Page 6 of Faking it With the Player Next Door

Chapter Six

Van

“ H ey,” I smiled when Taylor opened the front door.

“Van? Now what?” She leaned against the door, rolling her eyes, and I took in her appearance.

Her blonde hair was piled up and messy on the top of her head, and her green eyes seemed to sparkle against her glowing skin. Dressed in a pair of running shorts that hugged her hips, and every muscle on her upper thighs, I almost groaned.

She was wearing a white camisole shirt, and I had a feeling nothing beneath it. This added to the discomfort I was feeling in my groin.

“Van?” Taylor’s voice broke me from my thoughts.

“Uhm, oh,” I stammered. “I was going for a walk along the back trails, and thought I’d ask you to go with me.”

“Why?’ She narrowed her eyes.

“I think we need to discuss some things. A lot of things,” I sighed.

“Yeah, we do,” she replied.

“Well,” I held out a hand, inviting her outside.

“Sure, why not,” she shrugged and held up a finger. “Let me grab my shoes and sunglasses.”

I nodded, crossed my arms over my chest, and leaned on the exterior wall of the house. I heard Taylor inside as she retrieved her shoes and glasses. I knew we needed to talk about what happened the other day with Hunter, and how I lied about our relationship status because I knew how conservative Hunter was. I could kick myself for not coming over here yesterday to sort all this out.

I wasn’t too sure how Taylor would respond to me showing up, and how the chat would go, so I put it off. But as I sat in the living room last night, sipping a second beer, I knew I had to talk to her today.

“So here I am,” I mumbled as I heard Taylor traipsing down the stairs just inside the house.

“Okay, ready,” she slipped her sunglasses on and a baseball cap.

I smiled when I saw she was wearing a Los Angeles Stars hat.

“What?” She grinned. “Hunter gave it to me.” She replied when she saw me smirking.

“Hmm,” I continued smiling.

“Let’s go,” she practically skipped the steps, and I followed.

We strode behind my house, where the trail passed by to the north, and walked in silence for about thirty yards. Walking this close to Taylor and being unable to touch her was at the forefront of my mind.

She was all I could think about for the last day and a half. When she landed on my lap, I was in heaven for that brief moment when we kissed. I’ve had such a crush on her for as long as I can remember, and sharing the kiss the other day was perfect.

That is until Hunter arrived. Not that he ruined anything, but I would have liked to have finished the kiss on my terms.

“So…” Taylor began. “Talk.”

She swung her hands as we strolled down the path, and I snuck a peek at her. She hadn’t changed her clothes, or anything from when I arrived, and I appreciated her natural beauty and casual appearance. Taylor had a way about her, whether it was her minimal makeup, and hairstyles, or her casual attire always ceased to amaze me at how attractive she was with so little effort.

I’ve dated many women over the years who were what people called high maintenance, glamorous, and not a hair out of place when we were in public. Their makeup is professionally applied, always with sultry eyes.

Glancing at Taylor, you’d be blind to not see she didn’t have an ounce of makeup on her face. No shimmering eyeshadow. No dangling earrings hanging down to her shoulders. No essence of an over-perfumed body.

Taylor was just Taylor.

“Van?” She raised her eyebrows, and I realized I’d been staring at her.

“Sorry,” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you the other day…”

“I know,” she nodded. “You were only trying to help.”

“I was,” I smiled. “I didn’t want Hunter to get all up in your face about what he and Pastor Pierce witnessed.”

“While I appreciate that, Van,” she sighed and stopped walking. She was fingering the tall, soft leaves of a mullein plant. “I think you may have made things worse.”

“How so?” I frowned and stopped a few feet from her.

“Well, take last night for instance,” she sighed. “Hunter kept texting me… non-stop.”

“Same here,” I grimaced, recalling Hunter texting all day long yesterday. He had questions that I really couldn’t answer, hence why I needed to speak with Taylor today. We needed to be on the same page with our answers.

“Half the things he was asking about, I had no idea how to respond,” she mumbled.

“Yeah, same for me,” I nodded. “Which is why we need this conversation.”

“Agreed,” she picked a few leaves off the plant, rubbing the soft leaves in her hands.

“So, what was he asking you?”

“He asked….” She paused, and while facing me, I couldn’t tell if she was watching me “He wanted to know how it all started…”

“And?” I shifted on my feet, waiting to hear what she had told her brother.

“I had no idea what to say,” she exclaimed. “I told him I had a crush on you forever, and that we were finally old enough to act on the feelings.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I just kind of went with what I had said the other day,” she shrugged. “I had no idea what else to say.”

“Makes sense,” I cocked my head.

We began walking again, and I snuck a glimpse at Taylor. She fidgeted with the mullein leaves in her hands, and lost in deep thought. Her head kept turning as she took in the scenery around us, and the way the sun filtered onto her face reminded me of an angel. Aside from her natural glow, the sun added a whole new depth to her beauty.

“So, what did he ask you?”

“Pretty much the same thing,” I replied. “I told him the time away from you made me realize how much I wanted to be with you.”

She sighed but didn’t elaborate, so I pressed her.

“Was that wrong to say?”

“No,” she shrugged. “I guess not.”

Wanting to know more, I continued.

“So, the other day, when you said you’ve had a crush on me for a long time, was that true?”

I held my breath as I waited for Taylor to answer.

“What was I supposed to say?” She shook her head. “You kind of put me on the spot. I just blurted out whatever I had to make it sound believable.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, and we continued walking.

I had my answer. Taylor was just playing the part. She didn’t have a crush on me, nor did she seem happy about the situation. I had planned out this talk all night, and somewhere down the way, I had planned on how I would tell her the truth about my feelings for her, and how I shared the sentiments for years just as she had claimed.

Now, I decided not to say a word. How would I pledge my love for Taylor when she didn’t feel the same?

