He put his hand to my chin and turned my face back toward his slowly. “I’m sorry this has been so hard on you. I wanted for things to be so much different.” As he turned away I could tell that he felt bad.
“AJ this isn’t your fault. I know that if it was up to you things wouldn’t be this way, but it’s out of your control.” I leaned over and kissed him once gently on his lips. It was my intention to pull away after a peck, but he gripped my face firmly in his hands and kissed me so passionately that even my toes were tingly. I was almost starting to hate letting myself get this close to him because that made it that much harder to bear being away from him. The fresh memory of his lips on mine was like pulling the stitches out of a wound that wasn’t fully healed. My heart felt as though it was slowing down as the sadness seeped into it. With each gentle thud I pulled further and further away from AJ. I kept my eyes closed and rested my head on the back of the seat and tried to pull myself together. I opened them slowly and focused on his face. There was a dark figure behind him outside of the passenger window. When I noticed it I nearly jumped out of my skin. AJ turned to see what caught my attention. He rolled his eyes and flung the door open angrily before I could grasp what was going on. It was Mr. Hahn. Apparently we’d lost track of time. He must’ve gone inside to look for AJ at practice and when he discovered that he wasn’t there he’d come to the parking lot to search for him.
The fury in Mr. Hahn’s eyes was incredible. “Get inside,” he growled at AJ. Even though months had passed since our encounter, Mr. Hahn still harbored just as much hatred for me as the first time we’d met – maybe even more than before.
“I thought I told you to leave him alone.” Mr. Hahn turned up his nose and spoke to me like I was the lowest life form on planet Earth.
“Don’t say anything else to her.” AJ warned him sternly, just before closing the car door and walking toward the school. Mr. Hahn glared at me through the window, but didn’t try to go against AJ’s command. He looked back over his shoulder at me one last time before following AJ inside.
At about a quarter to ten my homework was finished and I decided to take a hot bath. The thoughts of AJ being surrounded by the awaiting female population at Westwood was still taunting me. My muscles were in knots because I was stressing over it so much. The back of my neck hurt so bad that I was almost craving the warm water. I’d just put my foot in it when my phone went off on my dresser. Ignoring it was a tempting option, but I knew that it could be AJ. It stopped ringing just as I placed my hand on it. When I checked the call log I was shocked to see that he’d called from his own phone. I frantically pressed send and waited for an answer.
When I heard AJ’s voice on the other end I breathed a sigh of relief. His father returned his phone despite the fact that he’d caught us together. He explained to AJ that once he got to college and saw all the girls he’d forget about me instantly anyway. It stung a little to hear the words, but AJ only told me because I kept pressing him for the details of his conversation with Mr. Hahn.
He got his car back and the gate code too, so he didn’t waste any time arranging one of our secret meetings. I thought of how cramped we’d be in the car and made the bold move to invite him over to my house this time. Once my parents were asleep, they never got back up before morning. If he parked down the street, I could sneak him up to my studio unnoticed. It was a simple plan and AJ seemed to like the dangerous idea, so it didn’t take him long to agree to it.
I was too high strung from our plan for my bath to relax me any. I washed and climbed out of the tub to put on my pajamas before sitting to watch the clock. At 11:11 I heard my parents going to their room. They shut the door and then there was silence. Mom usually read for about ten minutes before she fell asleep, so that meant that by no later than 11:30 they should both be asleep. So by midnight, AJ and I would be in the clear.
My phone went off at 12:03.
“Are they asleep?” AJ asked.