Dumping Dallas Winston

by Jessica Bucher

  “Thanks,” I muttered, then grabbed the bag from Reagan’s lap and pushed open the door to the van.

  Behind the heavy brocade curtains of the front window I caught a flash of movement. Now would be an excellent time to turn around and hone my sprinting skills. It was too late though because the fancy iron door knob had already begun to turn.

  “Surprise!” I cried when Landon pulled open the door. I’d thrown my hands to the side and was wiggling the fingers of my free hand while my legs involuntarily sprung into a long forgotten tap routine.

  I could hear Reagan giggling behind me, and my face flooded with blood and shame, but what the heck...he was standing there in pajama pants and no shirt. There were abs and biceps everywhere. Jazz hands were my only defense!

  In front of me, Landon’s eyes were wide as the full moon. Was he shocked, pleased, or mortified? He quickly scanned the neighborhood for potential members of the Khaki Collective. Alright then, mortified it was. Landon grabbed me by the crook of my still flailing elbow and dragged me inside.

  “What has grounding done to you?” he balked, looking me up and down from head to toe. I was in cut-offs and my old cadet’s campout T-shirt, nerdy sure, but who was he to be judging my attire in a moment of near nakedness such as this!

  “Ahem. Me? It’s 1:00 pm, and you’re wearing pajama pants and...” I cocked my head to the side, the words escaping my mind as the subtlest pectoral flex drew my attention.

  He blushed. “I had the house to myself!”

  “You’re a partially naked man!”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. An attempt to be modest. Little did he know it brought out the lovely little muscles in his triceps. Okay, maybe he did know because now he was smirking at me in that distinctly I got you, way that I had grown annoyingly accustomed to over the last few months.

  “Would you like me to put a shirt on?” he asked, one eyebrow cocked to the ceiling.

  A grin slipped across my face. “As a matter of fact. I brought you something.”

  Landon relaxed his expression and took the bag from my outstretched hands. I had rehearsed what I would say when he opened it, but now that the moment was here, I couldn’t remember any of the brilliant things I had decided on.

  Landon wrinkled his nose as he reached into the back and pulled out a black T-shirt.

  “Seriously? You had a shirt in the bag? What dark magic is this?”

  I shrugged. “Just a little stalking. Cameras in the corner’s of all your rooms that sorta thing. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”

  Landon unfolded the shirt and held it out in front of him. The puffy paint was still a little tacky and he had to stretch the material out to be able to read it, but the moment he got it straightened out his face burst into a smile.

  “Oh, this is something else.” Landon immediately pulled the shirt over his head and dragged the material down over six very pretty abdominal muscles I was saddened to see disappear.

  “Is this true?” he asked, his expression going from amused to serious. “Harper Loves Landon Back?”

  I took a step closer and used both hands to pull the shirt straight by the hem.

  “That’s what it says. Well, sort of. That paint has been at the bottom of my sister’s craft drawer for two years minimum.” I had squeezed way too hard on the O and now there was a big blob where the hole was supposed to be.

  “So, no more Drake?” He was looking down at me now, his face adorably contorted between curiosity and anticipation.

  “Nope,” I replied, fixing my eyes on his. “I dumped my Dallas Winston for a Soc. Can you believe it?”

  His grin was wicked sexy as he pressed his hand to the small of my back. “I’ve always thought of myself as more of a Ponyboy than a Soc, khakis aside.”

  I lifted up onto my toes. “Yeah? Think we can trade your wrestling jacket in for something leather?”

  Landon pulled me closer by the waist. “Harper.”

  “Hm?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off his very close lips.

  “Shut up,” he murmured then closed the gap between us.

  Landon

  I could feel the sticky paint of my new shirt sticking to Harper while I held her in my arms, but I didn’t care. This wasn’t our first kiss, but it was definitely the best one. Other than my dad, who I knew was quietly lurking somewhere behind me, ready to meet the girl I hadn’t shut up about all week, we had no other distractions. No stupid boyfriend. No major laws violated. No Girl Scout camp rules broken. It was just me and Harper, and for once...it felt nice.

