Wander

I’ve never been a very social person. I was never one of the people who were invited to all the loud parties. I’m more like the guy who lives across the street from those people and wishes they would keep it down. I do, however, get the urge to wander late at night, and sometimes I join a party just to have something to do.

It was a Thursday, Friday if we wanted to be technical, since it was after midnight. I was walking through a neighborhood near my dorm room. The only light was provided by streetlights and the half-moon in the sky. The way the neighborhood was set up, all apartments faced the highway, and since I was walking on a regular road, I was passing by other people’s backyards. In one of the backyards, there was a group of three girls gathered around a fire pit.

“Heeey,” one of them called out. In the middle of the fire pit was a hookah, and one of them was inhaling.

I’m mainly not a social person because I’m very passive. I’ve never gone out and searched for friends. But when a chance is handed to me, I always take it.

“Hey,” I said. I walked over to them with my hands in my pockets. The backyard was small. There was a sliding glass door that went into the house, then a fire pit, then the grass sloped up to the road I had been walking on. The three girls were all sitting cross-legged around the hookah. I sat down next to the girl who had called out to me.

All of them were dressed up, but the girl who called out was a bombshell. White denim shorts that had the pockets coming out below the hemline. Sky-blue tanktop that came down to just above her belly button piercing, with a white parka on over it. The parka looked expensive. It also looked warm, which was good. It was only fall, but I couldn’t imagine the rest of her clothes were giving her any protection from the cold. Her hair was long, curly, and chocolate brown. It was a lovely contrast to the white parka. Her face was clear, her makeup well done. Her nose pointed upwards, giving the impression of snobbishness. Her eyes were the same color as her hair.

I realized she was asking me where I was going.

“Umm…nowhere in particular. I like walking around at night.”

“You should come with us!” she said. “We’re about to go downtown.”

“Umm, sure.”

“I’m Fawn.”

“I’m Dave. Nice to meet you guys.”

The two other girls took that as their cue to introduce.

“Robin”

“Lacey”

Robin was cute. Lacey was not. If Fawn was a bombshell, Robin was…approachable. She didn’t have the same superstar beauty, but I would have talked to Robin over Fawn if I had seen both of them at the mall. Lacey also wasn’t approachable, but for the opposite of why Fawn was. If you saw Lacey at the mall, she would be reading alone at a table in the food court, and you wouldn’t take that as an invitation.

Lacey wore a flowered dress that looked like it inspired a sofa cushion. It was cheap. I didn’t know anything about fashion, and even I knew it was bad. It wasn’t her fault, necessarily. All the sexy clothes- slinky cocktail dresses and denim minishorts- were all made in small sizes. I’ll stop trying to dance around it; Lacey was fat. She had two chins, so that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She was a dirty blonde, a plus in my book. She had the kind of smile that looked like she meant it. But that didn’t change the fact that her upper arms were as big around as my thighs.

Robin was wearing blue denim shorts that came just above the knee. She had on a band shirt with a dark gray design of an old-school record player made of heart and veins. Well, probably a band shirt. The name under the record player was no one I’d ever heard of. Over the band shirt was a red and black plaid button-up that was way too big for her. I couldn’t see her hands. It was adorable. She was the one who had been taking a hit from the hookah when I walked up.

She caught me staring and winked lazily. Her eyes were electric blue. Her nose was a little too big, and didn’t match the rest of her face. Her hair looked like it had been dyed, but dyed well. Dark red, almost brown. Long and curly.

She tried to give me a chance to smoke, but I waved off.

“You don’t want any?”

“Uh…nah, not really the smoking type.”

“Too bad.” She could pout like no one I’d ever seen. And her lips looked just as good on the end of the hookah, sucking down smoke.

Fawn took control of the conversation after that. Quizzing me about my major (Sociology), favorite class (Archery), and complaining about her rotten luck with teachers.