"I have more planned for us, Rose. If you'll come with me. It's your choice I can take you home right now or you can see what I have in store for you.”
I hadn't planned this far ahead, to be honest I really didn't even think that this date would get off the ground, and I was sure that at the end of the dinner he was going to send me home. Just existing here in the silence, in the quiet, it was freeing in a way. It hadn't been like this the first time. We were so swept up in hormones and emotions that I didn't get these moments.
“Who are you?" I couldn't help it, I had to ask. He was not the same man that I dated before. This man was grown. .The ability to be confident in himself, to love the silence between us, that was not the same Wyatt from high school.
"I'm not sure, Rose. It's something that I've been trying to figure out for a while." He smiled sweetly." No one else has noticed. You're here not one week and you already can read me like a book. After all these years.”
He reached across the empty space between us and took my hand holding me tight as the last little bit of sunlight dipped below the horizon. I wasn't expecting him to pull me into his arms but he did. And they were strong as they wrapped around me.
“Wyatt, I–" before I could finish the thought his lips were on mine, the kiss wild and warm.
It was like every feeling that I've had for the last five years every thought was extinguished and I was back there my last summer before college lusting after the older boy that I never thought I could have.
I was swept up in that moment, deepening our kiss, opening my mouth giving him the chance for his tongue to invade me. He took it and every last little bit of reason that was in the back of my brain was screaming at me to stop.
“I want to show you something, come with me?”
I couldn't stop. Not even if I wanted to. Not even if I tried.
“What is this place?" Rose asked if she looked around the small amphitheater. I brought her to a little park I’d been working on at the edge of town. It was in the final phases almost ready to unveil. I loved it. I even repurposed old stone to set into a landscape for a stone amphitheater. The playground wasn’t yet finished, but just about everything else was in place. It was scheduled to open in the next couple of weeks.
“This is going to be the finished product of my first community project. It’s for everyone in town." I wanted to see exactly what I was capable of. I fought for months to make this a reality, just a mile from the school in the perfect place for children and teenagers to come and play after school. There was a tennis court, two basketball courts, a dirt bike track, soccer and baseball fields. . There was also a building that housed after school homework help and projects. I’d thought this out a great deal.
I’d worked my ass off on it.
Stage lights lit up the amphitheater, casting a blue halo over it as I got her to her seat. There, a small string quartet filed up onto the stage, the low light giving them just enough luminosity to play. It was beautiful. Light and airy and everything I’d asked for.
"I didn't know that you would ever do something like this." Rose looked up at me, her eyes wide.
It wasn't surprising she felt that way about me, practically the whole town did. But she knew me. She knew who I really was. Rose was the only woman who’d ever seen into my soul. It might’ve been five years ago, but I couldn’t forget that. I couldn’t let it go.
To them I was nothing more than a playboy, the poor replacement of my father. Sure, he contributed to campaign elections and different funding for projects, but he didn't start anything like this. He didn't donate time and land or resources for the poorest of the poor.
“There's a lot that you don't know about me, Rose." I paused then said. “I got into a lot of shit when I was younger, and part of that was because I was bored. I figure, maybe some kids will choose this instead.”
I shrugged. She didn't know the good or the bad or anything in between really. A lot had changed since that summer. I wasn't the same reckless youth that I was then. My tastes had changed. Except when it came to her. Looking into her eyes now, there was no way I could break her heart the way she destroyed mine, even if it was what she deserved. That plan has gone out the window. I wanted her. Needed her. Even if I couldn't admit it to myself.
“Dance with me, Rose." I stood and extended my hand to her. She gasped as I pulled her up into my arms.
I felt so good to wrap myself around her and pull her into the soft sweet romantic song swaying under the moonlight. She was so beautiful I had to pull her close, feel her next to me. I looked down into those deep blue eyes as she stared back up at me. With the park light streaming down on us I could see her lips flush with excitement or arousal, I couldn't tell.