  With one hand on her back, I brought the other to her hair, brushing the long side back so I could stare into her eyes.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually wearing the shirt,” she whispered.

  “Of course, I am,” I laughed. “This is, by far, the cheesiest thing you’ve ever done. I’m never going to let you live it down.” I buried my face in her neck and she broke out in giggles, trying to push me away. “You told me you loved me on a T-shirt.”

  “Landon?” a voice behind me startled me just as I was going in for Harper’s lips again.

  My dad stood in the hallway, waiting patiently, but obviously not too excited about watching me make out with my new girlfriend.

  “Oh, Dad...this is Harper,” I stammered. She stood there, biting her lip and looking pretty deer-in-headlights, seeing him for the first time. He stepped forward and reached a hand out to her, which she shook with a polite smile, but I could see that she was guarded. I’d done my fair share of crap-talking about my dad, but I didn’t expect her to be so defensive about it.

  It was going to be a nice change, having a girlfriend with a backbone.

  “What are you two up to today?” he asked, looking painfully awkward, clearly not knowing what he was supposed to say or do next.

  “Umm...I’m stealing him...if that’s okay,” she said. Hunt did say he was sending an officer over for one last chaperoning job. I was too busy frenching her in the doorway to put the two things together.

  “For what?” I blurted out.

  “To finish what we started.” She linked her fingers with mine, and I responded with a suggestive wink. Bold...and right in front of my dad. I liked this new Harper.

  “I was talking about the riverwalk, you perv,” she snapped back with one of her signature slugs to my shoulder.

  “Aww, love you too, babe.” Leaning down, I gave her a quick peck on the cheek and took off in a run to get changed before she could really slug me. Leaving her in the foyer with my dad, I watched them both squirm as they stared at each other. Before I disappeared into my bedroom, I heard him ask, “So, you liked the shirt from Matt Dillon?”

  When I came back out, keeping my puffy paint expression of love on, Dad and Harper weren’t looking any less uncomfortable, so I patted him on the shoulder and said goodbye in passing.

  “Landon,” he called for me once Harper was outside. I put my head back in to answer him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Mom would have loved her,” he said before clearing his throat.

  “I know,” I answered after a moment of being momentarily stunned. I didn’t quite know how to react to all of this openly talking about Mom stuff. Years of everyone pretending to be over her and treating her death like a secret, made it feel a little raw. “Bye, Dad,” I said before slipping out the door.

  When I joined Harper in the van, I was a little shocked to find my brother and Ginger sitting in the back.

  Leaning in toward Harper, I whispered, perfectly loud enough for them to hear. “We’re not going to be double dating a lot, right? Promise me.”

  “No way,” she answered. “They’re always cuddling and whispering to each other. It’s gross.”

  I peered back at my brother with a look of disgust on my face.

  “Hello to you too, Landon,” Sloane said, rolling her eyes.

  “Hey, Ginger,” I answered. After the years I spent teasing her and being a total jerk
, it was nice of her to actually not hate me and put up with me dating her best friend. “And I mean that in the most loving way.”

  She actually smiled at me, for probably the first time since fifth grade.

  When we reached the riverwalk, we unloaded the supplies from the back of the van. Every chance I could, I stole her away, kissing her as much as I could before we were interrupted by the other couple.

  Once everything was ready, we started with the white base while Harper made her plan for the mural. She had a sketch drawn out on a grid, and she kept biting her lip and erasing and redrawing little parts.

  I walked over to where she sat on the curb, admiring her artwork. “It’s perfect, babe,” I whispered, brushing my lips across the top of her head. And it was. It incorporated something Harper loved and Grover in one. If those Girl Scouts didn’t give her a Platinum Award, they were stupid.

