Roxanne

007.

One of the worst feelings in this world has to be when you have a fantastic dream that feels so damn real that you believe it is—and then you wake up. Needless to say, the realization of reality is quite a downer. I currently found myself praying that this wasn’t one of those situations because it certainly was beginning to feel like it. I don’t think any part of me would have been surprised had I woken up. Disappointed, yes—extremely disappointed, but not surprised.

We hadn’t gone far from the aisle that we had just caused a bit of mayhem in. In fact, it was when we reached just the next aisle over that Billie took his comforting hand from my shoulder and went to a carriage that I assumed to be his. I set down my basket that held most of what I needed with an exception of the eggs that I had almost had and fixed my dress as Billie gave the carriage a once-over.

While Billie had been swiftly looking over his food, I found myself swiftly looking over him. The fact that he was now standing in front of me only a couple days after saying farewell to each other just seemed like too much of a coincidence. I’m not implying that the blonde was stalking me or anything because I knew he wasn’t—it was just one of those situations that seemed too be to good to be true. With my luck it would be around now that I learned that Billie was a psycho path that preyed on teenage girls.

Billie finally stood up straight from checking his things and then looked to me. For a few minutes we seemed to do the exact same thing—analyze each other. I think, quite honestly, that there may have been an equal attraction for one another. Not to flatter myself or anything by saying that Billie was attracted to me even though it sounded as if I was doing just so, but it seemed that every time Billie and I were able to see each other in lighting when there wasn’t something chaotic happening, we stared at each other. Not so much staring as…studying each other.

Perhaps the both of us were just still in slight shock that we had managed to run into each other again—and so quickly.

I tried my best to subtly look at Billie. The last thing I wanted him to do was figure out that I was staring at him. He was hard to not stare at, to be honest. His two-toned hair was much brighter when the sun was out despite the fact that we were in the middle of a store and his tattoos seemed to be the same way. If anything, it was his tattoos that had stuck out in my memory the most. He looked pretty much the same, really. The only real differences that I could tell from glancing at him [quite a few times] was the fact that his black Ramones t-shirt was now a black and blue striped one and the comfortable loose pants that he had been wearing when I had last seen him on the plane had also been replaced with a pair of what looked unbearably tight black pants. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why any man would want to wear a pair of pants half as tight as his were—especially in the summer in California.

Not that I was complaining. Billie had been doing a pretty damn good job at pulling them off.

My eyes trailed back up from the pair of tattered converse that Billie was wearing to his scruffy face. Our eyes met and I found myself trying my best to flight of a blush at the fact that he had most likely caught me staring at him. I had been almost positive that I had won. “You know,” Billie stated. I caught his eyes again. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who blushes half as much as you do.”

If I hadn’t already been blushing enough before that statement had been made, I certainly was now. Upon seeing my cheeks become even pinker, Billie laughed loudly. It wasn’t a mocking or rude laugh as if to say the he was laughing at me, but rather a sweet laugh. It was more like he possibly enjoyed the fact that he had made me blush.

I had always had the problem where I blushed a lot. I was constantly blushing at just about everything, even if it hadn’t been flattering or embarrassing or really anything at all. It seemed as if my cheeks were just permanently pink.

“I blush a lot,” I mumbled.

Billie grinned at me. He gestured to the rest of the aisle. I assumed that he was asking me to walk with him but I didn’t want to go making the wrong assumptions. I cocked my head to the side a bit in an unspoken question. The grin on Billie’s face didn’t disappear though he did look a bit sheepish at having to ask me. I guess we were both pretty crappy at meeting new people of the opposite sex. “Shall we walk?” He asked. After hesitating for a moment, he added: “unless you were leaving?”

I shook my head and picked up my basket from the floor in front of me. “Sounds good to me.”

And so we walked—painfully slowly. Only it wasn’t painful at the moment because our attention wasn’t focused on what speed we had been walking at but rather each other. I don’t think either of us really even had any more shopping to do. I think that instead of leaving after somehow miraculously running into each other, we instead found a reason to stay.

