Page 45 of You Found Me (The Meadow Springs #1)
Emmaline
Today is the day for our real first date and I’m nervous.
Because what if we do this and he decides to change his mind. That the image he crafted of me in his head all these years doesn’t align with the person I actually am.
It doesn’t help that no matter how much I beg, he won’t tell me where we’re going.
Only told me to dress in layers, which lets me know we’re likely to be outdoors.
I settle on a pair of black leggings, a deep-green long sleeve henley, a cream cardigan in case it’s chilly, and my trusty white Converse.
Spencer is dressed similarly in a pair of black sweatpants, a tan quarter zip sweatshirt, and sneakers. As he was leading me down to his truck, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at his ass. Sweats really work for him. I think next to him being naked, this look is a close second favorite for me.
He caught me staring and instead of being shy, I told him that he was my boyfriend now and staring is definitely a girlfriend privilege.
We’ve been driving for around ten minutes before I catch onto where we’re headed. The Daisy Lane Drive-In has been around since my mom was a teenager. It’s in a part of town that’s surrounded by fields of wildflowers, and is known for only showing movies twice a month.
“Are you bringing me out to the old drive-in to murder me?” I ask Spencer.
He throws his head back, falling into a fit of laughter. “Do you really think that I’d take you so close to where all your friends and family are to murder you? Give me more credit than that. We’d drive at least two hours in the middle of nowhere for that.”
I lightly punch his arm. “Note to self, don’t go anywhere with Spencer outside of our hometowns. I ask because this specific drive-in only plays movies on the first and last Saturday of the month.”
“I kid, I kid. When I looked online it said there was a movie playing tonight. Guess we’ll see if you’ll be planning our future dates from now on or not.”
“Who says there’ll be any future dates?” I tease.
“Oh, I’m pretty confident we’ll have many more dates,” he tells me with his stupid smirk.
When we get to the gravel drive that leads to the drive-in, I notice only a few are lights on throughout the field. The concession stand is dark, but the projection booth is lit up. There’s one car parked next to the booth and a single truck in the lot where you’re supposed to park for the movies.
“Are you sure you read there’s a movie tonight?” I ask skeptically.
“I’m positive,” Spencer says with confidence.
He pulls in, putting the truck in park. Only he has us facing the back of the lot, rather than towards the giant screen.
“I’ve got to talk to someone really quickly,” he leans over, kissing my cheek. “Be right back.”
I watch as he reaches the booth and instead of waiting for whoever’s here to come down, he climbs the stairs. He knocks, and out pops Edie—and as if she knows I’m here, she looks my way and gives a wave.
She turns back to Spencer and whatever she says makes him laugh before he pulls an envelope out of his pocket.
When he tries to give it to her, she shakes her head before handing him a set of keys.
They talk for another minute before coming down the stairs.
She gets in her car, driving off, while he comes back to the truck and we drive toward the lot.
“What was Edie doing here and why did she give you keys?”
“She was my in with getting the owners to open tonight, because you were right—they weren’t scheduled to show anything.
I did some digging and found an article about how Edie used to be married to the owner of this place.
She agreed to help immediately and within twenty minutes, this date came to fruition. ”
“Okay . . .” I say, still confused, “but why do you have them and why is there no one else here?”
“Because Emmy, this whole place is ours for the night.”
“You planned for us to have this whole place to ourselves, and you still want me to believe you’re not going to murder me?” I tease again.
Before he responds, he parks the truck, further away from the screen than I’d like but I don’t complain. He gets out, coming around to open my door like always.
“You’ve got jokes, huh? You should really stick to your day job instead of trying to moonlight as a comedian.
” I stick my tongue out at him, causing him to laugh.
“I don’t plan to murder you and having Edie as the last person to see us together would’ve been really stupid on my end.
Besides,” he grabs under my knees, “I wouldn’t have waited this long to finally be with you just to up and murder you. ”
He kisses me, short and sweet, before pulling me out and covering my eyes with his hands. “Okay, we’re going to walk a little bit and when I uncover your eyes, you have to promise to keep them closed until I say you can open them.”
“Bossy . . . I like it. I promise to keep my eyes closed.”
“Such a good girl,” he purrs in my ear before kissing the side of my neck. “Keep them closed.”
Holy hell.