  Harper

  I had been mapping this mural out in my head for the better part of thirty days. Up there it was perfect. On the paper diagrams in front of me all I saw were flaws.

  Reagan rested a hand on my shoulder. “It’s go time, Harper.”

  She was right, but the butterflies in my stomach were launching into a flurry anyway.

  I took a long deep breath, rose to my feet and turned to face the crew. There were twelve of us total. Three girls from our troupe, Gabe and Sloane, Reagan, Landon and I and the four city volunteers who hadn’t jumped ship when they learned about the fire.

  “We will be working in pairs,” I started, handing each two person team a piece of paper and a clipboard. I knew not everyone who volunteered was an artist so I had taken the mural pieces and divided them into two foot by two foot squares. It was a trick I learned in art class. Even a no-talent clown like Landon could paint something decent if they did it by grid. “Today we chalk the design onto the walls. Tomorrow we will paint and the final day will be for the black outlines.”

  I answered a few questions about the designs before handing a box of chalk to each pair and sending them toward their designated wall.

  Together we would paint six walls between Main street and the bridge. I had kept my original concept of portraying scenes from The Outsiders, but I hadn’t forgotten what Landon said back at the station about needing to show Grover as well.

  The first wall was a silhouette of two groups of teenagers. The greasers and the Socs from S.E. Hinton’s groundbreaking novel were re-envisioned as Grover’s khaki collective vs. well, the rest of us. The greasers silhouettes all wore red converse shoes. I positioned them on the grid so that they faced off with the khaki pantsed Soc kids walking toward them with chins in the air.

  Behind the two groups of silhouettes, the wall was covered in bursts of colorful graffiti tags. If you knew what to look for you could find prominent quotes from the book mixed in with the art.

  Each scene you encountered covered a new part of the story. Some stuck closely to the novel and movie, while others strayed to incorporate more of Grover. I had loved replacing Cherry Valance and Ponyboy with Sloane and Gabe in the drive-in scene, but I was most proud of the final wall.

  There I had taken the silhouettes from the start of the murals and interspersed them so that the Socs stood shoulder to shoulder with the greasers as they all looked up at the same graffiti wall from the beginning, only now it had been painted white, with Stay Gold tagged high among a spray paint sunset.

  I saved that piece for Landon and me. The fiery reds and golden yellows of the movie's final image would take someone with a steady hand and a good understanding of color. Plus, it felt like I needed to finish it myself.

  Stay Gold had always resonated with me, but it wasn’t till this summer that I realized the most important part of The Outsiders wasn’t that the greasers and the Socs weren’t so different. It was that no one has to be just one thing.

  I could be a cop's daughter with a wild streak and still take pride in being a Girl Scout. Just like Landon could drive the fanciest car in town and still be a kid in need of a father.

  Maybe next time I read the book or saw the movie something else would stand out. That was the beautiful thing about it. It changed with you.

  “Are we gonna draw this thing or are you just gonna stare at the wall all day?”

  I glared at Landon. “Excuse me, but I was having a revelatory moment over here.”

  “Oh yeah? Let me guess, you were remembering when I sacrificed myself for you Dally style.”

  I tilted my head back and laughed. “I hardly think you’re sticking around till the police came is the same as getting shot during a rumble.”

  “I had to wrestle your incredibly weak, incredibly dumb boyfriend. Inside, I died a little,” said Landon, clutching his hand over his heart as if it were an open wound in need of pressure.

  “Ex-boyfriend,” I reminded. “And I thought you said you were more of a Ponyboy anyway.”

  “Fair point,” said Landon, tugging me toward him by the wrist. “Except Ponyboy didn’t get the girl, and I did.”

  “For now,” I smirked.

  “For always,” he whispered, his lips closing in on mine with a fierce sort of tenderness I’d begun to hunger for every moment we weren’t together.

  Landon

  There might have been a lot more kissing and a lot less painting if a cough from the bridge above us hadn’t caused us to break apart.

