by L. B. Dunbar
“I’m sorry.” I paused. I had to ask. “What happened?”
“I’m not married.”
“Divorced?”
“Not really your business, but no.”
I was startled by the roughness of her tone.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” I narrowed my eyes to look at the boy. Was she raising him alone? A single mother? If that were true, she had to have had him at eighteen or nineteen years old. I looked back at her. She could see the processing on my face.
“I was almost nineteen,” she replied curtly.
I shook my head. I didn’t mean it rudely, but I looked at my watch for something to do.
“I don’t want to hold you up,” Britton replied dryly.
“Oh, it’s not that. But I do have a dinner with Mike George soon. I was planning to return to my hotel, but I don’t know if I have time to make it there and back.”
“Well, if you hurry, you could make it. What time is it?”
“Almost five-fifteen.”
“We need to leave soon, also.” Britton stood from the swing. “It was nice to see you again.” She was dismissing me again, just like the other day.
“I’d like to see you again. Maybe drinks? Dinner? Coffee? Water?” I was rambling, blurting out anything.
“I don’t know, Gavin. I’m busy.” She looked at Gee.
“Lunch tomorrow. Bring Gee with you.” I was sincere. I just wanted more time.
“I can’t.” She didn’t offer further information. Then she added, “You better go. You don’t want to be late for your big dinner.”
I shook my head in defeat.
“It was nice to meet you, Gee,” I yelled toward the playset. The boy waved at me and continued to run up and down the wiggling wooden bridge.
“He’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“Yes, he is,” Britton whispered in reply. I glanced back at her and noticed that she was watching me again.
“I’ll see you?” I realized I was holding my breath again.
“Good luck at your premiere tomorrow,” she said, and stuck her hand out to shake. I almost laughed. I couldn’t shake her hand. I was too familiar with this girl, but I took her hand, caressing it in my own and holding on a bit longer than is normal.
“Would you…would you come to my movie…tomorrow? I could get you tickets. I could get a ticket for you and Gee?” I knew I sounded desperate, but I felt that way. I had an overwhelming desire for her to be there, to see what I had been working on and what I had accomplished. I was staring at our hands, still joined together as I smoothed my thumb over the back of hers, feeling a slow pleasurable burning sensation creep through me.
“Your movie’s hardly for little kids, Gavin,” she laughed. I whipped my head up to look at her and raised an eyebrow. She knew? She knew all about my movie?
“How do you kn…are you going already? With someone?” I sensed the moment I pushed too far, asked too much. A guarded expression flashed across her face and I wanted to punch myself for asking one too many questions.
“You better go, Gavin, so you aren’t late.” She gently tugged her hand from my clasp and I let it go. A feeling of loss, and mistake, was overcoming me again.
“Thank you.” I didn’t know why I said it or where it came from, but I reached for her hand again and raised it to my lips, turning it palm up and kissing it. It was intimate and inappropriate, and somehow I knew I never wanted to let go of her hand again.
Take 13
Under the Moonlight
I smiled to myself as I rushed back to the hotel. I was surprised she remembered that my premiere was the next day, but furthermore she knew what my movie was about, or at least knew it was rated PG-13. I’d told her a few days ago and she remembered. I’d been telling Zoe for months and she couldn’t recall a single detail.
My hand still felt the soft imprint of hers in mine and I recalled the fragrance of her. Something fresh, like summer. I couldn’t believe I’d kissed her palm, and yet my lips still felt the sensation of touching her skin again. Another memory replayed in my mind, not as vivid, but still memorable.
Scene: The Kiss
She was fourteen; I was sixteen.
She was entering high school as a freshmen and I was going to be a junior. She didn’t seem too young for me. As a matter of fact, I thought she was older when I first met her. It wasn’t just the shape of her body, but the way she carried herself, as if she were wiser and more mature.
