Blitzed(13)

"Well, come on then," Troy says, reaching out and taking my hand. "I hope you like fish."

"Why?" I ask, but Troy doesn't answer, and I let it slide. Instead, we walk back to his car, which I see is older and more beaten up than mine. It has to be from the nineties or earlier. "Nice car."

"Piece of shit is more like it," Troy says, opening the door for me. "Not for long, though."

"Oh? You're getting a new one?" I ask as Troy goes around. He glowers, and I start to feel bad. I mean, I don't know anything about him except that he's built like a Greek god, he's a superstar athlete, and he's tagged every piece of ass from here to California. That's not exactly what I want to talk about on a first date. I try a new tactic. "So what classes do you have this year?"

Troy shrugs and hangs a left toward downtown. "Spanish, Geometry, English . . . normal stuff. Doesn't really matter. I'm on cruise control at Silver Lake. I know what I’ve gotta do for my next step."

"Which is?" I ask. He sounds more confident, and I admit, sexy. I like a man who knows where he's going in life.

"The NCAA. I tear it up on the field, and I've got my ticket punched. My GPA is fine—I can cram in an SAT course or something to get that up enough, and then I'm getting the f*ck outta this two-horse town. NCAA, then NFL. Don't really care where there . . . except for Cleveland. I ain't going to Cleveland."

"Why not?" I ask. "Too cold?"

Troy laughs, then he looks over, realizing I’m being serious. "Sorry. No, it's that Cleveland has just about the worst football team in existence. Shit, Detroit's better than they are. You . . . you don't know much about football, do you?"

"Just what I've seen at a few games I've been to for school," I say, kinda blushing. "Dani got me to go a few times. I didn't really get it except that you were trying to get the ball into the end zone."

"Well, that’s better than some girls," Troy says, shaking his head. "Why'd you go out for cheerleading then?"

"Kind of a Dani Vaughn redemption project," I reply, and I’m actually enjoying talking about myself a little for once. "You know, I've been the invisible girl for most of school, and I wanted to do something this year. So, Dani had me start practicing on my own over the summer, and with my new diet, I kinda filled out. Speaking of diet, you said something about fish. Why?"

"The Crab Shack has a good special on baskets," Troy says, all confident again. "I was thinking we could grab two baskets to go and then just go hang out over on Slater's Point. You know, watching the river?"

I frown, and Troy looks over. "What?"

"Uh, my bad. I guess I should have told you. I have a bad shellfish allergy. Like, we go to the Crab Shack, and the next place we go isn't the Point, but County General. Sorry."

"Well, why the hell . . .” Troy starts to yell, then he takes a deep breath. He pulls over and slams his car into park, shutting off the engine. We're in the parking lot of a laundromat, and he gets out, walking around before slamming his fists on the hood of his car and yelling to the sky.

I should be scared. Troy is looking and acting like some sort of caricature from an abusive boyfriend movie, and we're still on our first date. But I'm not. There's something about the way his eyes look that tells me he's not angry at me, and in fact, he's got a lot of rage inside him, but there's something about the fact that he actually pulled over and didn't keep yelling at me that tells me to approach him.

"Sorry," he gruffly grumps as I come out of the car. "I shouldn't have yelled."

"No . . . but I'd like to know why you did," I say softly, taking his hand. "Yesterday, you were Superman, as Dani called you. Today, I can tell you're not having the best of days. What's up?"

Troy shakes his head, and I respond by not letting go of his hand, but instead squeezing it. "Come on, Troy. You didn’t make me spend six periods today debating in my head whether to call you up and cancel this date based on your rep, rip up my neighbor's flower pot, come to my house with what looks like a shiner nearly a half-hour early, and then go screaming to the sky like you're challenging Thor to strike you with a thunderbolt, and not get to at least talk to me. Tell you what. Change that Crab Shack plan to Mickey-Dees, and we can still go hang out at the Point. But if you think you're getting in these jeans tonight, buster . . . well, you might as well keep on yelling.”

Troy stops trying to pull away and instead tilts his head, looking at me differently than he had yesterday or even a few minutes ago. Yesterday, I'd been a piece of meat, a hot piece of meat, I could tell, but just meat nonetheless. He’d still had that look when he picked me up. But now . . . Troy looks at me like he's seeing me for the very first time. "Okay. Uh, I only got twenty bucks though, so are you cool with just a Big Mac meal? I might be able to spring a McFlurry if I can scrape some change from between the car seats."

"Or," I say, patting my pocket, "you can let me give you the five bucks that I have in my pocket, and the two of us can both eat what we want. But I don’t think we’ll need it—I mean I’m pretty sure we can both eat McDonald’s for less than twenty bucks."

Troy smiles a little, and I like this smile. It still makes my body do little pulses of strange feeling, but it's a warmer, more honest smile than before. I smile back. "Deal. But only if our total goes over twenty dollars."