropped a bomb on our way home from school. “Did you hear Aidan asked Skylar out for this Friday?”
I fell off my skateboard right as we arrived at my house. “Say what? Aidan Hamilton?”
“Yeah. Apparently, he’d been trying to go out with her for months, but she’s always said no. He asked her to go to the fall carnival Friday, and she said yes.”
Shit. Aidan went to Crestview High with me. She must have met him through Angie’s boyfriend, Cody. Aidan would trip people in the cafeteria for laughs and talk back to teachers. He was a douchelord. He’d been with a lot of girls, too, some of the same ones I dated. I would admit, he was a good-looking guy, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve to go out with a girl like Skylar.
“Really…” I was so angry I was practically foaming at the mouth.
“That’s all you have to say? Dude, your face is turning colors.” Davey followed me into the house and headed straight for the refrigerator.
A dozen thoughts raced through my head. Namely, how I was going to stop this.
Davey knew how protective I was of her. He lived two houses down from us, was our only mutual friend and a go-between. Skylar’s friends were mostly girls from her private school. Davey was our common denominator. I didn’t like the idea of Skylar having guy friends because they’d all want in her pants eventually—myself included if I were being honest. But Davey was almost as short as Skylar, roly-poly and harmless. Think Pillsbury doughboy with long, black dreadlocks he never washed. That was Davey. Let’s just say, Skylar wasn’t going to be tempted by our furry little friend, and I liked it that way.
Aidan, on the other hand, was a serious threat, and even though I wanted to spew venom, I tried to play it down while I cleared my head. “Technically, Skylar can go out with whomever she wants,” I said coldly.
“Not true,” Davey said as he helped himself to a soda.
“What?”
“She wants you, you dillweed.”
My pulse quickened. “She told you that?”
Davey shook his head. “She doesn’t have to say it.”
The way she looked at me sometimes with those beautiful almond-shaped eyes made me wonder if she did.
“You know I can’t go out with Skylar.”
Davey burped. “What I do know is that you mess around with girls you don’t even like to get her out of your system.”
Maybe, but that was the way it had to be.
“Skylar is like family to me. Going further with her…there is no way that could end well. We’re too young, too many years ahead to f*ck things up. It would destroy us.”
Speaking of destruction, I had to figure out how I was going to keep Skylar from getting mixed up with that dick, Aidan. If I couldn’t have her, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna get her. I texted Amber to cancel our movie date Friday night because now I had work to do.
I put my phone in my pocket. “What are you doing Friday night, Dave?”
“Let me check my phone.” He lifted it and pretended to check his calendar. “Oh! Waxing my ass.”
“Yeah. Postpone that. How do you like cotton candy?”
***
Whenever I went anywhere with Davey, I felt like we were Arnold Schwarznegger and Danny Devito from that old movie, Twins, because I towered over him.
The fall carnival was held in a big field about a mile from where we lived. It was full of people we knew from school and the last place I’d have been were it not for the fact that Skylar would be here on what I was pretty sure was her first official date.
She had told me about her plans, and I played it cool. It wasn’t like I could tell her I was going to show up and spy on her. I swore to myself I’d stay away unless I saw Aidan make one wrong move, at which point I would deck him.
It was dark, crowded and chaotic. The bright lights from the rides combined with the dinging sounds from the game booths made it hard to focus on my mission.
I hadn’t spotted her yet, and it didn’t help that Davey had gotten separated from me in search of funnel cake.
He looked like he had gone swimming in a vat of powdered sugar when I found him. “Davey, can we please focus on finding Skylar? You can eat later.”
“Try this,” he said, pushing the fried dough into my face.
I waved it away. “I can’t think about food right now.”
He spoke with his mouth full. “Man, can’t you see you have it bad for her? This isn’t a normal reaction to your friend going out on a date.”
“I’m just trying to protect her.”
“You’re gonna do this every time some guy asks her out?”
“No, just when he’s an a*shole,” I said as I continued to look around.
“Is there really ever going to be a guy good enough for her in your eyes?”
I thought about it. “Maybe not.”
F*ck no.
Davey waved the funnel cake as he spoke. “That’s messed up. Just admit that you’re not here to protect her. You’re here cuz you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Then, it shouldn’t bother you that she looks like she is having a really good time right now.” He pointed over to the ticket booth.
I turned around and saw Skylar laughing at something Aidan was saying while they were in line. My chest tightened, and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. When I could make her laugh like that, it normally made me all gooey inside. Seeing her face light up for another guy made me want to kill someone.
