Meet Me at Midnight:
A Romantic New Year’s Eve Story
By Rusty Fischer, author of A Town Called Snowflake
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Meet Me at Midnight
Rusty Fischer
Copyright 2014 by Rusty Fischer
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: © Peter Atkins – Fotolia.com
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Author’s Note:
The following is a FREE short story edited by the author himself. If you see any glaring mistakes, I apologize and hope you don’t take it out on my poor characters, who had nothing to do with their author’s bad grammar!
Happy reading… and Happy New Year!
Enjoy!
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Meet Me at Midnight:
A Romantic New Year’s Eve Story
The air is crisp and cool as I step outside the hotel lobby. I can still hear the canned Christmas music after the door shuts, and I silently inch down the steps to escape it.
Don’t get me wrong; I like Christmas music as much as the next gal, but I’ve been listening to it since before Thanksgiving and by the last night of the year, well… even I’ve had enough. It’s probably my fault for peaking too soon.
Traffic is light and despite the holiday, most of the restaurants in downtown Frostbite, Florida are closed for the night. I stand in front of my hotel, restless and wired.
The last place I want to be at midnight is stuck, alone, in my hotel room watching the ball drop while scarfing room service ice cream like some sad spinster in a made-for-TV movie.
Stomping from foot to foot to burn off some of my nervous energy, I spot the neon lights of Surf’s Up, the world’s only 24-hour surf shop, and drift slowly toward it. I haven’t been there in years, and since it’s always open, I figure I can at least get some cheesy, surfboard shaped souvenirs for my pals back in the office.
As I slalom between the giant surfing statues that line the front of the store like those Tiki heads on Easter Island, suddenly I hear a honking horn.
Traffic has been dead the entire way here and I turn only to find an empty street at my back. Weird. When I turn back, the horn honks again and I inch past a giant surfboard welded into the ground to see a massive tour van idling at the far curb.
It looks like one of those Star Tour busses you see in Hollywood, with no roof and two rows of bus seats underneath the starry sky and there is a tall, lanky guy standing alone inside, waving me over.
As I walk closer I see the name “Hang Ten Tours” painted on the side of the van in green neon letters. “Happy New Year,” says the guy standing in the back of the convertible tour bus, waving. He’s got on headphones and there’s an almost invisible microphone in front of his mouth.
I look more closely and a smile spreads across my face. “Reggie?”
He smiles, nodding. “How have you been, Tara?”
He still has his microphone on and so half of Frostbite has heard him ask. I point to my mouth and he chuckles, moving the microphone away.
“Good, Reggie, how about you?”
He walks to the back of the bus and motions for me to follow. There is a little door back there and he swings it open. “Come on board and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I pause, biting my lip. I kind of had a whole night planned, in my head, you know: wandering aimlessly around my old hometown, alone in my party dress, grabbing a bottle of bubbly at the Stop ‘N Go by the pier and sitting on the beach, watching teenagers shoot off contraband fireworks over the ocean, feeling bad about myself – but also vaguely hopeful – on the last night of the year. And now, Reggie has thrown a kink in that.
He waits, patiently, brown skin aglow in the bright lights of the tour bus, soft eyes staring down at me.
I smile and step inside. He takes my hand. His feels warm and soft, just like I remember.
“How long’s it been?” I ask as we stand, awkwardly, in the aisle between the two rows of seats.
“Too long,” he says, taller than me now. When did he grow so much? And when did his boyishly handsome face turn manly and fine?
“Are you… I thought your folks moved away a few years back,” he says, offering me a seat.
I take it and he sits down across from me. I smile, noticing the “Wave Riders” T-shirt clinging to his athletic torso and the blinking bowtie around his neck.
He always was a joker.
“Yeah, they did,” I confirm. “Dad got a promotion and the firm moved him out to Colorado. I’m actually… I’m here on business.”
He looks suitably impressed. “Business?”
“I write for this surfing blog, actually, and they sent me to do a story on all the surfers who grew up in Frostbite.”
“Get out of here,” he says, leaning forward so that I can smell the cinnamon on his breath and the vaguely sandy hints of his perfume. “That’s… that’s what I do.”
I make a scrunchy face and he explains, “Hang Ten Tours drives around town and shows you where all the pros grew up. We make stops at 12th Street, where Slade Sommers learned to surf. I stop at the house where Kane Palmer grew up, and the Snow Hut, where Fez Fitzsimmons worked one summer to save up and buy his first surfboard.”
“What an awesome idea,” I say, leaning forward in my seat a little. Who knew Reggie would grow up to be an entrepreneur? “You… maybe you can help me with my story then.”
“Absolutely,” he says, pointing toward the cab of the tour bus, where a small binder sits on a kind of makeshift podium where the passenger seat should be. “I have a whole script that basically runs down the surf history of this town. Here, let me give you the tour and maybe you can get a little work in while we catch up…”
I bite my lip again. “But… aren’t you about ready to close?”
“Not now I’m not,” he insists, reaching into a cardboard box behind him and rooting around for a small “Hang Ten Tours” T-shirt, ball cap and wristband. “You’re getting my special VIP New Year’s Eve tour treatment.”
I look around the empty parking lot. “But… it’s just me. Don’t you want to wait for anybody else?”
“I’ve been waiting for the last two hours,” he tells me, leaning in closer so I can see the sparse moustache above his upper lip. “And so far… you’re my first taker.”
I smile, a little flutter in my stomach, and quickly slip on the T-shirt over my little black dress before he can change his mind. “Well,” I chuckle, propping the hat on my head to complete the cheesy tourist look. “If you insist…”
He claps his hands together and rubs them, excitedly, like he’s trying to keep warm. “Oh, it’s on…” he mutters, sliding his microphone back in front of his mouth and standing dramatically.
Strutting back to the front of the tour van he slips into the front seat, fires up the engine and pulls away from the curb. As the engine idles and we ease onto an empty Pompano Street, he fiddles with some buttons on the dashboard and Christmas music, soft and jazzy, begins to play.
I smirk. Suddenly, I don’t quite mind the last of the year’s holiday strains. I inch closer, when he’s not looking, so that by the time he pulls up in front of his first stop, I’m only a few chairs behind him.
He puts the tour bus in park and stands, turning, and pausing slightly to find me so close. “Oh, well…” he murmurs, smiling that warm, Reggie smile. “Welcome, welcome to this special VIP New Year’s Eve tour with your one and only
host, Reggie Watson.”
He’s in full-on salesman mode now, and I can picture him giving the speech to a packed house of tourists, wearing that trademark Reggie smile. The one that made him prom king, and class president and editor for the school newspaper and the subject of a couple dozen schoolgirl daydreams.
“Our first stop is the Copper Penny Pawn Shop,” he goes on, pacing slightly in the open cab of the convertible tour bus and pointing to a sad little store in a cheesy neon strip mall. “It doesn’t look like much now, but back in the 1970s it was where none other than five time world champion Hub Fenton bought his first surfboard, for a whopping $22!”
I nod, approvingly, but it’s nothing I hadn’t already researched before heading down here for my holiday assignment. I can tell he kind of knows, even though I’m sitting up straight and kind of golf clapping with a vaguely forced enthusiasm.
He moves the microphone away again and frowns. “You knew that, didn’t you?” he asks.
I frown. “I can’t lie to my former class president,” I announce. “Yes, yes I did know that.”
He shakes his head. “And about 12th
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