Chapter 26A: Making a move

A/N: Thanks to Jim for editing!

"Hi."

"Hi... Rory?"

Good guess.

"I didn't know if you'd be working or not," I replied, as I sat on my bedroom floor, leaning back against the bed with the phone to my ear. "You said three o'clock."

"I'm on my way there now," Seth replied.

I glanced at the clock. That made sense. It was just past two forty-five. But it seemed much earlier in the day to me. Maybe that was because it was one o'clock before I woke up to Eddie asking me if I wanted to go driving. We didn't spend too much time out there, though. Just long enough for me to figure out that parking was a lot easier in Jase's car, and for Eddie to talk me into getting a driver's manual to study. He insisted that I might as well be ready for the Arizona driver's license test, just in case I changed my mind and decided to stay. I'd wanted to argue with him, but decided that it wasn't worth it. If all he wanted me to do was study a little book, I decided that I could give him that.

"Right. I'll let you go then," I told Seth. I didn't necessarily want to hang up, but I didn't exactly see the point of staying on the phone, either. He was on his way to work, and the only reason I'd called him was because last night I'd suggested that I would--okay, there were more reasons than that, but I couldn't really deal with them when Seth had to go, anyway.

"Okay," Seth replied, sounding a little confused.

"Talk to you later," I said quickly, feeling entirely annoyed with myself. It wasn't like I'd promised to call him, and it wasn't like he'd expected it. And yet, that's exactly what I'd done. "Uh, maybe I'll see you later," I added, and there was a silence on the other end of the line while I waited for Seth to say goodbye. But it dragged on a little too long, and a moment later I was wondering if he'd hung up on me.

"I get off work at seven tonight," he suddenly said.

Well, that was an opening if I'd ever heard one. Too bad I didn't have the guts to take it.

"Yeah, cool. So, I'll talk to you later."

I quickly hung up the phone, and then proceeded to smack myself in the forehead.

I didn't know what I was doing. Last night, I'd been fairly certain that any attraction I had to Seth was because I was looking for ways to get over Aaron. But after Luke gave me that little kiss, I'd caught myself wondering what kissing Seth would be like on more than one occasion, and when I'd picked up the phone to call Seth, I'd been hopeful that the sound of his voice would either help me realize it was a good thing he hadn't kissed me, or at least convince me that I still wanted him to. It hadn't really done either.

I don't know when I started laughing, but I couldn't seem to stop. It was Jase's fault, I decided. Just when he was about to start dinner, he discovered that one of his ingredients had passed its expiration date and he tossed the whole thing out. Eddie had been in the middle of reading a magazine, peacefully sipping a soda at the kitchen table, when Jase snatched the magazine out of his hands, smacked him in the head with it, and insisted that Eddie didn't take us out to dinner nearly enough. Eddie was in shock. Luke and I were amused. And as I soon discovered, it wasn't beyond Jase to be completely spontaneous like this. We were halfway to finding a restaurant when Luke spotted a goonie golf course, mentioned we should go sometime, and Jase made an abrupt left into the place with no objections. There, we decided to play in teams. Luke automatically claimed Eddie as his partner because Eddie happened to be very good at the game, but Jase and I came out ahead by eight points because Jase was shameless when it came to distracting Eddie from getting his famous hole-in-ones. Once, he even grabbed Eddie's butt, and the way Eddie actually squealed was so funny that Luke and I agreed that there was no gross-out factor. We made it to dinner around seven o'clock, at which time I was looking at the clock again, thinking of Seth; but that didn't last very long because I was soon drawn into conversations around our table as we ate.

On the way home, while Jase and Eddie talked quietly in the front seat about how they could both take time off for a vacation this year, only not on the same days, I found myself in the back, asking Luke about Dave. I hadn't asked him what had happened the night before because I'd been distracted over Seth. As it turned out, he did talk to Dave, only he hadn't told his friend that he was annoying the shit out of him. I didn't understand this, but Luke insisted that there were plenty of times that Dave had put up with him, and the least he could do was do the same thing for Dave. But, he did happen to tell Dave that if Dave didn't ask Angela out soon, Luke would ask her out himself. Apparently Dave wasn't convinced, for the obvious reasons, but he agreed that the next time he saw her, he'd try his best.

It was after eight o'clock by the time we were driving past Seth's house and towards ours. I found myself taking an extra long look out the window, noticing the blue truck parked out front. This didn't go unnoticed by Luke.

When I started to follow Eddie and Jase into the house through the garage, it was Luke who grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

"Hey, I'm gonna meet the guys at the park. Do you wanna come?"

"Um... now?" We'd just gotten home.

"In a few minutes... I could drop you off at Seth's on the way."

I blinked, and noticed Luke studying me carefully after he made that offer.

