And She Made the Shape of My Heart With Her Hands

It was hit, after hit, after hit, after hit. As I sat against the metal fence of the enclosed tennis court, the clinks and clonks of the skinny pale yellow bat of plastic making contact with the small plastic ball was all you could hear.

I clapped whenever someone hit the little ball really far, (which was often), and I laughed when someone did something stupid, (which was also often.)

Joel walked up, the cheap bat in hand. “You’re lucky you’re severely injured, Nickelsen,” he called out while pointing the bat accusingly at me. I smiled.

“Yeah, I know. Why make a fool of myself when I could be watching you do it for me?” I chuckled.

He let out a laugh. “Ha! You just wait, Miss ER. This one’s going out of here, baby!” I laughed, along with some other guys.

Sure enough, Joel’s hit made it to the very, very top of the fence, threatening to fly out of the ‘park’ in success. He watched it as he rounded first base, jogging to second and coming to a stop. Someone threw the ball in.

He let out a groan. “I totally got robbed, man!”

The teams were pretty mixed up; some Good Charlotte boys and their friends on one side and some The Maine dudes on another. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if there were teams!

Suddenly Jared got a hit that was real high into the air. I looked up, shielding my eyes from the sun with my bad hand. The ball came swirling down, extremely close to the tall tennis fence. Pat sprinted over, trying to catch the ball to get Jared out. His body smacked against the fence, bouncing off a little from the force.

“Ah, damn,” Pat hissed out in pain. I stood up and walked quickly to where he was.

When I got to him, he was holding his arm away from his body. Some of the other guys came over to look at it.

“Aw, Pat,” I mumbled. He feebly smiled at me.

Pat’s arm was bloody and gross with a gash running across part of it. It wasn’t real long or serious, but it was a bloody mess, literally. There was some skin hanging off, too.

“Come on,” I told him, pulling him by his good arm.

When we made it into the hotel bathroom with the first-aid kit from the van, I sat him down on the edge of the tub.

“This is probably going to sting a little,” I informed him, patting the blood and gross stuff with a warm wash cloth.

I felt his arm flex a little under my touch. I chuckled. “Relax, Pat.” I made sure to be gentle. He smiled a little as he watched me clean the gash up.

“Was that like an evil fence or something?” I brought out the antibiotic cream and smiled.

He chuckled. “I guess so. There was like this, um, metal thing poking out and caught me.”

I started applying the cooling cream to his wound. “I see that.” He let out a laugh and kept watching me with intent and focused brown eyes.

I brought out the long roll of bandage next, holding one part lightly on Pat’s arm and then wrapping it around his forearm repeatedly.

The silence in the small white room was almost unbearable. The tension grew and grew within each second. Our eyes lingered on each other for almost too long.

That’s when it happened.

His soft wet lips pressed against mine so gently that I just couldn’t deny anything. My eyelids closed instantly as Pat pressed a little firmer to me, our lips moving in unison as my stomach and heart fluttered around. The feeling was so strange and foreign, but I liked it.

As quick as it came, however, it was gone. I frowned a little.

“Cara, I’m…Um… I shouldn’t have done that,” he spoke softly and sadly, looking to the tiled ground.

“No, no… It’s fine. Really, Pat.”

“No, I’m sorry. It was my fault. Now you just wasted your first kiss on me and-”

Without knowing what I was doing, my lips pressed against his softly on instinct, shutting him up immediately. I pulled away and looked at him.

“Stop it,” I whispered, smiling a little.

“But you don’t like me back,” he whispered back, frowning.

I sighed, closing my green eyes for a moment. “I never said that I didn’t like you, Pat,” I repeated to him for a second time in life.

“I’ll wait for you, Cara… I really will,” he stated with soft confidence.

I halfheartedly smiled as I finished with his arm, then going back to the van with him.

I wondered if anyone noticed how long we were gone…