Chapter 21: Slow Pursuits and Madcap Chases

Saturday, September 7, 1985

After getting up slightly late and lingering over breakfast, we got going just in time for the hot tub people to arrive. We let them into the backyard and showed them where we wanted it to go. After some discussion, they agreed that we had picked a good location.

From here, we just let them go. Their job was to set up a concrete pad for the hot tub.

They were done several hours later, well before I had to leave for my date with Darla. The pad itself needed to cure, so we would just leave it alone for the next week.

I headed to the bedroom around four-thirty to change and found Jas in the middle of changing, too. Since she was down to her bra and panties, I said, “Woo-hoo!”

That got her giggling.

“Glad you approve!” she said.

“Always!” I said, hugging her.

“Ready for your date with Dave?” she said, grinning.

I gave her ass a playful pop, which got a much bigger “Oww!” than was really called for. The giggle made it clear she wasn’t at all serious, thankfully. To be fair, she really didn’t have much padding there, but she also sometimes liked much stronger pops. I would hate to deprive her of those!

“No,” I said. “But quite ready for Darla. I think.”

“How do you think it’s going to go?”

I shrugged.

“Best guess? We have a nice, casual date which goes no further than a nice goodnight kiss, but sets up future dates.”

She nodded.

“Sounds about right. Sometimes you move a bit more slowly than you need to, but ‘slow’ is a good thing in Darla’s case, I think.”

“Me, too. How about yours?”

She grinned.

“Fast, of course!”

“Woo-hoo!”

She gave me a quick kiss.

“This is fun!” she said. “Which is how it’s supposed to be.”

“Definitely!”

I put on a fairly nice shirt and khaki pants. Darla was used to seeing me in nice clothes and I expected she would put in a bit of effort, too. Hopefully a good ‘casual date’ level of effort, but we would see.

By this point, I was a veteran at picking up girls from the Commons dorms. Krueger was little different from Mosher, save that there was no outside entrance near the front parking spaces.

The other difference really mattered more. Darla barely knew her roommate, and she knew me quite well, so there wasn’t anything like things with Kay. Her roommate wasn’t even there, so any meeting would be left to the future.

Yes, it occurred to me that her roommate could turn out to be someone I knew. That was true all over the place, though. What would be would be.

She answered the door right away when I knocked. I gave her a big smile, which she returned immediately. I’d guessed right about clothes. She had a light green blouse, a brown knee-length skirt with low heels, and had her hair back in a ponytail. It worked for both Darla the cute girl and Darla the tomboy, both of whom I appreciated.

Our hands found each other’s before we even reached the stairs. From that point on, we held hands. We talked about classes on the way to the car. ‘So far, so good’ was the conclusion for both of us, pretty much. Hard to be much more after a week, except for those times when you can already tell a class is going to be a pain in the butt for any of a number of reasons. She didn’t have that yet this semester, and neither did I.

I’d picked Swensen’s for dinner. It was casual, which suited our relationship thus far, but still the sort of place one would take a date. Indeed, it was full of couples this evening, most of whom looked like they were probably early in the dating process.

Heck, we probably looked like we’d been dating for a long time by comparison. Most of these couples were likely really new. We’d been in each other’s lives for two years at Memorial. Even with last year as largely a missed opportunity, we still knew each other pretty well.

Neither of us went anywhere particularly deep. The flip side of knowing each other well was that we knew where each other was coming from. I was quite accomplished at dating and my role was to chase Darla. She wasn’t all that accomplished, and her role was to lead me on a merry chase. Whether she was ready to be caught was something neither of us could answer, I was pretty sure.

When we got to the theater and I ordered the tickets, Darla looked surprised.

“I would’ve guessed ‘Gremlins’,” she said.

“I considered that, but ... I just have a feeling you’ll enjoy this.”

“It looks kinda ... odd,” she said.

I shrugged and said, “So did ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’.”

She giggled.

“Okay!” she said. “Fine! You have a point there. You think this will be that good?”

“How can I tell? I hear good things, but I guess we’ll find out in a bit.”

“I guess we will!”

We skipped snacks, since we’d just eaten, and settled into the theater. I was reminded of movie dates long, long ago. The row she’d chosen would have been where Candice and I would have sat, most likely — towards the back of the theater, with very few people around us. This date would be very unlike those, but it still brought a bit of a smile to my lips.