I had been invited to her uncle’s to watch a movie a few days after we met. I’d practically been stalking her and I discovered where she lived for the summer. When I entered her house with my friend, Reese, her uncle wasn’t home. Reese threw himself on the couch while Britton stretched out on the floor before the television. She put in a John Hughes movie and I couldn’t have been more excited by the classic.
I lay down next to her as Reese flipped between using his phone and watching the movie. The film was about a forgotten birthday and I commented that I was sixteen.
“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,” I said with a pout.
Britton laughed. “I doubt it.”
“I’m serious,” I said innocently, batting my eyelashes at her in mock flirtation.
“Right?” she drew out exaggerating.
I bumped into her shoulder with my own, teasing her, and then I kissed it when she bumped me back.
I looked up at her after my lips left her bare shoulder and she sucked in a breath. I leaned forward and kissed her lightly, but when I went to pull back, her lips followed mine. I leaned toward her again and she kissed me softly. I sucked her lips lightly and she returned the action. I bit her lower lip gently and she bit mine. I pressed firmly on her mouth and heard a sound from the back of her throat.
Reese coughed, and we broke apart. I realized in that moment, that I hadn’t been joking. I hadn’t ever been kissed with the electric intensity that crept through me as my lips touched hers. No, I had definitely never been kissed like that before.
* * *
The dinner with Mike George was all I hoped and more. The gathering was intimate in a private dining room at an American-themed restaurant on Main Street. I knew Mr. George prided himself on American made products and would have expected nothing less than a restaurant that served American cuisine, which meant more burgers and fries. I ordered chicken from the limited selection and added a salad. I hadn’t eaten anything healthy since I’d been back home.
Home. Was that the right word for this area? I felt like a foreigner here and yet I knew this was still somehow my home.
Mr. George was entertaining, if not a bit argumentative, but I wasn’t convinced he meant to be. He just wanted to play devil’s advocate for things and come up with conspiracy theories to see how people would react. What I enjoyed the most was his passion for wanting to know the truth and share that information with others. By the end of the evening, I felt comfortable pitching my idea about migrant workers. I was no Cesar Chavez, but I believed that the migrant workers of America needed support. Even if they were immigrants, they worked for cheap labor in jobs that many Americans did not want, and the fruits of their labor were for Americans. It all seemed cyclical to me, and although my first film was fictional, I wanted to tell the truth behind the premise. Mr. George listened attentively and asked some critical questions that made me reflect on my idea. At the end of the conversation, I explained how I needed financial backing for this work, and that’s where I felt I lost Mr. George.
“Aren’t you the one dating Zeke Steinmann’s daughter?” Mike George smiled.
“Yes, but he won’t support this kind of project,” I sighed.
“Why not? It’s about the money for him, isn’t it? Which ironically is what you need, right?”
I didn’t respond.
“Work on the girlfriend. Doesn’t she have support from daddy? What Zoe wants, Daddy gets, and all that?”
“Well, she doesn’t exactly support the project either, I’m a
fraid.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t see the suffering. Or rather, she doesn’t want to see it, even if she is aware.”
“Sounds like she’s not aware of a few things.”
I looked at Mr. George, puzzled.
“If she supports you, she supports the project. If she believes in you, she believes in the project. But if she doesn’t, maybe she’s not the one unaware.”
I thought Mr. George was trying to be sarcastic for a moment, until he smiled and extended his hand as a farewell to me.
“Don’t be afraid, Gavin Scott.” He shook my hand and approached another director to say goodnight.
I replayed the final words exchanged over and over again, but my concentration kept shifting to Britton…and Zoe. Zoe had called again just to complain about some purchase she made that wasn’t what she ordered, and to inform me of another party that she wanted to attend the next weekend. She said she would go without me if I wasn’t home by Friday, and I sighed deeply. I was staying to attend Jess Carter’s wedding in another week. Period. Zoe knew this.