“You know how Hunter can be,” she sighed.

“How’s that?” I frowned.

“So strict, and by the book,” she replied.

“Yeah, he is, isn’t he?” I nodded when I thought about how Hunter had always had such conservative viewpoints.

When we were in high school, and even into our first year of college when we went to the same university, Hunter was always the gentleman when he was dating a girl. Holding hands was the limit of public displays of affection that I could remember. I hadn’t seen him kiss a girl in the hallway, or between classes all through high school.

Once, when we were sophomores in high school, and Hunter was dating Jenna Barbour, everyone thought they were sleeping together, but I knew otherwise. When Hunter began dating Jenna, he told me he had vowed to remain celibate, and at first, I thought he was joking.

But he wasn’t.

Over the summer between our freshman and sophomore years, Hunter began to attend church seriously, became involved with the youth group, and talked about attending a religious school that curtailed its curriculum with the Bible.

I was astounded, as I didn’t know what had caused such a change in him. We were always the two kids causing trouble around town, riding our bikes and creating bedlam wherever we went.

But hearing Hunter talk about being virtuous, and not having sex with whatever girl he was dating that month, left me speechless. It wasn’t until a summer before that we talked about how this girl, or that girl, had developed and changed and how we wanted to date one of them.

As young teen boys tend to do, we discussed who we’d kiss if we had the chance, and who we wanted to make out with after the Friday night football games that coming fall.

Then, one day, Hunter did a one-eighty. He no longer wanted to talk about who he wanted to date or how he tried to get to third base with that girl the following weekend. On the other hand, I was stuck in the cycle of dating, kissing, and making out with whatever girl I was with that weekend.

Being the star pitcher, as a sophomore, for the varsity baseball team allowed me to date more selectively, and I had junior and senior girls hanging out at my locker between classes.

The only downside of my situation at the time was that I wasn’t old enough to have a driver’s license or vehicle to go out on dates. But most of the girls I dated through my sophomore year didn’t care about that. They would drive on our dates, and I would benefit from their make-out experience.

Hunter chided me every weekend for being such a playboy , and for having respect, if not for myself, then for the girls I was dating. I blew off his scolding and continued on my way of being Casanova. I figured Hunter could do his thing, and I’d continue to do mine.

“Van? Hello? Are you there?”

“Huh? What?”

You were a million miles away,“ Taylor laughed. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Sorry, I kind of zoned out,” I apologized. “Care to repeat it?”

“Not really,’ she shrugged. “I was just rambling.”

We strolled to the end of the trail, where the old Dairy Shoppe was located, and I hadn’t had a good ice cream in quite some time.

“Feel like an ice cream cone?” I asked to change the subject without hurting Taylor’s feelings that I’d been so callous and hadn’t listened to a word she’d said for the last few minutes.

“Sure, why not,” she nodded, and we strode to stand in line.

Slipping my hands into the front pockets of my jean shorts, I glimpsed at how Taylor seemed to be studying the menu. Glancing around, I saw quite a few people waiting for ice cream, sitting at one of the numerous picnic tables eating their frozen delights, and some kids playing on the open field between the ice cream shop and the trail.

Nodding to a few people I recognized, I decided on a whim to place a hand around Taylor and pull her a little closer to me. As I did that, I caught her off balance, and she stumbled to my side.

“What are you doing?” She gasped.

“Making a show for the audience,” I mumbled and cocked my head to the people standing around us. “For Hunter’s benefit.”

Taylor opened her mouth to reply, then snapped her lips closed. She nodded, realized what I was saying, and decided to play along with it. She laid a hand on my chest, and I felt my stomach flip. Just having her so close, touching me so intimately, made me wish this was all real, and not just for show.

“Hey, Van,” Kurt Collins, an old classmate, and the catcher for the baseball team during my senior year at high school, came up and offered a hand to shake. “I heard you were back in town.”

Shaking his hand, I smiled. “Yeah, only for a week or so now.”

“How long are you here for? I saw you got hurt and had surgery,” Kurt said, shaking his head.

We chatted for a few minutes, and then Kurt’s gaze shifted to Taylor next to me. “Oh, wow!” He exclaimed, “I didn’t know you two… that you guys were an item.”

“Yeah, well, we just started seeing each other,” I responded, then squeezed my hand on Taylor’s waist.

“It was an unexpected turn of events,” Taylor added with a sparkling smile, and she nudged her hip into my thigh.

“So, what are you doing back in town?” Kurt asked Taylor.

“Well, I, uhm… Taylor stammered, and I opened my mouth to rescue her, but she began speaking again. “I’m on a hiatus from work, and was a little homesick…”

“Yeah,” Kurt chuckled. “We all say we can’t wait to graduate and high tail it outta here, but we all end up coming back.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” I laughed and realized it was our turn to order. “Catch up with you later.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded and strolled back to his pickup truck in the parking lot.

“Well, Hunter should hear about this pretty quick,” I whispered in Taylor’s ear.

“How long will we have to keep this up for?” Taylor grumbled and wouldn’t glance at me.

“I don’t know,” I frowned. “I haven’t thought about that.”

Taylor nodded, then placed her ice cream order, and the conversation ended.

After we got our treat, I strolled to an empty picnic table, and Taylor followed me. We sat across from one another, and she finally removed her sunglasses. She set them on the table in front of her, and for the first time since I arrived at her house earlier, I was treated to her glorious emerald eyes.

As she licked away at her vanilla ice cream atop the cone, my eyes were drawn to her tongue and how it swirled around the melting ice cream. I moaned and closed my eyes for a brief second. When I reopened them, Taylor had her head tilted and she was glaring at me.

Busted. She caught me in the middle of gawking, or rather fantasizing.

“The sooner this is over, the better,” she hissed.