  “Andy,” Harper called, looking up at the face grinning down at us. I recognized the guy as a local homeless guy who was pretty harmless, but never failed to get picked up for outstaying his welcome in public establishments.

  “It’s nice to see you again, outside of the station that is,” he said.

  “It’s good to see you out too. And not in the hospital,” she added, her voice laced with what sounded like guilt. I noticed she had a soft spot for the old man, and I could gauge by her texts over the week that the fact that homeless people were hurt by the smoke was eating away at her, and I hated that she took responsibility for that.

  Andy laughed a loud and gravely laugh. “It was a free night in a warm bed, I can’t complain too much.”

  “I still feel terrible,” she answered. I gently squeezed her arm, hoping such a small gesture might stop her from beating herself up over it. Harper sure had a tough exterior for a girl who I knew was just a big softie inside.

  After she finished explaining to Andy the riverwalk project, she caught me staring at her.

  “What?” she asked, looking briefly self-conscious.

  “Nothing,” I laughed as I pulled her toward the supplies. As much I wanted to go back to the kissing, I figured it was a good time to get started, or we would be standing out there, wasting what was left of our precious summer.

  “Are you always going to be this creepy?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me while I passed her the chalk.

  “Are you always going to be so adorable?”

  She rolled her eyes at me, and I couldn’t help myself from leaning in for a quick peck on her cheek. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep the smile off her face after that.

  I’d realized that all of the fun I used to have torturing Harper I could still enjoy, but now it came in different forms.

  For one, she seemed to hate compliments, which was ridiculous because they were so easy to dole out. Now, instead of teasing her about her lopsided hairdo, I threatened her life if she even considered changing it.

  Two, she absolutely despised PDA, but now that I had the liberty of kissing her and running my hands through her blonde locks whenever I wanted, there was a pretty good chance I’d be doing it all the time. Even after giving Sloane and Gabe crap for their constant canoodling, I couldn’t exactly blame them now. When you had a girlfriend as hot as mine, you didn’t let something like that go to waste just because there were people around to see it.

  And three, my personal favorite, it drove Harper crazy how much she loved me right back. Every time I caught her smiling at me, it was flavored with a hint of ir
ritation too. My ultimate torture was making Harper accept how good we were together. Because we were.

  Harper

  The Girl Scout Gold Award is a seven step process. It starts with choosing an issue and it ends with educating and inspiring others. That was the part I didn’t particularly agree with. Whose bright idea was it to make us all ‘share our experience with others’?

  “You’re getting that creepy twitch in your eye. Not planning to burn it all to the ground again, are you?” asked Landon.

  “Very funny,” I replied, jabbing my boyfriend in the ribs with a stiff elbow. I was still getting used to having a boyfriend I didn’t have to hide from my friends and family.

  The main perk? Alice was totally and completely repulsed by him, and he couldn’t stand her either.

  “Your sister is wearing a bow in her hair. And her haircut is disturbingly even.” He growled, giving Alice the side eye from his spot behind me at the podium.

  I grinned, quickly spotting my sister sandwiched between my parents in the front row. She had taken the last two weeks of summer off from her summer job to visit home and I was actually starting to enjoy her presence. It was weird to think that a few weeks ago Dad had pretty much lived in his office and she was across the country. Now, it was family dinner every night, a daily donut battle with dad in the morning and the four of us, actually listening to what was going on in one another’s lives. It was exactly how I imagined the end of the world.

  “She’s dressed like I’m about to pass out hymnals,” I said with a laugh. “My dear, sweet, perfect sister.”

  “That is the absolute worst kind of sibling,” said Gabe, popping up behind us unexpectedly. “I know because I’m very impressive myself.”

  Landon rolled his eyes. “Can we help you?”

  Gabe coughed and then pointed out toward the audience. “There are sixty people out there waiting for you to get this thing going.”