I grabbed Davey. “Come on, I don’t want her to see me.”
“You should wear green more often. It suits you.”
“Shut up.”
Davey and I walked back over to the concession stand where he ordered a caramel apple. “I should have gotten the one with the nuts.”
The crunch of his teeth sinking into the apple made me cringe. I shook my head at him. “Seriously?”
“Look, I’m here for you, but I’m hungry. Just tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it. In the meantime, I’m eatin.’”
Aidan had taken Skylar over to a game booth. It was the one where you had to shoot water into the clowns’ mouths to see which player could fill the biggest balloon. The first to pop won a prize. He sat down to play while Skylar stood next to him.
Her long, straight hair fell loose down her back. She looked sexy as hell, and I might have drooled a little as my eyes traveled from top to bottom. A tight, red shirt hugged her firm breasts, and she wore a short, denim skirt that made me want to pull my hair out. I wanted to scoop her up in my jacket and carry her home.
I knew I was attracted to Skylar. I knew I cared deeply about her and wanted to protect her. But I wasn’t prepared for the level of jealousy that hit me tonight.
Aidan kept winning. After each victory, they’d offer him a bigger stuffed animal. If he kept playing, he would eventually get the gargantuan one. After his final win, he stood up from the chair, bent down and lifted Skylar into the air.
His hands were on her ass, and my blood was pumping through my ears. The carnival music began to sound like it was being played backwards along with the drumbeat in my head.
A beastly voice inside me said, “Get the f*ck off my girl.”
After they finally walked away with a pink hippo that was practically bigger than she was, I realized Davey had disappeared on me again.
Several minutes passed, and I had lost track of both Davey and Skylar.
Then, I heard Davey’s voice. “Mitch!”
I could have killed him for shouting my name. But it seemed to be coming from the sky. I looked up and saw him waving excitedly from atop the Ferris wheel. He wasn’t alone. It took me a few seconds to realize that sitting next to him…was Aidan.
What the…how in the world?
Davey flashed me a maniacal grin and a peace sign. Aidan looked annoyed, and that pleased me to no end.
“What are you doing here?”
Skylar was still holding the massive hippo when I turned around.
I tried to play it cool. “Oh…hey.”
“Hey.” She wasn’t smiling.
“Um…what is…Aidan doing with Davey on the Ferris wheel?” I asked.
“We were standing in line waiting to go on. Aidan got in first, and out of nowhere, Davey pushes past me and steals my seat. Then, it started moving up so the next person could board, and I couldn’t do anything.”
Remind me to buy Davey another candy apple…with extra nuts.
I bit my lip to stifle a laugh. “No way.”
“Any idea why Davey would do that, Mitch?” She asked with a suspicious look.
I held my hands up but couldn’t contain my smile. “I swear to God. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You didn’t tell me you were coming here tonight.”
“How were you going to go on the Ferris wheel with that hippo anyway?”
“I was going to leave it on the ground and hope no one took it. You didn’t answer my question.”
I played dumb. “What was that?”
“Why you didn’t tell me you were coming. You knew I’d be here.”
“Yeah…that…”
“Are you spying on me?”
“No.”
“Your ears are turning red, Mitch. You’re lying.”
She knew me so well. That really sucked.
“Okay.” I rubbed my temples. “I just wanted to check things out. Make sure you were okay.”
“Do I do that to you when you go out with a different girl every weekend?”
“No. But it’s different. You don’t know how guys are, Skylar. We’re dirty, dirty f*ckers. I don’t want him trying to take advantage of you, to touch you. Aidan goes to my school. I know how he is. I—”
“Maybe I want someone to touch me once in a while.”
F*ck.
I was stunned silent before I said, “You don’t mean that…not him.”
“Why wouldn’t I? The girls you take out like it when you touch them, right? So…why am I any different from them?”
Shit. I didn’t know where this conversation was going anymore, except that I was starting to feel my jeans tighten at the thought of her wanting to be touched. God help me, I’d never wanted to touch any girl like I wanted to touch her.
My phone rang. It was Davey. “Davey? What’s going on?”
“Have you not realized that this death trap hasn’t moved?”
I looked up and saw him waving from the dangling seat. Then, he broke out some kind of hip-hop dance move while Aidan had his head down, hand over his face, looking frustrated. They were stuck at the top. Skylar and I had been so busy talking that we didn’t notice.
“They’re stuck?” she asked.
I walked over to the conductor who reeked of cigarette smoke. “What’s happening?”
He didn’t even look up from his newspaper when he said, “Equipment malfunction. We waitin’ on support.”