Or she should know this, but she wasn’t the one that was here at the festival. And she wasn’t the one who remembered the night of my premiere. And she wasn’t the one who could recall the premise of my movie, even though I had been living and breathing it for months. The person who did seem aware of the movie was Britton, and I was still dumbfounded. She had to have done the research, which would not have been hard. A quick look at the festival website or the movie brochure of events gave a brief description of each movie, but this all meant Britton would have had to take the time to look. That’s what puzzled me most. It also made me smile.
Take 14
Under the Moonlight
I felt sick to my stomach. Not exactly, but I hated to say that I felt butterflies in my stomach, which was more closely a description. Either way, I was nervous as hell, and I knew why. It was the film itself. I was so proud of this film. I was proud of the direction I gave and the vision I saw come to life. What I was worried about was the audience. Would they see what I saw? Would they interpret what I wanted them to? Would my dad appreciate the fatherly character that was clearly modeled after him, or the sympathetic mother that was clearly my own? The love interest in the movie was a Hispanic girl with dark features, quite the opposite of Britton, but I wondered if she’d recognize herself in this young girl … if she showed.
Despite Britton’s summer visits to her Uncle Leo’s, I knew vaguely of her convoluted home life down south. Her father had left her mother when she was young and her parents subsequently divorced. Her mother remarried when she was still young, to a man with older children, leading her interests to the new love of her life. This often left Britton alone, with or without the guidance of the older children, and thus she was sent to her great uncle’s each summer. Her stepbrother came up north once and that’s how I’d met Britton. It was a match made at the movies.
Scene: The Introduction
She was fourteen; I was sixteen.
It was ironic that I met her at a movie. Every third week of the summer months a movie was being played in the public park by the beach. In hindsight, it might have been the precursor idea that sparked Mike George’s Traverse City Film Festival. Either way, people came to the showings by the beach in large groups. Families on vacation, locals who loved movies, teenagers on dates.
The movies rotated through an animation kid movie, a teen favorite feature, and a classic film, but the crowd remained roughly the same. On the night of the teen movie in late July, I was with Jess Carter, Reese Stover, and an older friend, Caleb Walker, who loved the Traverse City area. Caleb could drive and he still hung out with a few of his younger friends on occasion. On this particular night, we decided the beach movie might be the best spot to meet girls, although in hindsight, it was a stupid idea because most girls would have been on a date with someone else. Reese and Caleb decided that didn’t matter. They snaked through the crowd, meeting up with guys they recognized, and monopolizing the girls as the movie played on.
Jess and I hung back, enjoying the bottle we’d snuck with us for the night’s entertainment. Jess saw her first, but I was the one who approached her. I thought she was older, and I never would have gone near her if I knew she was only fourteen. She was coming back from the bathroom and I passed her just to get a better look at the blonde beauty with a rich tan. In her white jeans and a tank top, I could assess the outline of her body. She was thin, but shapely. She returned to sit on a blanket near a guy in deep conversation with a woman. I noticed a little kid climb onto her lap, and for a moment I was disappointed that she might be the mother of this child. Who would want to date a teenage mother? I thought.
I returned to my seat near Jess and took a deep sip of the harsh alcohol, but my eyes kept wandering over to her. I noticed her looking at me on a few occasions, too. She finally stood and walked with the little boy to a makeshift concession stand on a folding card table with a portable popcorn cart. I stood and followed her. After she made her purchase, she turned quickly and I made sure she bumped right into me.
“Oh, excuse me,” she smiled, and I was a goner. She was a natural beauty. Her smile was white against the tan, and she had light pink lips. Her eyes were bright blue; her blonde hair was blowing in the slight breeze. It was all over for me and I held my breath at the instant attraction.
Some popcorn had spilled out of the container she held and the little boy reached for it. Britton gave him the paper bag and he took off at a skip, dribbling a trail of popcorn behind him, as Britton stood a moment longer staring at me. When I didn’t say anything, she stepped around me.
“Wait!” I reached out to grab her arm, and a slow burn tickled up my hand. It was like an electrical current. Once you’ve been zapped, you can’t break the hold. She looked down at my hand holding her arm.
