Paradise Lost

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I spent the day after the bonfire faking the hangover of a century. A very small part of me wished I could have exercised my acting potential by actually pretending to be hungover around people, but instead I spent the entire day hiding inside this cramped shithole we call a vacation home. So technically, I suppose I retract my previous statement about faking a hangover….I didn't lie to anyone, I didn't fake a hangover; I didn't have to. I just stayed inside all day and let the entire world come to its own conclusions.

And let me tell you, the conclusions the world came to involved multiple rumors about how I was vomiting so much I had my parents worried that I had come down with the swine flu. Yes, swine flu is honestly a true concern of my parents. One of their biggest concerns, in fact. Sad, I know. I think it's sad as well.

Neither Jackie nor Morgan bothered to stop by and check on me, not that it surprised me at all. Trust me, all things considered, I was definitely the bad friend in our relationship considering I didn't go to check on them after all of the alcohol they consumed. I wouldn't be surprised if Jackie and Morgan were the ones with the worst hangover of the century.

No, strike that. I'm willing to put money on the fact that Angela has the worst hangover of the century. Hmm….maybe I shouldn't be making bets for a while, considering I lost the last one I made.

Which brings me to my reason for hiding inside all day after the bonfire. Okay, maybe hiding isn't the best word to use. Maybe I should use the term….doing anything within my power to avoid stepping foot outside my front door which would run the risk of being seen by Jake. Okay, yeah, hiding, if you want to be all technical about it. But I had a damned good reason to hide, and no my reason to hide is not because I'm too cheap to buy him an ice cream cone that he so clearly deserves.

Honestly, I couldn't tell you why I spent the day locked inside a small, dingy, clearly out of style house. Yes, I also lied when I said I had a good reason to hide. So sue me, I lie a lot, I thought that this minuscule detail would be more than apparent by now. I think the main reason I hid was because I woke up the next morning and had this stupid empty feeling in the pit of my stomach…the same disappointing feeling I had felt as I watched Jake walk away alone just the previous night. To be honest, I despise that feeling. I loathe it. And I am almost one-hundred percent certain that it's all Jake's fault I woke up with that feeling! No, I'm not willing to bet money on that being the cause; I've learned my lesson about bets, thank you very much.

But still, it seems only logical. It had to be Jake's fault in some way. It just had to!

And so I spent an entire day…hidden away…speaking with no one….staring at the spot in the top right hand corner of my room where the tacky seventies wallpaper was finally starting to peel away from the wall. For future reference, this was not a wonderful way to spend the day and I would only recommend this type of torture to convicts and shady lawyers.

But that was yesterday. That's old news. Been there, done that, nothing exciting, trust me.

Today is better. Today, I'm staring at the sky instead of my peeling wallpaper. I swear it's an improvement.

Today the sky would have been perfect in my younger, childhood Gemma eyes. Youthful Gemma would have had a hayday with all of the wispy clouds that floated over my head. I had only been laying out on the grass for a few hours and I had already seen a castle, a pirate ship, a fairy princess, a frog, a dragon and a knight having an epic battle….yes, I said epic battle. It doesn't matter if it was a cloud battle, it was still epic! I had also seen some cotton candy and I'm pretty sure I saw the devil's face once too. Then there was a lion and also a teddy be—

"That one's an alligator."

The light voice seemed to dance on the subtle breeze that floated between us and I nearly jumped out of my own skin from the shock of it. When had he gotten here?

I turned my head toward the sudden noise as instant reaction but I already knew who the voice belonged to. His profile looked just as it had two nights ago at the bonfire, calm and content. He wasn't looking at me, he was leaning back on his hands and watching the clouds I had previously been studying intently.

Summer Gemma was already flustered; this was the second time he had caught me doing something clearly forbidden to Summer Gemma. Summer Gemma was not allowed to watch the clouds. She was not allowed to delve into childhood whimsy. She was crude and she was crass and she drank all the time and slept with every boy she saw, or at least everyone thought she did. Summer Gemma was the complete opposite of innocent and childlike and therefore she did not partake in anything bearing an innocent or childlike resemblance. Ergo, she did not blow bubbles, and she certainly did not watch clouds....for hours....this was starting to look bad...

"See?" Jake was persistent, he leaned forward and tilted his head down so he was almost on the same eye-level as I was and then he stretched his arm forward and pointed, "That's the tail, and then the body, and there's the head. Look, it even has a whole mouth full of pointy teeth."

He clearly misinterpreted my uneasy silence as my incapacity to see the alligator shape in the clouds. Trust me, I saw the alligator. That needed no clarifying. No, the silence came from my incapacity to comprehend how I had managed to be caught off-guard twice by the same person. I was losing my touch and losing it fast.

When I chanced a sideways glance at him, Jake was looking expectantly at me. For a moment I didn't comprehend the keen expression he was giving me, and then I realized he was waiting for me to concede that some stretched out wisp of collected water in the sky truly did resemble an alligator. So I tried my hardest to put on my best Summer Gemma face; the coy smile yet apathetic eyes.

"I guess." I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly, my tone careless, "It could just as easily be a crocodile." I wasn't willing to fully acknowledge his claim. Summer Gemma was always a little bit snide when someone was trying to get her to agree with them.

"What's the difference between an alligator and a crocodile?" Jake asked with laughter in his words.

"If you don't know, then you obviously can't make the claim that it's an alligator with one-hundred percent certainty." My response was lofty and arrogant, as if he was the maid that I was sending off to take out the morning’s garbage. Gemma - one, Jake - zero.

