Chapter 14

The next few days went by much like they had for the majority of the summer. Along with Monday I had also had Tuesday off, though hadn't really done much with it but relax and enjoy some down time. With the summer starting to tail off I was starting to get a little more conscious of my running. Through most the summer I was averaging 3-4 miles and usually running every other day with the weather starting to cool I was running 5-6 days a week. With the increased frequency I was keeping the mileage about the same. Since the races for cross country were just over 3 miles the longer runs didn't really need to be all that much further than what I'd been doing, but the increase in number of days would give me an advantage for once the season started.

Work itself that week was fairly typical. Each of the days that week I ended up working Boat Tag. I also kept the habit of going into work a little early to see who was around and socialize a little bit. I had to admit to myself that I enjoyed when I was able to include spending time with Tenille or Tonya. With Tenille there was the friendship we'd had for a while now and with Tonya it was the same with the added level of attraction I felt to her. Not that I wasn't attracted to Tenille, but that somehow with Tenille it seemed more just a friendship and nothing more. With Tonya however I felt that there was some connection between the two of us. It might have just been wishful thinking on my part, but there was just something about her that drew me in.

The one thing I did find out that wasn't typical though was about Nicole. Friday night after the park closed I had ended up going to Denny's with the group and she had gone as well. She hadn't gone out to Denny's with the crew for a while, though neither had I for that matter. That night she was there and with what looked to be her 'new' boyfriend, Chris. New proved to be a relative term, when I asked one of the guys if he knew how long the two had been going out I was told that it was a week before she and I had supposedly broken up.

Once I had found that out I definitely hadn't felt like sticking around, I'd simply got up from the table, paid my part of the bill and left. I had been told that the break up was due to the distance and that school was starting back up soon. Evidently it was just to make room for the next guy. To make it worse, it meant she had started dating him before she had broken it off with me. I felt like I had a wound reopen. Pain that had become dull brought forward again. She could have been honest about it and it would have hurt the same as it had to have the relationship end, but at least then I wouldn't have had the additional pain of not being given the decency of an honest reason. I wasn't naive enough to think I was the first choice for every girl out there, but to be tossed aside for someone else was painful. She had been a friend too, or at least I had thought she was. That she would not have the decency to have been up front with me showed in my opinion a lack of respect and concern for the other person. That wasn't something that I wanted in a friend, so I had effectively lost both a friend and a girlfriend by her actions.

I spent the next week in what I felt like was a bit of a funk. At work I was just kind of going through the motions. The good thing about having frustration and hurt as emotions were that it helped the intensity of my morning runs. All I had to do was put on some fast paced music and go push the pace up or go pound some hills. It also had the advantage of wearing the body out; forcibly making the mind think about things other than what irritated you in the first place. The other advantage to it was that it was a legitimate reason to get some sun in just shorts. Since I was half-Japanese I was naturally a little tan but time out in the sun like that helped turn it a little darker and of course helped to neutralize the work-caused farmer tan that I would have had otherwise.

I was in a bit of a funk I had to admit to myself. Thinking about it I thought there were two things I could do about it. I could just wait for it to go away, which it would of course, or I could more actively do something about it. The thing I did try to focus on was the luck I had with the blind date that week. I honestly thought that if it weren't for the distance and situation that might have been something that would have worked out, well for a while at least. I definitely had no illusions that I was going to go on a date with the person I would marry anytime soon. I was just sixteen, after all. Countless numbers of people hadn't even met the person they ended up marrying until well after the high school years if not college years were over.

So I decided: active it was going to be. I didn't want to just sit back and see what would happen, I wanted to be the one pushing to make something happen. If I asked someone out and got turned down, then so be it I would get turned down. But if there was someone that I wanted to go on a date with I would at least ask and just see what would happen for the rest. Now all I had to do was decide who to put that plan into action with. Tonya seemed like a logical choice or I could go for more of a spur of the moment opportunity date if I was able to get a good enough vibe from someone I may not know as well. Logical didn't always mean that it would be successful, though.

