Original publication date June 25, 2015
I get home and immediately take a shower. Afterwards, I feel a bit hungry, so I fix myself some fish. I caught this fish! I’ve gotten better at fishing the past few days, wanting to stay out sight thereby making it impossible for me to have leftover picnic food. Contrary to what Alexander thinks, I don’t exactly live completely off cereal, granola, and yogurt.
This is good! I think happily after taking a bite of my dinner. It has a campfire taste that I love.
If I’d said yes to the pub, I’d be getting something even better to eat tomorrow, I’ll bet. I stop chewing for a moment as I think about Graham.
‘You shouldn’t have said yes.’ I know it’s true; I should’ve walked away and disappeared again. If he weren’t so hot, I would’ve been able to. I did say no to the pub at first, but he kept asking, using different angles.
He likes me. He kissed my hand.
Oh, what am I going to do?
‘Not show up tomorrow,’ my inner voice answers for me.
Tomorrow….What am I going to wear?! Sure, he must’ve thought I was pretty, but it was dark. It’s not going to be dark in the museum tomorrow afternoon. I want to at least look nice. My mind quickly runs through my small wardrobe, and I pick something out that could work.
Using my phone screen as a sort-of mirror, I fix my hair a little better than normal. I show up at the museum at 6:15. For a second, I worry he’s left, thinking I won’t show. It took me longer than I thought it would to walk here. I do a small sigh when I walk through the door and see him standing in one of the rooms on the first floor. He looks super hot today, probably wearing what he wore to work. I bet I look frumpy next to him.
“Brielle!” he exclaims happily. I sense a bit of relief in his voice like he was worried I wouldn’t show. “I’m in here,” he tells me like I wouldn’t be able to spot him anyway.
What am I doing?! What am I doing here?! I shouldn’t be here! I’m on what may as well be a date. I’m sixteen, and he’s…well, he’s old enough to be able to teach college.
“Hey. Sorry I’m a little late. It took longer than I thought it would for me to get here.” I leave out the part of how I got here: walking.
He guesses anyway. “Did you walk? I would’ve been happy to come pick you up.”
I’m sure you would, I think with an internal smirk. “No, it’s fine. It wasn’t far.” Well, ‘far’ is a relative concept. From my campsite, it’s actually farther to Alex’s house.
Since we’re sims in Sims 4, we go and have a seat together on the nearest seating surface.
Remembering the premise for the date, I ask, “So, how did your first day go?”
“It was okay. From what I saw today, I have a wide variety of students. It’s funny, but for some reason, I guess because of my own experience, I expected most of them to be eighteen, nineteen, and so on since I’m teaching the freshman level, but I have several that are older than me. I know not everyone takes history their freshman year, but I even have a guy that looks like he’s in his fifties. And I’m supposed to teach him history?” He laughs at himself, and I join in.
I like listening to him talk, just like last night, and the want to never tell him my actual age grows with every second.
“Well, I guess a late start to a degree is better than no start at all,” I say once we’ve stopped laughing.
“Are you attending college anywhere? I was wondering that today,” he tells me.
He was thinking about me today. “Me?” I ask with a giggle. “No, not currently. Maybe someday.”
“I was just… Well, since you said you’re in between jobs right now, maybe you should. Not Sim City U, though.” He grins as he says the last bit really fast.
“You don’t want to encourage me to go to the university where you yourself teach?” I ask, meaning that he’s cutting the place down.
“Teachers shouldn’t date students,” he answers me simply, a shy smile spreading across his handsome face.
“Oh,” I say quietly and feel suddenly glad that I’m sitting down. He just left absolutely no doubt at all that he considers this a date.
“That’s… That’s why I asked you last night if you went there,” he further explains.
“Oh,” I breathe. “I thought you were just worried you’d possibly have to put up with my smart-alec comments.” No, he’d already decided he wanted to ask me out if he could somehow manage it.
He laughs quietly. “No. Actually, I’m afraid I’d have way too much fun with them.”
I sit here and breathe. Stop acting so surprised! You’re just making yourself look like you don’t know what you’re doing! A part of me kept trying to convince myself that this wasn’t a date, that it was just me going to meet him at the museum to discuss his first day. It wasn’t a very strong part of me, but perhaps stronger than I first thought.
“Brielle?” he asks.
“Hm?”
He watches me closely like he’s trying to figure me out. I sense he wants to say something but then decides against it. He clears his throat and looks down. “Well, we’re at the museum. Let’s look at some stuff.”
We start with the painting behind us, and before I know it, it turns into an architecture lesson. He sees the painting as a portrait of a time period, and he points out all the reasons he knows which time period it is. Then, I learn about what was going on in the world during this time period. After a while, I begin to wonder if he’s talking to fill a void… or to keep from talking about something else, maybe.
“And so…” He turns to see me watching him, and he closes his eyes like he’s scolding himself. He lets out a breath. Then he breathes in quickly. “You know what?” He clears his throat. “I don’t know s— about art.”
I crack up laughing, just like last night when he had a somewhat-similar look on his face.
“You don’t have to know about everything,” I tell him, a silly grin still on my face.
“Yeah well, I don’t know why I even mentioned the museum last night. I guess it was just the next thing to pop into my mind when you said you didn’t want to go to the pub. I didn’t know it was an art only museum until I got here today.” He smiles a small smile back at me. “Unless you’d like to hear me go on and on about all this stuff in my head that probably has nothing to do with the actual work of art, we could go somewhere else.”