Jake's only response was to continue chuckling quietly to himself. I heard the rustle in the grass that implied he was shifting his position and watched him as surreptitiously as I could while he shifted back further and stretched his legs out so that he was nearly lying down beside me. He exhaled and shook his head with that half-smirk I was becoming so familiar with and I almost asked him what he was shaking his head at. Almost. I stopped myself mid-inhale; Summer Gemma didn't give a damn about anyone but herself, she couldn’t care less about why Jake was shaking his head or what he was smirking at.

And so instead of using the easy conversation starter given to me, I remained silent and allowed said silence to stretch between us. Thinking back on the small handful of times Jake and I have spent in each others' presence, I can't think of a single moment where my brain was functioning well enough to merit conversation. He must think I'm either the dullest person around the Lake House, or the quietest. Technically, the quietest can still be viewed as the dullest, which didn't make my situation seem any better.

'That one's a spider." Jake's voice broke the silence once more, the tone relaxed.

I shifted my gaze to follow his pointing finger and took in the image. I scrunched my nose. "Nope." I popped the 'p' haughtily as the word left my lips, "Clearly a crab."

He chuckled once more and I saw the head shake again. "You're just trying to be disagreeable, aren't you?" his words left his mouth jumbled within his slight laughter and the accusation was more playfully amused than anything.

I felt my nose scrunching even more. "I'm just correcting your mistakes. It's not my fault you're making them." I replied with the same arrogantly indifferent tone I used on every boy here.

He was still laughing and shaking his head as he rose to his feet. "Alright," he began, bending forward to wrap a hand around my forearm, "Up you get, before I make any more mistakes." The last part was added mockingly and his eyes appeared so amused as I struggled against his persistently tugging hold on my arm.

"What?" I demanded, entirely shocked out of my cool and calm Summer Gemma facade, "Why am I getting up?"

"Because." He had succeeded in pulling me into a sitting position now and was bracing himself for what I presumed to be his next attempt at pulling me fully to my feet, "You're taking me out to get ice cream now." He stated matter of factly.

"Excuse me?"

"Yep." He had succeeded in pulling me fully to my feet and finally released my arm, giving me the chance to cross my arms in front of my chest in a resistant stance. "You. Me. Ice cream. Now."

And with that he turned slightly and began walking in the direction of Dave's Old Fashioned Ice Creamery, quite obviously expecting me to follow. My clearly confused mind was ready to follow him without thought. Thankfully, my clearly confused mind did not have complete control of my body. The stubborn, arrogant part of my clearly confused mind is what had control of my body at the moment; I must have been on Summer Gemma auto-pilot.

"I don't remember agreeing to this plan of yours at all." I announced, arms still firmly crossed in front of my chest.

Jake didn't even turn to acknowledge me, he never saw my defiant stance. "Really?" he called over his shoulder, still walking, "because I'm pretty sure those are the terms we agreed to when you refused to pay me those five bucks out-right."

My mouth fell open; the nerve of that boy! Just expecting me to follow his every command. He wasn't discussing this with me at all, he was just stating things as if they were indisputable facts. He wouldn't even slow his pace to wait for me! Who did he think he was?

"First of all," I began, stomping forward to give him a piece of my mind, "We never discussed the day or time when I would be buying you this ice cream! And second, you didn't even stay long enough to see the end of the night!"

There was an all-knowing look in his baby-blue eyes as he glanced sidelong at me that I didn't like. "How would that have changed anything?" he inquired, his amused tone irritating me even more.

"It would have changed everything!" I vehemently insisted, "Okay, I'll admit that Angela totally drunkenly slut-danced her way into the fire, BUT,” I continued on loudly when Jake opened his mouth to interject, “but later on, after you left, Scott totally tripped over Jason, who was passed out, and proceeded to fall into the fire. Therefore, my scenario happened as well. So I shouldn't owe you anything." I concluded with a huff.

Jake didn't seem convinced. "But my scenario happened first."

"So what? We didn't set limits like that. Neither of said, 'okay, whoever has the scenario that happened first is clearly the winner.'" I argued.

"It was implied an--"

"It was not!"

"And," he continued as though I had not just cut him off, "And my scenario was way more elaborate. It had specific details, like…it had to be a girl…and she had to be blonde…and she had to be dancing…and it even had to be a specific girl. The likelihood of mine happening was far less than the likelihood of your vague description happening and mine happened probably hours before your scenario happened. Therefore, I win the bet."

I was scowling by now, my strides angry as I rushed to keep up with Jake. "None of that matters!" I exclaimed, "The likelihood of one of our scenarios happening, who's scenario was more detailed, who's scenario happened first, none of that was mentioned during the bet! Therefore, it plays absolutely no part in the determined winner. We both simply said, we bet that a scenario would happen, and they both happened. Therefore, we're both winners and I refuse to take you out for this ice cream." I concluded with a definitive nod and arrogant exhalation of air.

Jake seemed unperturbed by my logic and merely shrugged his shoulders casually. "Regardless of all of that, I wasn't there to see your scenario play itself out. There, I won the bet. And," he paused momentarily and the look in his eyes when he faced me was mockingly triumphant, "we're already here, so it looks like it doesn't really matter whether you refuse to 'take me out,' you're buying me an ice cream, Gemma."

I felt as my eyes shifted upward to make out the old-fashioned sign hanging above my head, as if this and only this was solid proof that Jake was in fact correct and we had indeed arrived. Dave's Old Fashioned Ice Creamery, written out in that classic sixties style font, hanging right above me. Jake was in fact correct. We had indeed arrived. And he was now standing before me, holding the door open for me like a proper gentleman, wearing the smuggest smirk in the world.

Gemma - one...Jake - one. Touche.