Billie leant forward against the handle of the shopping cart that he was pushing and looked up at me with what looked to be a playful smile.

I was pretty surprised that a man with that tight of pants could bend over at all.

I cocked an eyebrow at Billie’s smile and he chuckled while dropping his eyes back to the things in his carriage. He then straightened up a bit and lifted a hand to run through his thick hair. “It’s funny,” he stated. “Of all the places that the two of us could have met again and it ends up being a goddamn grocery store in Berkeley.” He laughed. “How unoriginal.”

The playful smile that Billie had been wearing was on my face now. He was completely right. “You’re right,” I agreed. I then shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, we did cause quite the catastrophe to those poor eggs by meeting, though.” I then paused. “Well, you did.”

Billie snickered and slid his hand to the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m sorry for breaking the eggs. I didn’t figure you’d jump like that.”

I laughed at my own characteristics. “I’m very jumpy,” I noted. “I’m a very paranoid girl. I always feel like I’m going to get abducted or something.” When Billie chuckled I found myself yet again blushing. I removed my bangs from my eyes and then looked over at him. “How did you know it was me?” I asked after a moment. “I mean, what if that had happened and it was some girl that you’d never seen before?”

Billie continued to rub the back of his neck. “Uh,” he hummed. “I would have run.” I laughed and he grinned. “I was pretty damn sure it was you, though. I remembered that your hair was long and bright red.” He shrugged. “I guessed.” I nodded slowly as we continued to walk down the aisle. “How’s your stay in California been so far?” Billie asked after a moment of looking through his things again. “The grocery store? I’m glad to see you’re living a thrilling life here so far.”

I snorted. “Yeah. It’s absolutely thrilling so far.” I rolled my eyes. “So far I’ve failed to tan and now I’m cooking dinner for myself and maybe my aunt tonight. It depends on if she gets home in time.” I shrugged. “I don’t mind at all, really. I love to cook and I need some down time.”

Billie seemed to mull over my words in his head. “So your aunt works?” He asked.

I grinned. “Don’t most?”

“True,” he agreed. The store was pretty damn empty at this time during the day and it made me wonder how Billie was here. Didn’t he work? “So what do you do all day—you just sit there?”

I suppose I did just sit there all day. All I had done within the past two days was tan and attempt to cook with the lack of items my aunt had in her kitchen, thus leading to where I currently was. It hadn’t bothered me, though. I enjoyed being able to just sit and relax on the opposite side of the country.

“Yes,” I admitted. “But it’s not as bad as you make it sound. Summer’s a time for relaxing, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” Billie agreed hesitantly. He looked up at me and cocked an eyebrow. “But don’t you feel like it’s a waste to come here and do nothing?”

Billie seemed to be one of those people that couldn’t sit for long. I wasn’t surprised anymore at how he had said that he traveled a lot; he seemed like the type to do so.

I shrugged my shoulder. “I’ll do something here before I go home, I’m just not rushing anything right now. I’m kind of getting settled in—I don’t know anyone or anything here yet.”

Billie cocked his head at my statement. “Going home?” He asked. He looked genuinely surprised.

“Yes,” I said slowly with a nod. “I’m only here for some of the summer. My parents didn’t want me staying home all summer so they’ve sent me out here to stay with my aunt.” I knew I had told him this one the plane, but at the same time it wasn’t like I had expected him to really remember it.

“Where do you live?” Billie asked. “New York?”

“Close,” I agreed. “I live real close to Manhattan. My parents work there but we live in New Canaan.” When seeing the clueless look on his face I choked back a laugh. “That’s in Connecticut.”

“Oh,” he mumbled. “Oh, shit, you live far away.” I nodded and so did he almost as if we were agreeing that I lived far away. “How long are you here for?”

“Originally around three weeks, I think,” I stated. “But I don’t want to go back. I know I’ll end up asking to stay longer if my aunt will let me.”