“Shit. Davey, are you still there?”
“No.”
“I guess they’re waiting on help. Hang in there, buddy.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
Skylar adjusted her grip on the giant stuffed animal. “I suppose you think this is hilarious.”
I shook my head with a grin. “No…no.”
Her mouth widened into a smile. “Because it is.”
We both burst out laughing.
I wiped my eyes and looked up. “Any minute Davey’s gonna bust out his Star Wars trivia.”
“And if Aidan gets hungry, I’m sure Davey wouldn’t mind searching his dreads for some leftover crumbs,” Skylar joked.
We waited for about ten minutes until I walked over for another update from the ride operator. “How much longer?”
“They’re telling me about thirty minutes now.”
I called Davey to let him know.
Poor Davey. But this night could not have ended up better for me. I turned to Skylar. “You hungry?”
She smiled. “I could eat.”
I grabbed the hippo from her. We ended up getting a couple of slices of pizza and taking them to a picnic area just outside the carnival gates. It was away from the action, but we could still keep an eye on the Ferris wheel in case it started moving.
When we finished eating, we moved to sit on a grassy hill that overlooked the entire fairgrounds. There was no one else in the vicinity.
We sat in silence until she turned to me. “You were thinking about your sister tonight, weren’t you?
Her question floored me because the truth was, I had been thinking about her. But how did she know that? “Why do you ask?”
“I saw you looking at the little girl in line when we were getting our pizza. She looked about five, and I know your sister is around that age.”
Sometimes, Skylar blew me away with how perceptive she could be.
I had only met my half-sister, Summer, a few times. I always felt guilty about not going to see her more, but things were always tense when I visited my father in Pennsylvania. Summer’s mother was one of the main reasons for my parents’ divorce and my mother’s breakdown, and I couldn’t get past it. It wasn’t my sister’s fault, and I felt guilty a lot for not being there more for her.
“How do you always know everything?”
“I don’t know everything. I know you.”
“Yeah, you do, don’t you?” I smiled. “That little girl did remind me of Summer. I was thinking about how I wished I could take her to something fun like this. I worry about her, Skylar.”
“Why?”
“I just have this feeling my Dad is going to f*ck up again and rip apart her world someday, the way he did mine.”
“That could happen, but if it does, she has something you didn’t.”
“What?”
“She has you, a big brother to turn to and someone who’s been through it and can tell her it’ll turn out okay. You’ll be there for her no matter what, even if he isn’t.”
She always knew the right thing to say.
I nodded. “She’ll have me.” I turned to Skylar. “And I had you. You were that person for me all those years ago.”
“I’m glad.”
“I was thinking of taking the train to visit her during school break. Will you come with me if your mother lets you?”
She put her hand on my knee. “Of course.”
Skylar’s touch felt electric. I looked down and almost put my hand over hers but didn’t.
Her hair blew in the breeze, and I wanted to run my hand through it and tell her how much she meant to me.
Instead, I was silent as I looked up at the starry sky. Something beyond my control was building inside of me tonight, and I started to feel inexplicably nervous, as if suddenly this moment were different from the hundreds of other times Skylar and I hung out.
It felt like this was our first date instead of hers with the bozo stuck in the Ferris wheel.
She was looking up when I turned to stare at her pretty side profile. She had the smallest, pinned-up nose with a dusting of freckles. When she caught me, I instinctively looked up at the sky again.
A wind blew her flowery scent toward me and I breathed it in, wishing that I could do so much more than smell her. My heart started racing because I felt my inhibitions giving way to something else, something much stronger. It was something I wasn’t sure I could fight right now.
“Are you going to let him kiss you later?”
She looked surprised by my question. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought it through. I guess he’d have to be rescued first, or the chances are greater that he’ll be kissing Davey.” She laughed nervously.
I picked at the grass. “He’s gonna try. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Davey told me that Aidan asked you out a lot before, but you always said no. What changed?”
She looked up at the sky again. “I guess I’m growing up.” Then, she turned to me. “And maybe realizing certain other things aren’t gonna pan out.”
Ouch.
My eyes met hers. “Skylar…I—”
“Don’t say anything, Mitch. It’s okay.”
She had no idea how much I wanted to say and wanted to do.
I was pretty sure I knew the answer but asked anyway. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”
She shook her head no but didn’t say anything.
“Are you planning to give him your first kiss?”
“Probably.”
The jealousy that nearly made me insane earlier returned in full force.
“You can’t do that.”
“Why?”
My heart pounded in anticipation of what I was about to do. “Because I’m stealing it.”