“I like listening to the stuff in your head,” I say without thinking. At least I don’t tell him that it’s because I love the sound of his voice.
“Are you sure?” he asks in a disbelieving, joking manner. “Believe me, there’s a lot of it. Probably a little too much.”
I giggle and say, “If you want to go somewhere else, we can.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here,” he says happily and takes my hand.
Where?! I think in a panic, worried he plans on getting me into his car and taking me somewhere unknown. He leads me out the back door of the museum, and we slowly take a walk along the sidewalk behind the buildings while the sun sets. I relax.
We stay quiet, lost in our own thoughts, and he never lets go of my hand. It’s a date. This is definitely a date. He runs his thumb back and forth across the back of my hand occasionally, making my insides jump around. Sometimes, he looks over at me like he wants to say something, but he always stops himself. It’s like he doesn’t know how to say it.
A little hungry, we stop at the pub he mentioned last night, and we walk into the small courtyard behind it.
“Brielle…” He tugs my hand a little, silently asking me to stop. “I have been trying to tell you something all evening, but I keep wondering if you want to hear it.”
“You have?” I ask, realizing I was right. Well, it was more that he thought I didn’t want to hear it versus not knowing how to say it.
“Yes,” he replies, and his fingers of his free hand run down the end of my arm before capturing my other hand.
“Back in the museum, the way you reacted to something I said makes me wonder if you realize that I consider this a date.”
I have that overwhelming urge to kiss him again, and it scares me. It would be easy; all I’d have to do would be to rest my arms on his shoulders to tilt his down to me. Then, I’d just kiss him. What scares me most is that I have no idea what I’m doing. What will happen once I kiss him? Will I look like a dummy if it’s too short? Will I look crazy if it’s too long? What if it’s just all wrong?
“I don’t want to leave any doubt. I would really like to see you again, over and over if that’s possible, dating.” His beautiful eyes watch me closely, and his hands adjust themselves to get a firmer grip on mine.
‘This is where you say no, Bri. This is where you confess. This is when you say that you didn’t think it was a serious date and that you two can’t date. This is the point when you apologize for lying.’
But…then I’ll not see him again! I…I’ll never know what it’s like to kiss him.
His eyebrows slowly come together like he’s starting to brace himself for a no. His lips tighten, as if to keep himself from blurting something out and/or further push away a painful thought. “Is that possible?” he directly asks in a controlled voice.
Shut up, I tell my inner voice. “Yes. I’d like that,” I tell him.
The tense expression leaves his face, and a smile replaces it. I can’t help but mirror it back to him. Yeah. Shut up. This incredibly hot guy likes me.
“I’m glad,” he says, pouring happiness into the two words. Then, that look like he suddenly got an idea crosses his face before he says, “Hey, Brielle, you know what?”
I have to giggle at the somewhat-childish glee in his eyes. “What?”
He leans in to whisper in my ear, and I again smell that wonderful scent that I smelled last night. “You. Are. Gorgeous.” I take in a surprised breath. He kisses my cheek! “And witty.” His beard lightly scratches my jaw as he moves his mouth down to my neck, giving me goosebumps. “I’ve never seen eyes so blue!” He kisses my neck, and my knees shake for a second while his arm wraps around my waist.
“Graham…” I whisper.
“Mm?” he murmurs on his way back up to my cheek again. One of his hands reaches up to hold the side of my face, and he pulls back to look down at me. “Too much?”
Not enough, more like, I think very loudly as I look up at him. Something ignites inside me, and I don’t know if he makes the first move or I do, but we meet in the middle.
Even though I want this, I still shake. He pulls back a second and sighs before kissing me again, and this time, he does something with his jaw on mine that makes my mouth open. His tongue invades my mouth, making my hands splay out for a second. Then he strokes my tongue with his, and a quick jolt goes through me. If I thought that little touch last night when he gave me his phone number was something, this beats that by a million.
I finally realize that I don’t have a thing to worry about. Graham definitely knows how to kiss. Of course he does. I relax and let him lead me, and when he senses me really relax, he moans and kisses me harder, his arms squeezing me to him.
My stomach makes a growling noise, the really loud, embarrassing kind. He chuckles into my mouth while I make an annoyed sound.
“Come on. Let’s get something to eat,” he says, looking blissfully happy.
I smile, and we turn to head into the pub. After he opens the door for me, I look inside and see the last person I wanted to see.
Dad!
“What is it?” Graham asks, obviously reading my facial expression.
I start breathing faster and backing up. Dad hasn’t seen me, and now that I’ve backed up, he can’t see me.
“What’s wrong?!” Graham asks again, holding the door and watching me with growing alarm.
“I have to go,” I tell him quietly.
“Go? Why?”
“I have to go!” I whisper in fright. I leave the little back porch behind the back door, back on the bricks where Graham kissed me. I don’t stop backing up until my back hits the tall fence.
He leaves the door and walks towards me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, open the gate next to me, and run out to the sidewalk.
“Brielle!” he calls out, and I quicken my pace in my fear, giving everything I have to speed.
The music in the pub is too loud. Dad couldn’t have heard that.
“Wait!” Graham begs. He sounds fainter as I go around the corner with tears streaming down my face.
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