A part of me, which was quite large, was actually hoping for Billie to say something along the lines of getting to know me better over those three weeks. Not in a relationship way, but in a friendship way. This man was the only person I knew in California other than my working aunt. At this point, knowing anyone in California would be beneficial to me.

“Ah,” Billie hummed. He smiled coyly. “I thought you were moving here,” he admitted. “You look like the type of girl that would live in California.”

“Oh, I plan to,” I agreed. “I like Berkeley even if I haven’t seen any of it. I’d love to move here when I can.”

Billie cocked his head to the side. “Why can’t you now?” He asked.

“School,” I said simply. When I saw the confused look on his face I continued to explain. “I’m in school. When I graduate I want to move here.”

Oh.” Billie nodded. We both seemed to be doing a lot of that, but I suppose it’s all you can really do when you’re learning about someone. In all honesty, I was getting a bit tired of talking about myself—I wasn’t one to really enjoy the spotlight. I wanted to learn something about Billie for a change. For christsakes, even his last name or shoe size would have satisfied me. Billie seemed to hesitate a bit before continuing to question me. “What are you majoring in?”

I once again moved my bangs from my eyes and cocked an eyebrow. Did he think I was in college? I had always known that I didn’t look eighteen, but I didn’t think that I could pass for in my twenties. The thought of him imagining that I was in college mortified me a bit—he had thought that I was a lot older than I actually was. “I’m, uh, I’m not in college,” I stuttered. “But I’d like to major in some kind of journalism when I go.”

The look of confusion on Billie’s face was, dare I say it, adorable. He looked thoroughly confused. His eyebrows pinched together as his eyes narrowed a bit. “You’re not in college?” He asked slowly. “Then what are you in?”

I wanted to lie and say that I was joking and that I was in college, but I knew it’d come back to bite me. However, the look of confusion of Billie’s face pretty much guaranteed disappointment with where our conversation was headed. “High school,” I stated. “I’m going to be a senior.”

Though he wasn’t eating or drinking anything, Billie choked. My eyes widened as he coughed and whacked his chest. The blush that had finally disappeared from my cheeks was now back in full throttle and mortification was probably the biggest understatement as to how I was feeling now. I wanted to just get away from the obviously shocked man as fast as I could but my feet weren’t allowing me to move.

Billie stood up straight. He was no longer choking but his eyes size didn’t decrease. “You’re in high school?” Billie asked slowly after a moment in disbelief.

I sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I should have graduated this year, but I stayed back in elementary school.”

Billie didn’t say anything—instead he just gawked at me. I absolutely hated it. I bit down onto my bottom lip and toyed with my hair that had been pulled back. I could feel his eyes burning into me; therefore I avoided all eye contact. I think the worst part out of all of it was the pounding of my heart in my chest and the sudden regret I felt. I had the feeling that if Billie had never known that I was still in high school, something could have perhaps happened between us. Now, well now there seemed to be no shot in hell. I was partially expecting him to just take off with his carriage and run screaming down the aisle with the way that he was standing there.

“So you’re…,” he drifted off.

“Eighteen,” I finished his sentence.

I hadn’t thought it was possible, but somehow Billie’s eyes doubled in size. I groaned lowly and shifted to lean back against the cans that were on the shelves as Billie’s gaze finally dropped from my face. He lifted one of his tattooed arms and ran a hand through his hair almost angrily. “Shit,” Billie said after a moment. He then laughed. “Holy shit, you’re eighteen?” He continued to laugh. “Jesus Christ, I feel like a fucking pedophile.” When I didn’t say anything, Billie must have realized that he was doing much more than just embarrassing me. He looked apologetic as he reached across the aisle and touched my arms. “I’m sorry,” he apologized verbally. “You know that you can fucking pass as over twenty-one, don’t you?”

“So I’ve been told,” I mumbled quietly. It wasn’t that I was meaning to mumble but rather that I couldn’t speak at all. I was absolutely horrified.

Billie chuckled softly and straightened back up. I had wanted to know how old he was now, especially after his damn pedophile comment, but I found myself a bit scared. If he was so surprised at me being eighteen with my luck he’d end up being forty or something.

