9 Chapter 9

You said no but I knew you would say yes eventually, which I know sounds like a really douche thing but something in me told me that you felt the same.

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"I'm no photographer, but I can picture us together," Dean says when I climb into his car Friday morning, almost a week after he asked me out. I know it's a little cruel but I want to make him work for it, so... here we are.

"Are you ever going to stop using pick up lines?" I ask hoping the answer is no.

"Nope," He says with a bright smile causing a smile to spread across my face as well.

"That's what I thought," I say with fake disappointment.

"Oh don't be like that, I know you like my pick up lines," he points out.

"Shut up," I chuckle.

"I was thinking," he starts but I interrupt him.

"What? I didn't know you could do that," I say shocked.

"You can shut that pretty little mouth of yours". Ah yes the flirting. It has gotten way worse in the past week. And by worse I mean more obvious and much more often. "Anyways, like I was saying... I was thinking that I don't want to go to school today".

"You never want to go to school Dean," I point out.

"That is very true but today I don't want to go even more. So I was thinking, we should skip today," he offers.

"I'm down. What do you want to do?" I ask happily.

He thinks for a second before a light bulb goes off in his head, "We should go bowling".

A smile stretches across my face as I say, "Can it be a date?"

My question shocks him for a moment but he recovers quickly, "Of course it can princess".

"Ok, then. What are we waiting for?"

"Nothing," he says, putting his car into drive and heading in the direction of the bowling alley.

"Why?" he asks at a stop light.

"Why, what?" I ask, confused about what he is asking me.

"Why today? It's been a week since I asked and all of the sudden you want to say yes.

"Well, I wanted you to work for it," I inform.

"Work for it?" he asks in disbelief. "I have been working for it for like two months," he laughs.

"No before that you were working on becoming my friend. Honestly, I let you off easy," I tease.

"Did you know?" he asks, pulling into the bowling alley parking lot.

"Yep I could have been stringing you along a lot longer," I say in a serious tone.

"I'm glad you said yes," he says shyly.

"Me too," I say honestly before tearing my eyes off him for the first time since we were parked at that stop light. The parking lot in front of the bowling alley was completely deserted other than our car and one other; which I am assuming is the employee's car.

"Ready?" he asks, tearing my eyes away from the empty parking lot and back over to him.

"Yeah," I say before we both open our doors and climb out of the car.

"I'm excited. I haven't been bowling in years," Dean says while we are walking across the parking lot to the bowling alley. We were close to the sidewalk right in front of the building when Dean took his hand in mine. I look up at him a little confused "What?" he asks as if he didn't do a thing.

"Nothing," I say looking down at the carpeted floor of the bowling alley.

"Yo Dean, what are you doing here?" Nathan Hill says from behind the counter. Nathan is just like every other jock in this town. He peaked in high school, had all the friends and was a star athlete but then it all went down hill. For Nathan, he got into a huge fight the first day of college and was kicked out, so he came back to this one stop town in the middle of Kansas.

"I am here on a date with this beautiful girl," he says like he is bragging. I don't know what he is bragging about, I am nothing special.

"Shouldn't you two be in school?" he asks suspically.

"Yes," Dean says flatly.

"Ok. How many hours do you want?"

Dean looks down at me with a questioning look but I just shrug. "I think we will start with two and then if we want to add more we will come back," he suggests and I nod.

"Ok two hours. What's y'alls shoe size?"

After we got our shoes and paid for the lane -- which I tried to pay for but Dean refused and ended up paying for everything -- we walked over to the couch in front of our lane.

After we put our shoes on Dean looked up at the crappy screen and said, "Looks like you are going first Princess".

"Just a warning, I suck at bowling," I declare while picking up the heavy, marble pink looking ball.

"Don't worry. I'm terrible too," he laughs. I walk up to our lane and get ready to let the ball fly down the greesie floor, "You got this princess," Dean calls from behind me, his voice echoing in the large empty room.

With that I let the ball go and watch it go immediately into the gutter, Dean and I are both quite in shock for a second before we both start laughing hysterically.

"Holy shit, you really do suck," Dean says, still laughing.

"I told you I did," I say stumbling over to him, still laughing hard. Dean falls back onto the couch from laughing and I fall with him. I don't know how but somehow I ended up in his arms, him clinging to me. When we realized what was happening we stopped laughing but the smiles never left our faces.

"I really like you," Dean confesses.

"I really like you too," I say, finally admitting it to both myself and him.

We stay in this position on the couch for like twenty minutes before the Nathan yells, "Are you guys going to bowl or fuck?"

"Shut up Nate," Dean calls but he does move me a little so he can get on his feet.

"You've got this," I call as he picks up his ball.

"Thank you Princess," he smirks.

Unlike me, when he let go of the ball it flew down the lane and hit a few of the pins down. "Nice," I called happily.

"And that is how you do it," Dean says, taking a bow.

"Dude you hit like two pins," Nathan calls.

"Shut up Nathan," this time both Dean and I yelled.

"Fine, I'm going to the back. Don't steal anything please," he called before disappearing.

"What should we take first?" Dean questions loud enough for Nathan to hear.

"Dean, I swear to God," Nathan calls, which causes both Dean and I to start laughing again.

Dean and I ended up spending three more hours in the bowling alley, not really bowling just goofing around. Nathan didn't come out again until right before we left which gave us all the freedom to do whatever we wanted. We slid down the lanes and almost crashed into the pins; we walked around on the tables and countertops; and we just sat in weird places to talk. It ended up being an amazing day and the best date I have ever had, granted I have only been on like four other dates but still it was amazing. After we left the bowling alley we went back to that diner he took me to last week and then we went to the abandoned building again. We walked around for a little bit before he drove me home

"Where is your mom? I thought she worked from home?" Dean asked when he parked outside my house.

"Her and my dad are taking a month-long vacation to celebrate their anniversary," I inform him.

"Seriously? And they just left you at home all by yourself?"

"My aunt lives a few blocks down and will check on me and stuff but other than that yeah," I smile.

"That's cool, my parents would never let me do that," he laughs.

I am about to say something else when I see Jo's car pull into my driveway and get out of her car looking a little angry. "I should probably go handle her," I say before opening my car door. "Call me later tonight?" I ask before climbing out of the car.

"Yeah," he smiles.

"I'll talk to you later then," I say before closing the door.

"Where the hell were you today?" Jo asks leaning against her car.

"I was hanging out with Dean," I say simply walking up to the front door.

"I can see that. What did you guys do?" she asks interested.

"We hung out at the bowling alley," I say happily.

"You two are adorable," she laughs.

"It was a date," I inform.

"Wait seriously?" she asks, shocked.

"Yep," I smile.