Chapter 11
The ride home from the beach was deadly silent. Jessica was in the passenger seat, fuming and shooting occasional glares at her brother and to Sydney, who was in the back seat. During their drive, Sydney focused all of her attention out the window, trying to ignore the palpable tension in the car, but it was no use. In order to escape the uncomfortable situation, she napped for an hour, which made the drive slightly more bearable.
The moment Michael turned off the car engine in the Vaughn’s driveway Jessica bolted from the car and made her way towards the house. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Vaughn were home at that time; it was only three p.m. and they were both still at work. Jessica slammed her way in the front door and started to stomp up the steps but Sydney stopped her by yelling out her name. “We have to talk about this,” she continued. “You can’t just ignore us forever.”
“Oh really? Can’t I? It seems that’s what my ex-best friend has been doing – ignoring me. Pretending I don’t exist. Running around behind my back with my brother!” she shouted.
“Jess, god, you don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Sydney practically growled. “Will you just shut up a second and let us explain?” she asked. Jess said nothing, but she also didn’t run away, so taking that as a positive sign, Sydney continued. “Look, it’s not what you think. Michael and I never kissed until Saturday night, our first night at the beach. That was it – our first kiss. Nothing happened before that. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but I was a little freaked out at the time.”
“Yeah,” Michael chimed in. “We weren’t sure what was going on between us and we weren’t going to tell you until we did.”
Jess grumbled slightly. While her brother and friend made a significant argument, there was still another problem at hand. “But you said you loved each other! Are you telling me that you fell in love with each other over, like, two days?! I know you are too logical for that!” she shouted at her brother.
Sydney and Michael shrank slightly, giving sheepish looks to the floor. “Well…actually…,” Sydney began, refusing to make eye contact with her friend. “I’ve sorta had a crush on Michael since ninth grade…”
At this discovery, Jess gave an incoherent shriek and stomped her way up the stairs and down the hall until she reached her room, where she slammed her door shut as hard as possible. Sydney and Michael both winced at the noise before slowly turning to each other. “So much for Spring Break, huh?” Michael laughed
“Right,” Sydney rolled her eyes. “It’s only Tuesday. We’ve still got five more days home with her and you know she’s going to make it utterly miserable.”
“What are you kidding? She’s going to make it utterly miserable for the next five months, assuming she gets over it in that time, which isn’t likely,” Michael sighed. He walked from the foyer, where they were standing, into the adjacent sitting room and flopped down on the couch.
Sydney followed him and sat down beside him with her legs tucked underneath her. “So… what about us?” she asked cautiously. “I mean, are we still, like, dating?”
With a grin on his face, Michael leaned over and bumped his nose up against Sydney’s before saying, “Yeah, we’re still like dating.”
“Don’t mock me,” she said, shoving him lightly.
“I would never,” he said, still grinning. Then he took Sydney’s hands in his and laced their fingers together. “How about… we go out for our first official date tomorrow at lunch? Pizza and then an afternoon movie?” he suggested.
“Sounds good to me,” Sydney smiled.
“Good,” he said. Then, he leaned back in and captured her lips in his. After a minute, they dropped each other’s hands and moved them to each other’s neck and face. Only a few more minutes into their make out session, the front door swung open once more and footsteps were heard approaching.
“Kids are you – Oh! I’m sorry Mic- OH MY GOODNESS!” Amelia shrieked when she saw the two very guilty kissing parties on the sofa, both of whom were blushing furiously. At first, she had only seen her son and a brown head of hair, obviously belonging to the woman he was kissing. However, when the kissing duo broke apart and she saw that the brown hair belonged to Sydney, she was so stunned she couldn’t help but yell.
“Mom…you’re home from work early,” Michael said very casually as Sydney attempted to hide her face from view. That was not the exact scenario she had pictured when thinking of breaking the news to the Vaughn’s about her relationship with their son.
“You two…,” Amelia began in a breathy tone as she approached them very slowly.
“Uh, Mom…,” Michael began. He slid off the sofa, taking Sydney’s hand and pulling her to her feet as well as he did so. Then the two of them slowly walked around to the other side of the sofa (though it was more like Michael dragging Sydney) before he continued, “Sydney and I are sorta…together now.”
Amelia let out a choked half-gasp, half-sob as she rushed forward and pulled them both into a smothering hug. Sydney and Michael stared at each other in shocked confusion while awkwardly hugging Amelia, who appeared to be sobbing. “This is so wonderful!” she managed when she released them from her grasp.
“Really?” Sydney asked, sounding very surprised. Not that she had expected the Vaughn’s to be dead set against her relationship with their son; she simply hadn’t expected such overwhelming emotions.
“Of course dear! It’s so nice to have you two finally together! Well, at least, for Michael anyway. It was so sad how he liked you all those years, but never-”
“MOM!” Michael cut her off with an embarrassed squeak as his face began to resemble the red color in his mother’s shirt.
“Well, anyway, I guess it’s no surprise why you’re home so early from the beach,” Amelia sighed. Sydney and Michael exchanged looks and then looked back to Amelia. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You two got together, Jess found out and threw a fit.”
Sydney and Michael laughed and nodded; roughly summarized, that was a very accurate account of what happened. “Well, just ignore her,” Amelia advised. “Or hit her… which ever’s easier. Where is she anyway?”
“In her room pouting,” Michael told her. Amelia rolled her eyes slightly and waved her hand at them; some days, even she didn’t know what to do with her daughter. Then, she excused herself and went upstairs so she could change out of her work clothes.
“So…,” Sydney began with a grin after Amelia was gone. “It was so sad how you liked me all those years, huh?”
“Shut up,” he said in an embarrassed tone as the pinkness began to return to his cheeks. “It’s not like I told her I liked you… she musta just figured it out…”
Sydney leaned up and kissed his pink cheek. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “I mean, in high school I did write about how much I liked you in my diary…”
“Really?” he asked hopefully. Suddenly he wasn’t feeling like such a heel. She nodded. “Can I see?”
“NO!” she said firmly. While there were no deep, dark, ground-breaking secrets in her diary, there was no way she was going to allow him to read her girly thoughts and escapades. He stuck a pouty lip out at her, which she ignored. “How about we just go and clean out your hunka junk car?”
“Hunka junk car?! You really need to stop hanging around my sister,” he shook his head at her.
“Oh come on, Michael – you bought it at a police auction. It was used in drug runs. It has a bullet hole in it!” she exclaimed.
“Okay, it may have been used in drug runs but it does not have a bullet hole in it,” he defended. Sydney grabbed his hand and pulled him around to the trunk of his car. There, she pointed to the tiny circular hole in the trunk’s lid. If it wasn’t a bullet hole, then rust had suddenly become amazingly geometric. “Huh… I never saw that before…,” Michael said. Sydney rolled her eyes.