I knew that any chance of Billie and I becoming friends or anything at all had been shattered. True, I hadn’t been expecting much from this attractive man but now it seemed that anything I had been expecting or hoping at all had been executed.

After a moment of a disgustingly awkward silence, I decided to try to look at him again. He looked a bit calmer though his hand was once again threading itself through his unruly hair. “How old are you?” I finally asked after a moment of mulling over the decision to ask him.

Billie looked up at me at those words. He lip curled into what looked to be a nervous smile and he looked down the aisle. He laughed nervously. He seemed far more hesitant to tell me his age than I was to tell him mine and that worried me. This was just my damn luck. The first man I had found myself somewhat attracted to in seven years and he ended up being completely out of my range.

“Um,” Billie hummed. He groaned and sighed. “I’m thirty-one.” The way he said it sounded almost pathetic.

I understood why he had choked when I had told him my age because I found myself almost doing the same thing. Instead of coughing or anything that he had, I sighed loudly and nodded. He wasn’t forty, but he was pretty damn close.

It angered me—a lot.

Not so much that he was older than I had expected but rather the fact that I felt as if I was getting fucked over big time. My “knight in shining armor” as I had thought of him back on the plane was a damn fraud. True, thirty-one really wasn’t that old at all, but either way it didn’t look good compared to an eighteen year old, dating or not.

I laughed. “Well,” I started slowly. “I guess it’s safe to say that we don’t look our age.”

Billie grinned at me as he slid his hand from his hair to his scruffy face. “Guess so,” he agreed. “Shit, Roxanne, I can’t believe you’re eighteen.”

“Touché,” I murmured.

The grin from Billie’s face stayed put as we continued to stand there awkwardly. It was getting to the point where I was beginning to think of excuses to leave so that I could accept this misfortune, but Billie seemed to regain his composure. “Do you, uh, do you need eggs?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his effort to make this situation less awkward. I think we were both being pretty irrational about our ages, to be honest. I had known many people who were friends with much older Billie so why should it have stopped Billie and me?

“Do you think there’s a chance of finding ones that aren’t broken?” I asked. I was determined to make the awkwardness that we were going through disappear. I needed a friend in California and Billie and I seemed to be doing a good job as becoming so before admitting how old we were.

Billie chuckled. “We can hope. I’ll help you look—I’m the reason that yours broke.” He shrugged. “We can do some rearranging.”

And so we both found our way back to where we had originally met in the supermarket. At the site of an egg carton that seemed to be covered in egg, Billie giggled and turned away from it. I found myself doing the same thing while at the same time trying to be inconspicuous.

I’m not sure how we managed it, but we did seem to ignore the age difference that had left us in such a pathetic state only a few minutes prior.

After a few minutes of searching, Billie straightened up holding a carton full of perfect eggs. He smiled and held it out to me. “For you, madam.”

I grinned as I took the egg carton. “Thank you, kind sir.”

We both smiled to each other before I placed the carton in my basket. Billie wiped his hands on his jeans and I forced my eyes to stay away by searching through my basket to see if I had anything. Billie was absolutely, 100% off limits as of now.

We weren’t in the store much longer after that. We both went up to check out and within fifteen minutes we found ourselves standing in the parking lot carrying a few bags. I had thought that Billie would have just said a quick goodbye, especially after learning how old I was, but he instead surprised me by following me over to the car that my aunt had pretty much given to me for the few weeks that I was there.

Billie had placed his few bags down next to my aunt’s car as I loaded the couple bag I had into the trunk. “Hey,” Billie called to get my attention after a moment. I looked up at him. “I’m sorry for our…brief departure at the airport,” he apologized.

I was surprised by his words. I hadn’t expected him to apologize for that at all—I hadn’t thought that there was a reason to. All that I had thought of it was that it was a bit odd, but not anything else. “Oh,” I murmured in surprise. “Oh, it’s fine.”