Being called a good girl in the bedroom is one thing, but I didn’t think it’d be so hot outside of it. I find myself doing what he says and thinking that I need this energy to come back when we finally take our relationship to that next step .
I hear a bunch of noises that I can’t place except for what I think is a switch flipping. Shortly after that, I feel Spencer touch my hip. “You ready?”
“I’m ready!” I say with mock enthusiasm before muttering, “well as ready as I can be since I have no idea what’s happening.”
He chuckles. “So much sass in such a tiny little thing. You can open your eyes now, Shortstack.”
I open them and see that not only did he manage to get the drive-in open just for us, but he came here before to set up.
That old, powder-blue truck I saw on the way in is set up in the perfect spot so we can watch the movie from the truck bed.
There’s blankets and pillows, dinner in the form of pizza and snacks set up on the tailgate, and a cooler on the ground next to the truck.
Now I know what the clicking sound was—fairy lights.
He’s got fairy lights strung all around the back of this vintage truck.
If I think too much about what he’s done, I’ll cry. Yes, they’ll be happy tears, but I’m an ugly crier and he doesn’t need to see that more than he already has.
Instead, I throw my arms around his neck and pull him down for a kiss.
“Thank you, Spence. This is more than I could’ve hoped for.”
“You’re welcome, Emmy. Now, the movies are supposed to start in about fifteen minutes. Edie said they are set up to play one right after the next, with about ten minutes in between.”
“Movies? They don’t do more than one. ”
“No, they don’t. But when you’ve got someone like Edith Jackson in your corner, you get whatever you want. Which is why we have three movies for the evening.” I laugh because he’s right about Edie. “We can leave at any point—for any reason. Or if you decide you hate the movies I picked.”
“I bet whatever movies you’ve chosen are going to be great,” I tell him, going up onto my tippy toes to kiss his dimpled cheek.
Spencer helps me climb up and that’s when I notice there’s more cushion toward the front. I sit down and ask, “Am I sitting on an air mattress?”
I notice his cheeks redden ever so slightly before he answers with, “You are. It was supposed to be one to fit the truck bed, but I read the listing wrong and basically ended up with a crib-sized mattress.”
I cover my mouth to stifle a giggle, then compose myself. “It might be on the small side, but it's pretty comfy. We’ll just have to sit pretty close.”
Spencer smirks. “What a hardship that’ll be.”
After we kick off our shoes and make ourselves comfortable with every movie snack a person could think of—along with a dinner consisting of Anatoli’s meat trio pizza with extra cheese and a giant side of garlic sauce which happens to be my favorite—the first movie starts.
And at the first few notes, I know instantly it’s Stepbrothers .
We each grab some pizza and settle in. Spencer and I talk and laugh while we eat, the movie playing in the background.
I let myself be giddy in this moment because talking—or even eating—during movies is something I could never do with Chance.
He wanted total silence when we’d watch movies.
But with Spencer, I’m able to mimic my favorite quotes and he does the same.
When the movie ends, we clean up the food. Spencer leaves out a couple of berry flavored sparkling waters, and the mini trash can he always has in his truck. The second movie starts as we’re making the way back to the old truck and I squeal.
“You didn’t!” I exclaim excitedly.
“You said it was your all-time favorite movie. And since I’ve never seen it, I wanted my first time to be with you.”
I notice a slight blush on his cheeks once he finishes talking and it’s so sweet. “You have no clue how much this means to me, Spence.”
He kisses my forehead, before pulling me into his side. The whole time The Princess Bride plays, Spencer is paying close attention while rubbing circles on my thigh. Not in a sexual way, just mindlessly, and it’s driving me crazy.
When the movie ends, he sits back up, drawing lazy circles across my jaw. “I liked it, and I like even more that the nickname has more meaning to you. You’re most definitely my Buttercup. ”
I don’t know whether to cry or kiss him. Then I think about it . . . he’s seen me cry enough. Which is why I go with jumping his bones.
He lets out a grunt of surprise, quickly recovering, and after a couple minutes, I pull away. “I want you, Spence. Right here. Right now.”
“I’m always down for some hand stuff in the back of a truck with you.” Laughing, I shake my head, leading him to ask, “Is that not what you want, Buttercup?”
“No. Well, I mean, I find myself always wanting that with you. I just meant I want all of you.”
Spencer’s eyes widen before he relaxes. “Are you sure? You want our first time to be outside?”