At first, I was a bit worried about whether Darla would like the movie. It took her a bit to really get into it, it felt like. Admittedly, the earlier parts can be a bit awkward. Perhaps that’s the point, but still. Once things really got going, though, she was enraptured. The basement (or lack thereof) at the Alamo, ‘Large Marge’, the madcap chases — all of it seemed to work for her.

I put my arm around her shoulders just a bit into the movie, which she clearly liked. About ten minutes later, her hand found my other hand and we held hands from then on. For Darla, that was probably a bold move, and it was one I appreciated. Our dating was hardly going to be a madcap chase, after all. It was going to be slow and steady.

When the movie ended, Darla squeezed my hand and said, “You were right about this being a good pick! That was a lot of fun!”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I said.

“I loved it! At first, I thought I was just going to hate Pee-Wee’s stupid laugh, but it grew on me. It’s ... he is who he is, and I like that.”

“Me, too. He was fearless, in a weird sort of way. Naive, but also maybe not as naive as one might think.”

She gave me a little grin at that and squeezed my hand again.

“Hey,” she said. “The police in the movie reminded me.”

“Oh?”

“When we left the party, there was a police car out there. It drove off, but we wound up talking for a few minutes and it came back, passed by slowly, then left again. I’m wondering if it was, like, scoping out the party. The whole thing was starting to break up, so I can’t imagine there was a problem.”

“We’ve had some weird interactions with the police,” I said. “Might be unconnected, but ... we’ll keep an eye out.”

“Good idea!” she said.

We got up, still holding hands, and walked to the car, only separating to get into the car.

Once we were settled, I said, “Back to your castle, milady?”

She giggled.

“Um ... I would have maybe said ice cream, but we did that. So ... I guess so?”

That set off a few things in my head. Not bad things, just ... curious things. If this was Houston, I might have proposed mini-golf or the like, but I didn’t know of anything like that in Bryan / College Station right now. Going to a nightclub was clearly out, and that was the late-night hangout of choice for most students.

Instead, I made a plan on the fly.

“Maybe we could head back, but go for a walk when we get there?”

“I’d love that!” she said, bouncing a bit in her seat.

The drive back was full of little comments about the movie. Things she liked, things she didn’t, and so forth.

I parked in the huge lot behind Krueger and the other Commons dorms this time. That, by itself, would guarantee a walk, but it was easy to head off around the Corps dorms area and around to the little park next to the MSC and football stadium.

We fell mostly silent during the walk, just enjoying holding hands and being together.

As we crossed a little bridge in the park, Darla lagged a bit, then stopped, putting her other hand on the railing and looking out.

“So...” she said. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Mm-hmm,” she said, nodding. “It’s ... well. In one way, I suppose, I’m Pee-Wee and you’re Dottie. Oh, I’m also not — he’s oblivious, and I’m not — but she’s the one doing the chasing, and he’s ... well, he is who he is.”

I nodded at that.

She sighed and said, “I ... I’m not sure...”

Then she fell silent.

After giving her a bit, I said, “You’re not sure if you’re ready to be caught.”

Even in the dim lighting in the park, I could see how red she became.

“It’s ... yeah,” she said. “I’m not. I thought I was, and I ... still kinda think I am ... but ... maybe I’m not, which ... yeah, that means I’m not sure.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“Is it?” she said, giving my hand a squeeze. “I mean ... for you?”

“Of course,” I said. “I mean that. Catching someone is never a given. If I wasn’t fine with you not being ready, I would never have asked you out. That’s ... there’s a lot wrong with that, otherwise.”

She made a thoughtful noise and bit her lower lip. After a bit, she said, “I ... see that. Yeah. It’s ... it’s just ... it feels different to me. Like, okay, we were in high school and that’s ... maybe young? At least, for a lot of people. But ... now we’re in college and I’m a grown woman and ... should I feel like this? All ... unsure?”

I pulled her into a hug, still holding hands.

“You should feel how you feel,” I said. “There’s no timetable, no age at which you have to be ready for anything. Anyone who tells you differently is pressuring you...”

She started to say something, but I shushed her.

“Before you say it, I know. Maybe part of you wants to be pressured a little.”

She blushed again, shivering just a bit against me.

“That’s part of you, though. That’s not all of you.”

“Y ... yes,” she said.

“So ... for my awkward part of the conversation...”