Billie smiled at me. “See, I had originally had one of my friends picking me up, but he fuckin’ called me ten minutes before our flight in JFK left and told me he was out of town. So, I had to call my other friend who wasn’t too keen on getting me too early. He was in a pretty piss-ass mood when he picked me up and I didn’t want to keep him waiting. That’s why I ran off so quickly.”

I’ll admit, it was pretty damn nice to know that the reason he had rushed at our departure at the airport was a bit relaxing. Out of lack of self-esteem, I had believed that it had perhaps been because of me even though I hadn’t been able to place why. “It’s fine,” I repeated while mirroring his smile. “It was early—I’d be pretty pissed if I was him, too.”

Billie chuckled and nodded. I dug the keys to my aunt’s car out of my purse and slid my finger through the loop, not sure what to do now. Billie seemed hesitant about something and rocked back and forth from his left to his right foot. He lifted a hand, unsurprisingly, to run through his mop of hair. “So your aunt works all day?” He asked.

I nodded. “Except for Saturday and Sunday,” I confirmed.

“Right,” he said. I watched as he seemed to go deep into thought of something. “Well,” he mumbled after a moment, “considering you won’t see much of Berkeley with her working all the time, um,” he groaned at his lack of words. “I don’t have a nine to five job,” he stated, “so I could show you around Berkeley sometime.” As if he was worried that I would decline, he threw in a smile. “I’ve lived here all of my life so I know everywhere.”

I found myself staring at Billie, not really comprehending what he was saying although my heart was pounding as it was back in the aisle, only I wasn’t completely mortified right now. I was…excited? I grinned at Billie. “Would you mind?”

Billie grinned back at me. “If I minded I wouldn’t be asking.” He laughed nervously. “It’s the least I could do—I mean, I scared the shit out of you and broke the eggs and all.”

I loved it when guys tried to come up with nonchalant excuses; they were always so adorable because they lacked such creativity.

“I’d like that,” I said with a soft smile. “It’ll be nice to get out of the house and see where I am. I’m pretty lost as it is right now.”

Billie chuckled. “Great,” he sighed. “I could show you around and then take you to my friend’s diner—it’s great.” He paused. “Just as friends,” he added as an offer.

I nodded. “That sounds great, just as friends.” We both nodded slowly. I took my phone out from my purse, feeling the need to help the poor man out. It seemed that we both really sucked at making plans with new people—particularly new people that seemed to be attractive.

Once seeing my phone, Billie reacted and pulled out his phone. He had a blackberry. “I’ll call you?” He offered. I suppose it was his way of asking for my phone number. We both traded phones and I quickly entered my number and name into his blackberry while he stared in confusion at my sidekick. I looked up when I was done to see him continuing to gawk at it. I laughed while he scowled. “I suck at technology. That’s my second fuckin’ phone this year,” he snapped while pointing at his phone. “Yours is my own personal hell.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized even though I was laughing. I pointed out what to do to him and Billie entered his number into my phone.

He handed it back to me and smiled somewhat as he placed his phone back in his pocket. “I’ll call you,” he promised.

I nodded and for what had to be the hundredth time that day, Billie yet again surprised me. He pulled me into a sweet hug that was completely different from the one at the airport when had quickly said goodbye to me and wished me luck. The hug was slightly awkward, but not awkward enough that I didn’t enjoy it. In fact, I believe the only reason it was awkward was because of, yet again, our age difference. Otherwise, it was completely natural. Billie wasn’t much taller than me at all—in fact, with my heels on I think that I was an inch or so taller than him. Our bodies fit almost perfectly together and if I hadn’t been wearing my heels I think that the fit would have been absolutely perfect.

He was a great hugger, if it made any sense at all.

“I’ll call you,” he repeated as we pulled away. I had managed to inhale his scent quickly before doing so. He had smelt strongly of cologne and what I believe was cigarettes although I wasn’t sure. He didn’t seem like a smoker to me, but at the same time I wouldn’t have been that astonished.

I nodded. “I’m looking forward to it.”

With one last genuine grin, Billie picked up his bags and began across the parking lot to where I assumed his car was.