Chapter Eight

 

“Over here!” I called out loud behind me as I stopped by the bulletin board outside a gym for seniors. It had half a dozen flyers about vitamins for seniors and book club meetings.

“Oh well, they can tell their grand kids about it when they see them,” I mumbled, taking three posters from the stack in my sling bag and stapling them neatly in a row on the blank spot by the left.

The new posters were brightly colored, glossy and sized at eleven by fourteen—something we wouldn’t have really been able to afford for five thousand copies if Seth’s family didn’t sponsor the printing of all our promotional materials. His family owned one of the biggest publishing businesses in the country and they had their own printing press to support about a dozen of their publications. The posters were shipped from New York.

He wasn’t kidding when he said he could rake in a lot of funds for the Children’s Play Day. He already has plenty of Ballard’s rich sign up as sponsors.

Yet here he is, being my errand boy and helper, putting up posters on foot all over the downtown area in the middle of a hot, humid day, I thought, catching sight of him squeezing through some parked bikes and stapling a couple of posters on a diner’s bulletin. He was in sneakers, golf shorts and a teal shirt, a sling bag of posters on his side, a water bottle on his hip and a staple gun on his hand.

The marketing committee has split up the town and assigned pairs to cover the different areas, putting up posters and distributing flyers. Liam had eagerly paired up with somebody else and Seth quickly volunteered to come with me and to avoid any curious questions if I profusely decline, I casually said okay and now here we are, on our second day scouring downtown.

It wasn’t bad. Seth was actually up for it. He picked me up from home and we parked his car by one of the free parking spots a good ten blocks away from main downtown and started walking and plastering the posters whenever we could. It’s been three hours now and I personally wanted to call it a day.

When Seth still hasn’t come a good two minutes later, I stopped, cast another glance at his direction and almost laughed out loud. He was by the sidewalk, surrounded by half a dozen high school girls, each with a flyer in their hand, pretending to be interested in the event as they asked questions while gawking at Seth with starry-eyed looks.

He caught my eye and flashed me a look pleading for rescue and I chuckled to myself.

I walked up to the small crowd, beamed at the girls who were quite aggressive for their age and slipped my arm behind Seth’s waist.

“Hi, sweetie,” I greeted him with a matching sweet grin and nodded to the girls. “Are you girls coming to our fundraiser?”

The dreamy smiles on their faces withered just a bit but enough to be obvious to the naked eye and they glanced at each other awkwardly.

“Maybe,” one of them, a tall, leggy brunette answered, eyeing me with blatant scrutiny. “We’re not sure. It’s all kids stuff. We’re not exactly into carousels and Ferris wheels anymore. It’s like, so juvenile.”

I shrugged casually. “I don’t know about that. I mean, we will have some of Ballard’s young elites there serving food and facilitating the different activities. All your friends will be there, won’t they, sweetie?”

Seth beamed and even eagerly pressed a kiss on my temple. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel like socking him with my knee for that. “Oh yeah, they’ll definitely be there. They think that it’s for a really good cause so they’re willing to take the day off and help out.”

This is such a shallow thing but the moment we finished saying our lines, the expressions on the faces of these young girls had drastically changed. They now looked like somebody who just got told that Louis Vuitton is giving one girl all the designer clothes she can possibly get and it’s a race to that golden ticket.

It was really sad to watch these sixteen-something girls become the opportunists that they truly seem to be inside. There seems to be nothing more effective in skyrocketing your social status in Ballard than dating a Seth Wallace or one of his friends.

“Well, it was nice chatting with you ladies but we have more posters to put up so we really have to go,” Seth finally said, putting an arm around me and slowly steering me into our exit direction. “We hope to see you at the fair. Take care.”

“Bye, Seth!” they replied in chorus and when we were fully turned away, I giggled and Seth grinned.

“Jailbait,” he muttered, his cheeks turning slightly pink. “Thanks for coming to my rescue. I don’t know how these girls know me.”

I grinned. “Facebook, MySpace, other high school girls, the local town’s gossip blog.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know if we have one. And I’m not on MySpace. Just Facebook and it’s restricted to close friends only. You have an account? I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have one. I just don’t have the time, as usual.”

“I’m sure,” he said, sighing and putting an arm around me. I didn’t shrug it away and only God knows why. “Us, mere mortals, can only try so hard.”

I wrinkled my nose. “It’s just that I’ve always felt I don’t have the luxury of time or opportunity to relax. That if I’m going after my big dreams, I have to keep going, until I get there.”

“You’re too hard on yourself, you know that,” he said, leaning down, his forehead touching mine. His green eyes were so vivid and bright from the afternoon sunlight bouncing off of the sidewalk. “You need a break—from yourself.”

He flashed one of his mischievous smiles and pulled me by the wrist. “Come on, I’m tired and I’m parched and you need to have a little bit of fun and I’ve got the perfect solution to that.”

“And what’s that?”

“Ice cream, of course!”

So, before I could even make sense of what was happening, we found ourselves in the long line of eager customers at the Ice Cream Deli, Ballard’s famous gourmet ice cream shop where you watch as they make your selected flavor with the freshest milk, fruits, chocolate and candies. It’s a bit steep in price and I’ve only ever gone here, I don’t know, twice in my entire twenty years of life.

Fifteen minutes later, we emerged, each holding a large sugar cone of ice cream. He had pistachios, vanilla and mint chocolate chip on his and I had a raspberry cheesecake with graham crackers and fresh raspberries. They were the best-tasting ice cream in the world, I must say.

“Okay, now that we bought enough ice cream to cover our entire daily calorie requirements, where to next?” I asked before taking a big bite.

The sun was warm and bright and the wind was cool on my cheeks and Seth’s eyes were deep green and happy and he had a silly-looking ice cream cone in his hand.

I had to swallow hard and look away. It’s like one of those hypnotic scenes where after you’ve stared at something for too long, you can’t get the picture out of your mind.

“How about a walk?” he asked, reaching forward to wipe off some ice cream from my chin. “We can walk to the legislative building and sit by the fountain.”

I was going to comment that it wasn’t Seth Wallace’s style to sit by the fountain in front of the legislative building. He was too cool for that. But maybe that’s why I said nothing—because I didn’t want Seth to remember that it wasn’t his style—because I liked Seth when he was just being himself and not what everyone’s reputed him to be.

“Okay, I’m in,” I answered with a grin. “On one condition though—we’re going to have to keep giving out flyers while we’re there.”

He rolled his eyes and feigned exasperation. “Fine, let’s go for it then, master.”

I laughed and his face broke into a cute, lopsided grin. We didn’t say anything else after that.

He took my hand, his fingers lacing through my own. They felt warm and strong and safe and so secure that they felt like they were going to keep holding mine for the rest of our lives.

I don’t know why I didn’t pull away or take a step back. I didn’t want to. Logic is beyond me right now—all I know for sure is that Seth and ice cream are yet to be my favorite combination.