“I’m sorry.” I released her quickly.
“I’m not,” she smiled again, and walked away. I followed her back to her seat and sat behind her on the grass. Jess moved forward to sit near me.
“What are we doing?” he whispered harshly to me.
“We are meeting this babe in front of me,” I hissed back.
Britton turned to look at us behind her and smiled before returning her gaze to the screen. The little boy sat next to her now, sharing the popcorn with her. It struck me that the movie really wasn’t appropriate for a little kid, and I was certain the boy must be bored. I couldn’t decide how the kid fit with this girl, though, and as I continued to watch her as she snuck peeks at me, I no longer cared.
The little boy eventually climbed onto the legs of the man sitting close to Britton. I later learned he was one of her older stepbrothers, and the little boy was his child. When the movie was over, I approached her again and introduced myself. We stood for a few minutes as her stepbrother and the woman gathered their things, and then the woman recognized someone in the crowd. Britton’s stepbrother followed, leaving Britton alone with me.
I had quickly learned she was staying with her great uncle up the beach a ways, and she was with her stepbrother and his new girlfriend at the movie. They were visiting for the weekend and things weren’t going well. When her stepbrother turned and called her name in the darkness, I knew I was losing time.
“May I walk you home?” May I walk you home? I repeated in my head. What an idiot. She could probably drive.
“Sure,” she said immediately, and I almost didn’t know what to do. I heard Jess laugh behind me and when I looked at him, he simply said to call him when I was ready to go. I knew Jess would never leave TC without me. It was a secret code between us. No one gets left behind.
The walk was longer than I expected in distance, but the time seemed too short. I learned that she laughed easily, and I liked that she seemed impressed with me. She was smart, though, and she sensed when I was bullshitting her. It was on this very walk that I showed her the moon, making my comment about being a star, and she seemed to
understand that I had grand dreams.
* * *
As the crowd filled the theatre, I grew increasingly more nervous. My hands were starting to sweat and I could feel perspiration drip down my side under my arm. If Zoe had been here, she would have been scolding me, telling me it was no big deal. She would have demanded I stop sweating, as if I could help it. But Zoe wasn’t here as the auditorium filled, and I was inwardly glad that she wasn’t present.
I noticed a few faces that looked familiar and a few others that I thought I should recognize, but didn’t. I saw Jess Carter and his finance, Emily Post, whom I had not met yet. She was pretty, like Jess described, and I was momentarily jealous of the glow of love she had when she looked at him. It was obvious this was no Debbie Schwartz, Jess’ first wife.
I wasn’t allowed to go down and greet anyone at the moment. I would have been too nervous anyway, so I stood in the side wings, peeking glances around the curtain at those arriving. I recognized Pam Carter immediately. She was practically a twin of Jess, but smaller, curvier. I never had a romantic interest in her because I was too close with Jess and her being eleven months apart, a year apart in school, made her off limits. My younger brother, Ethan, on the other hand, had an unabashed crush on her for years. I didn’t recognize the rocker-looking guy with Pam, but I heard she was pregnant and this must be the man. He was some award-winning horror/mystery author with five popular titles, and I heard his second book was currently up for movie potential.
I blinked twice when I saw Tricia Carter. She no longer looked like a little girl, and I had to remind myself that after seven years away, she wouldn’t. She was tall, like Jess, and had long legs and dark hair. She could have been a starlet in another era.
I was growing more impatient when I didn’t see my parents and the time was getting closer to seven. I hadn’t had dinner, knowing the party afterward would serve food, and the pit in my stomach let out a slow rumble. I peeked again to see Britton walk in, alone, and sit in the middle of the center section, roughly in the middle of the row. She was a few seats behind the Carter clan in an empty row. She looked beautiful, but somehow lonely, and I noticed her play with her hair, pushing it behind her ears. I wanted to walk out and still her hand, but knew I was as nervous as she was acting.