As luck would have it though I even ended up with a little help in getting things started. One of the guys I had gotten to know a little in working at Lagoon was named Chris. He lived in Layton, which was the next city north of my home in Kaysville, so it put us pretty close to each other and him still fairly close to Lagoon for work. I had been talking to him a little bit about the class my parents taught during the summer and how they had a trip coming up this next weekend that would take them out to the desert in western Utah and keeping them out there from Friday through till Sunday afternoon or evening. As it turns out, they were taking my two sisters with them, but since I worked on the weekends it would just be me around the house. Hearing that, Chris made the suggestion of making a party out of it, having a few friends from work over after the park had closed and just hanging out there.

While after work parties weren't as common as the trips we'd take to Denny's or another restaurant they weren't uncommon either. Most of the time they were similar situations to what the one at my place would be: the parents gone for the weekend or day, so there would be a party snuck in while they were out. I decided to take a chance and go ahead and ok the party and started inviting some people. As tends to happen with things like this, what had started out with in mind for a group of ten to fifteen people soon turned into almost triple that once the party actually got going.

The party itself had been fairly easy to get started. Since all of us were on fairly limited budgets for the most part, I had decided to spread things out and just told people to bring whatever they would want to drink or snack on and asked a couple of my closer friends to bring a few things as well so that we would have snack stuff to be able to last a little while. With the party set and started things kind of settled into groups as far as who was doing what. Out in the drive way some of the guys had started an impromptu game of basketball on my drive way hoop. Up in the office upstairs there had been a group of three couples that had gone up there to get a little privacy for what I later found out had been a game of truth or dare.

For my part though, I ended up circulating a little at first but eventually settling downstairs with a small group of people that had put on a movie. As 'luck' would have it (ok ok, so luck had nothing to do with it) Tonya had come to the party and had ended up sitting down next to me on the couch while we were watching the movie. The movie itself was a fairly decent one that had been out for about two years now called School Ties. The added benefit to the movie for some of us was the fact that it was a fairly slow paced drama. I had asked Tonya to the party as a date a couple days before it with the added provision that I'd have to give her a ride home after it was over.

As the movie went on Tonya ended up settling in against me watching it with my arm settled around her shoulders. Taking this as a positive sign, I ended up pulling her a little closer. Later I wouldn't be able to tell who had started it but the cuddle had turned into a kiss. The kissing definitely ended up going for a while. They had still been playing football in the movie the last scene that we had actually watched. I definitely had to say this was going to be a favorite way to watch a movie for me, lips locked with an attractive girl. The movie itself seemed to end all too soon, but it wasn't the end of things as far as the party went. We just ended up switching from movie to music. The general mood of the room was definitely not focused on the people as a whole, but the individual couples that had turned the living room into a make out area.

Sure, making out was a little tame compared to some of the stuff that had gone on with Nicole, but I was definitely not going to be complaining about it. Most especially not since Tonya seemed to be enjoying it as much as I was. As all good things do though, the night had to come to an end, at least for Tonya and I. During a break to come up for air she let me know that she needed to be heading back, since she'd been given a curfew for the night of 2 am. Since there were still a few people around my house I made sure to check in with Chris and let him know that I'd be gone long enough to run Tonya home and then be back.

On the drive home Tonya directed me up to her place and for the first time I found out just how close she actually lived to me. Tonya lived in a small city called Fruit Heights that was just east of Kaysville but up at the base of the mountains. I'd always taken it for granted living close to the mountains, but she was the first person I was spending time with who actually lived at the base of the mountains. The drive up to her house took me up a road that we used for our hill workouts and across the highway, highway 89 or Mountain Road as it was called, and then down a small side street. The drive itself probably only covered about two miles total and put her house almost due east of mine.

Stopping in her drive way I got out and did the gentlemanly thing, going around and getting the door for her, then walking her up to the front door. The porch light was on, but at this time of morning there were no other lights on inside the house. The goodbye itself was brief, with me leaning in and getting a quick kiss before she used her keys to unlock the door and go inside. Once she was in I went back to the car and for home, not wanting to leave the rest of the people at the party alone with me not there to at least keep an eye on things.