Shorter Stories from The Avocado Grove - Part III Why My Boyfriend Does Wheelies on His Motorbike at Midnight

I don't remember the path we walked or even the silly things I must have said as we reached our destination.  The place we ended up, a cove of pines and Red oak trees overlooking a valley, is a place my Mom would have warned me about, if she only knew.

I wanted so much to be a grown up, to not screw up.  But every scary piece of news about a girl my age, a dead girl found in a secluded forest bubbled up inside my head. 

"Can we go back now?"

Surely this would make him come to his senses and realize how maybe a guy like him might want to be with someone more confident, someone like Sherry.  And what about Cliff?

Dillon threaded his hands through his mane of hair, my fingers itched to follow their lead, and the voices began to fade.  I forgot all about Cliff.  Cliff who endured the endless glares of all the Johnson's because of his motorbike and who went to the last party at Ally and Don's when we all suffered Ally's sister Grizzly - her volleyball glory days, Cliff the most.  He nodded and smiled and invited her to go on about how she was just like Misty May Treanor.

"You should have seen my serve.  If I hadn't got mixed up with Emily's father."  She carried a dwindling crowd for a good half hour and sounded less like a volleyball superstar and more like she belonged in a Stevie Ray Vaughn song.  She was drunk and tired, and always someplace in between missing Eddie and blaming him for everything in life she didn't get.  Cliff said, "Not to worry, Mrs. Grizzly, Juni's going to a good school, I'm driving her up."

When Dillon reached for me and crushed my mouth with his, I thought he likes me.  And I followed all of these feelings inside believing how incredible, I had a boyfriend the first week of school.  (Except I already had a boyfriend.)  He packed me pieces of pineapple pizza for the trip here and said, "Be good." 

Dillon shoved me down.

"Wait a minute," I said.  He didn't.