Eternity

Jenn’s POV

I was nervous, I admit it. But Nick seemed calm…cool…collected. Lucky. We left the parking lot, where Alexa lived, and started down the road.

“So,” I started. “Where are we off to?”

“You’ll see when we get there,” he smiled.

“Ugh, you’re just like Joe; keeping everything a secret when it comes to a date. When Alexa told me about their first real date, she said she was so annoyed that she had no clue where they were going.”

“Well,” he shrugged his shoulders. “If I told you, than you wouldn’t be as shocked as you will be when you see it.”

“Fine,” I settled for his answer. He had a good point.

For what seemed like a while was only about five minutes. The silence between us was almost as awkward as Alexa would describe the silence between her and Joe. As we neared what I hoped was our destination, Nick finally spoke out.

“We’re almost there, so you can stop stressing about it,” he laughed.

I had been wringing my hands for the past few minutes.

“Oh,” I chuckled. “Sorry.”

His smile was adorable; I couldn’t really help but stare at him. He noticed me staring and I quickly looked away, feeling red in the face. We pulled into the parking lot of what looked like a park. There were swing sets and such; just a regular children’s park.

“The park?” I looked at him, wondering if this was actually a joke.

“The park,” he repeated with a smile and got out of the car. “You don’t like the park?”

I closed the car door after I got out and shrugged my shoulders at his question.

“Parks are okay…I guess. Why are we here?”

“Well,” he started and grabbed my hand. “I thought a picnic would kind of be fun. I used to come to this park with my brothers and cousins when we were little. This place had the best slides ever. I mean, it was like you could slide forever.”

“You know you’re kind of a geek,” I laughed as we began to cross the park to a table that was sitting next to a swing set.

“That’s just the way I roll,” he laughed at his own joke. I rolled my eyes.

“Wow,” I laughed again. “Using your own song lyrics to define yourself. Clever.”

He smiled at me and pointed to the table for me to sit down. I took a sit, and he sat down across from me.

“So, what happens now?” I asked and began to stare up at the starry sky. It was slightly chilly out and I crossed my arms to get warmer.

He pulled out a basket and set it down on the bench next to him. This seemed like a scene right out of a movie; a picnic under the stars.

“I was gonna set a blanket on the floor, but I figured you probably wouldn’t want to do that. So I thought setting a picnic-type blanket as a table cloth would make up for that.”

The blanket was set on top of the basket and he laid it out across the table, and started pulling out plates and cups.

“Have you been romanced yet?” He asked.

“Oh, please,” I chuckled. “This is what you call romancing?”

“Hey,” he furrowed his eyebrows. “It took some time to figure out a good plan.”

“Who helped you plan it?”

“Kevin,” he admitted quickly. “He’s quite the romancer himself; thought I could get a few pointers from him.”

I nodded my head with a smile as he continued to set up the table. As he was placing my cup in front of me, his phone began to ring.

“Sorry,” he said and pulled it from his jean pocket. “Thought I turned the ringer off.”

“That’s fine,” I assured him and waved my hand for him to continue to answer his call.

“Hey,” he answered and I watched his expression as he realized it was his brother. “Hey, Frankie, what’s up?”

His face visibly dropped, his lips quivering slightly.

“Really?...Okay, can you put mom on?...Hey, mom. What’s going on?...Are you serious?...Yeah, I can be there…Okay, I’ll see you soon…Love you, too, mom…Bye.” He hung up the phone and stared down at the picnic table.

“You okay?” I asked, worried why he looked so stunned.

“Uh, no,” he answered, honestly. “It’s Joe; he was in an accident. He’s at the hospital now.”

With that, he stood up from the table and quickly grabbed my hand to lead me back to the car. My jaw nearly hit the floor when he told me and I followed behind him silently to his.

“I’m bringing you back to Alexa’s, if that’s okay.”

I nodded my head, not wanting to argue with him to left me go with him to the hospital. We got into the car and he raced back to Alexa’s. After dropping me off, I watched his car spend down the street and out of sight. I wasn’t sure if she knew yet, so I ran up to Alexa’s apartment and went inside to find her on the phone with the same expression I made when I heard about Joe, except tears were flooding her eyes and streaming down her cheeks.

She looked over to me and dropped to the floor before I was able to get to her. I sank to the floor with her and held her in my arms.