"Luke... okay," I abruptly agreed, and he raised an eyebrow at me.

"Seriously?"

"Look, I don't know what I'm doing with Seth," I admitted. "But, I sorta like him. I think. I mean, I thought that I liked being around him because after Aaron he was just... well, a lot better, but I've been thinking a lot after last night and I think..."

"Okay," Luke abruptly cut off my babbling, cracking a smile. "Why don't you tell Eddie and Jase what we're doing."

"Okay."

Couldn't talk. Not with that woman smiling at me. I looked away from her, to where Luke had dropped me off. He was already gone. I looked back at Seth's mom, the pretty woman who was looking at me expectantly, and tried again. She'd asked me a question. "Are you here to see Seth?" it was simple enough to answer.

"Yes."

Thank god for the redheaded midget who fought her way past her mom, looked at me and grinned a toothless smile. It was a good distraction.

"Hi, Rory!"

I was surprised she remembered me.

"Hi... Gail."

And I remembered her name. Bonus points for me.

"I got a new dress!" she announced. "Wanna see it?"

Mrs. Fisher smiled at me again. Almost apologetically, but it also could have been one of those smiles that mothers give when they think their offspring have said something cute.

"Come on in," she insisted. "Gail, will you take Rory up to Seth's? I think he's in his room."

I stepped into the house as they made room for me, becoming startled when Gail latched onto my hand with a surprisingly strong grip for a forty-pound little girl.

"Come on, Seth's in his room!" Gail informed me, making sure that her mother's point got across.

"Hi, Randy." Mr. Fisher waved to me from their living room.

"It's Rory, Mars," Mrs. Fisher corrected him. This time, it was an apologetic look she threw over her shoulder at me, but I didn't see much of it, not with Gail hauling me up the stairs the way she was. I wanted to tell her to back off, that I already knew the way, but she seemed oddly proud of her ability to carry out her task. I didn't want to take that away from her.

I tried to stop Gail when we reached Seth's door, though. It was closed, and it was just rude not to knock on a closed bedroom door. Gail didn't knock. She opened the door, and fortunately, I managed to get out of her grip and wait outside because a moment later Seth was shouting her name. Another moment later and I found out why.

"You have to knock, Gail!" he informed her, and I stepped aside as he carried her to his door and deposited her gently outside of it. He was dripping wet and wearing a towel that was in the process of falling off his narrow, pale, right hip before he caught it.

"But Rory's here," Gail said innocently and I managed to get my eyes on Seth's face and away from everything else just as his eyes widened and he turned his head in my direction, pushing back his dripping hair as he licked a few tiny beads of water off his top lip. I couldn't help noticing the way he was suddenly holding his towel a little tighter after spotting me there, but all that accomplished was drawing my attention to a distinct tent that made me question what Gail had interrupted.

"I'll be right back," I heard him say, right before Gail and I had a door slammed in our faces. She looked up at me, shrugged, and then walked back down the hallway, leaving me to wait. I couldn't decide if I wanted to laugh or adjust myself. He hadn't looked that drenched in the pool the other day. His nipples definitely hadn't been that hard and I didn't recall his shorts clinging to his ass the way that towel had been; and I think I would have remembered seeing his very personal endowment if it had been sticking up like that. I wondered if he was taking care of that while I was out there waiting. My jeans suddenly felt a lot tighter than normal, but looking down, I decided that it could have been worse. I was suddenly very grateful for the fact that Luke had a fetish for walking around naked. It was good practice for controlling reactions similar to this one.

I tried to look as normal as possible when Seth suddenly opened the door again. He'd obviously dressed quickly. His jeans needed straightening and the top half of his shirt seemed soaked through from his hair dripping. At least he hadn't shoved a hat on his head, too. And, it was really hard to act normal with the blush coloring his cheeks as he waved me into his room. This was awkward.

"Sorry about that," I offered, trying to break the ice.

"Forget it," he responded. "Gail never knocks."

He wasn't meeting my eyes. At all.

"Hey, if this is a bad time, I can go."

"It's fine. I just didn't know you were coming."

He didn't give me a chance to respond to that as he shut his door behind me and then suddenly turned and headed back for his bathroom, leaving me alone again. I hoped that he wasn't angry. After a moment of considering it, I decided that he was just embarrassed. When he returned for the second time, I was sitting on his sofa, looking around his room, which seemed a lot more organized than the last time I'd seen it, and I was happy to find that he'd managed to compose himself. At least, he'd stopped blushing, and he'd stopped his hair from dripping everywhere and he'd combed it back. Wet like that it looked like the hair on the top of his head almost reached his neck. I found myself hoping that he didn't cover it all up too quickly. I kinda liked being able to see his whole face when I was talking to him.

"Are you sure you don't want me to go?" I asked him. "I really didn't mean to sneak up on you like that."

