Page 34 of It Started with a Sunset
“Can your hand even fit in the finger holes?”
“I’m pretty sure no.”
“Summer, we can get you another ball.”
“This one is perfect.”
And so it was. They entered the names into the screen hanging from the ceiling and started bowling. He couldn’t get enough of watching Summer bowl in her now-short ball gown as she held her ball with both hands, swinging it back by her right hip, and then sending it sailing down the lane. Every time, it would look like it was going to go into the gutter on the right side, but then the spin on the ball would take it back toward the center just before it got to the pins.
There were times when he was ahead in score, but she was ahead more often, so it was clearly working for her. Halfway through their first game, he noticed some teenagers start bowling a few lanes down from them, and they were amazing. Both of them were throwing the ball the same way that Summer was, and he suddenly wondered if she had learned that technique in her three weeks in a bowling league as a kid.
He high fived her as she was coming back to their table after getting a strike.
“You know,” he said, “if you’d have told me you were going to wear that dress, I would’ve worn something to coordinate.”
Her eyebrows rose, intrigued. “Do you own anything yellow?”
“I have a gray t-shirt with a one-inch stitched logo right here that’s yellow. And I have yellow socks.”
“Then we clearly missed an excellent opportunity.”
Brock shrugged. “Next time, then.”
He loved the smile that spread across Summer’s face. He really wanted to kiss it.
When they had finished both of their games—one where he won by two points and one where she won by thirty-seven—and they’d taken a selfie with the screen showing their scores in the background, they headed over to the counter to order food.
Once they were seated at a table in the corner, he asked a question he’d wondered about several times over the years but had been wondering more and more often lately, since her choice was greatly affecting his life and level of happiness. “You’re from Minneapolis, right? What made you choose to go to a college in South Dakota? Why LBSU?”
She smiled, then looked thoughtful, like she was thinking of the full answer instead of just giving whatever was her usual answer. “Well, I wanted to go to a small college so I would feel like I knew everyone, instead of going to a big school where I’d feel lost among so many students. And I wanted to go somewhere with a campus that I loved and could totally see myself calling home, around people who felt like home. And it had to be somewhere fun.” She smiled. “The lake was a plus.”
She paused like she was trying to get into where her head had been nine years ago. “Plus, I kind of felt... trapped at home. Not physically trapped. Maybe trapped isn’t even the right word. I guess I felt kind ofstuckin the emotions that were too present in my house, so I wanted to get away, preferably to another state, so I would have to stay over the summer to establish residency. But I do love to see my dad as often as possible, so I didn’t want to be more than an hour’s flight away.”
The same woman who had taken their order behind the counter brought over their food and set it on their table, so they took a moment and got the right burger and drink in front of each of them, the basket of fries between them, each with their own condiment cup of ranch dressing.
“How about you?” Summer asked as she picked up a fry and dipped it in the ranch. “What brought you here?”
“My reason is...a whole lot less complicated than yours. LBSU is twenty minutes from where I grew up in Golden Springs and I wanted to stay close to home so I could still help out easily. It was a no-brainer—it just happened to work out well for me.”
“So you chose here to be close to your family and I chose here to get away from my family.” Summer shook her head, chuckling. “I guess that right there shows which of us is the better person.”
Brock chuckled, too, then said, “Nah. I think it shows which of us is the stronger person.” He hadn’t ever headed out on his own like that, but he knew it had to have been exponentially more difficult than being twenty minutes away like he was.
They picked up their hamburgers and took a bite. They had been joking around and laughing so much while they’d been bowling that he hadn’t had a moment to stop and even think about the plan he’d made for their date. But now that they were sitting down and eating, he was thinking about it and realizing how much his plan wasn’t going to work with Summer wearing that dress.
He might as well deal with it head-on instead of letting his focus stay on how to fix the problem instead of on his conversation with Summer. So he pulled the schedule out of his pocket and unfolded the notepaper. “The rest of my plan for tonight isn’t going to work out as planned.”
Summer’s eyes went wide as she looked at his schedule. “Oh, wow, that is a really detailed plan.”
His need to plan everything was probably going to start to annoy a woman like Summer, especially over time. And he really didn’t want that to happen. But he just did better when he had a list for everything.
But he also really did better when he plannedwell. He had worked hard to come up with the perfect plan based on what he knew of Summer, and he didn’t get that right at all. Obviously.
He could almost feel her eyes going down each item on the list which, now that he was reading through it again, thinking about how she was seeing it, he wished he hadn’t been so specific with each item. Especially with the one that read,Arrive at Summer’s house at 6:58. Make sure I’m looking really good, then head to her door right at 7:00, flowers in hand.
“You were going to bring me flowers?”
He shrugged. “I’ll do that another time. I was mostly referring to the parts after dinner.”