He shook his head as he approached me, and I found myself standing up.

"That's okay. Do you want something to drink?"

I smiled to myself, noting that Seth asked that every time I walked into his house... except for that one time that Aaron had told him to go get everyone something to eat.

"No thanks."

He took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa and only then did I sit down.

"What are you doing here?" he asked after a moment, looking in my direction.

"You said you were off at seven... and then a while ago when we drove past here I saw you were home... Listen, when you said you were getting off at seven, I wanted to see if you wanted to do something, but I didn't. I don't know if you have plans now but I figured... I'd at least stop by. Is that okay with you?" I finished, almost challengingly, and Seth managed a smile.

"I didn't make plans tonight. I'm opening the store tomorrow morning."

"Oh."

Seth leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees for a moment as he studied his hands, and then he looked back at me.

"I'd ask if you wanna hang out here for a while, but I have a really bad feeling that my parents are going to come up here and drag us into a game of Go Fish with my sister, so do you wanna go for a walk or something?" He ran his hand through his damp hair. "Maybe I'll dry off some more outside."

"Sure," I agreed, and a few minutes later when he started to pick up a hat, I told him that his hair would dry faster without it. He seemed uncertain about that, but he left it.

Armed with a flashlight, we headed into the landscape, none of which we could really see in the dark straightaway from Seth's house, and any awkwardness that had been there when I first arrived slowly began to fade away, leaving me open to notice that some of the ease about being around Seth that had been there the night before was still present. And as we talked some more, I noticed that it didn't take him as long this time to walk more against my shoulder than next to me. Or, maybe that was me, walking so that I was up against him as he told me more about his family, specifically his brother that I'd heard about but never seen.

Apparently, Brendan Neptune Fisher was nineteen years old, and he'd been missing from his family for the last year and a half. He'd dropped out of high school during his senior year to marry a woman three years older than him. As Seth explained it, telling his parents that he was gay was nothing compared to his brother's news. Seth insisted that his parents tried to be reasonable, deciding to be supportive of their oldest son's decision, as long as he stayed in school; but when Brendan insisted that his parents owed it to him to let him and his wife live with them--and support them--while he was finishing high school, and during a heated moment when Seth's mom insisted that Brendan get the marriage annulled, things went bad and Seth's brother moved to New Mexico to live with his wife's family.

I got the feeling that this had been hard on Seth, who'd been close to his brother. He explained that Brendan still wrote to Gail every once in a while, but since Seth sided with his parents during the ordeal, the letters he wrote to his brother were only answered by his wife, who Seth had decided was okay, if somewhat ditzy. Recently, he'd learned that his brother was working on getting his life together, and Seth still had hope that their family would be able to reconcile.

The topic reminded me of what Eddie had told me about his family, and I found myself telling Seth what I'd been told, and how I was rethinking the idea of letting Eddie send a picture of me to his mother--a woman who probably wouldn't like me, anyway. When Seth asked me if it bothered me that my own grandmother probably wouldn't approve of me, I decided that I was indifferent. I didn't see myself calling Eddie's mom grandma anytime soon, anyway. I already had a grandma, as insane as she made me. I told Seth about Grandma Alice. But, not really any of the bad stuff. In fact, I don't think I mentioned that I was angry with her once. I told him all about her bad habits; like the fact that she was a midnight smoker. Every once in a while she'd get into my grandfather's cigars at ungodly hours of the night and go smoke one in the bathroom. There had even been a few times when she didn't remember it and blamed me. I told Seth about her bad driving, and a hundred other things that I hadn't thought about while I was trying not to think about her. And when I told him how she found a character flaw in every one of the friends I used to have, Seth started asking simple questions about the people who I used to hang out with and I found myself telling Seth about them. Only, everything I told him about them I remembered from before my mom got sick. That's when they'd really been my friends, I realized. It was before she got sick. I kinda missed them. I missed everything that I'd had before she got sick. It bothered me to think about, though, and as my thoughts turned deeper, I fell silent. It was when Seth fell silent, too, that I forced myself to pull away from my own thoughts and focus on our surroundings.

It occurred to me that I didn't have any idea what time it was. I wasn't too worried, though. There was no way it was already midnight, and besides, we'd turned back towards Seth's house at some point so I could find out soon enough. Worrying about the time didn't seem very important, anyway. At some point, as we'd been walking close together the way we were, the sides of our hands had started to brush together, and I found myself focusing on that. It tickled. The next time I was conscious of it happening, I extended my smallest finger, making it more deliberate. Nothing Seth was doing changed. I wondered if he even noticed as he started talking again, saying that he'd left his cell phone at home. It was a change in topic that I didn't particularly care for. I almost made sure my hand missed the next time it passed his, but decided against it.