32Just a boy, just an ordinary boy
But he was looking to the sky
As he asked me if I would come along, I started to realise
That everyday he finds just what he's looking for
Like a shooting star, he shines
/ Vanessa Carlton / Ordinary Day
_
It was nice, just to wander around and not have to think about saying the wrong thing or not saying the right thing or asking the wrong question or giving the wrong answer. I didn't know where Adie was and right then I wasn't really bothered, because I knew where I was and I knew where Dylan was, and seeing as we weren't going to be in the same place by the next night, I figured I should make the most of spending time with him.
Rockford wasn't a particularly spectacular city by any means, but after some of the holes we have encountered on our travels I would have gladly camped out within its boundaries. The films showing at the movie theatre weren't as great as those that had been showing in New York, and the weather wasn't as great as it had been in Pittsburgh, but given the choice, a re-run of Revenge Of The Nerds and a few clouds seemed like a fair trade for not having to be around Luke and Adie. Especially Luke. I was chalking that one up to extremely bad judgement and a particularly insistent friend. If friend was the right word to use anymore. But I wasn't supposed to be dwelling on that.
"You think Adie'll try and get back with Luke?" Dylan asked curiously, as we left the park and wandered into the middle of the city, and had finished ruminating the plausible whereabouts of Cameron, who seemed to have vanished into thin air.
To be honest I hadn't even considered that possibility. It was entirely possible, I supposed. However much Adie said she missed Cameron, the fact was that Luke was always gonna be just down the hall, and Cameron was always going to be in New York, which meant that to Adie, Luke was still the obvious choice. I shrugged. "Anything's possible," I pointed out dryly. "Adie's mind works in twisted ways sometimes."
He grinned. "You think? I always thought that next to Luke, she looked kinda sane. I mean, is it possible to dislike anyone more than him?"
"I didn't think you hated him that much," I remarked, amused.
Dylan pulled a face and scrunched his nose up. "Are you kidding?" He grinned. "I think the word slime was invented for that dude." I remembered now the way Dylan used to raise his eyebrows and say nothing whenever Luke decided to pull one of his ill-timed superior- male stunts. After a pause he pointed across the street with his free hand. "You wanna go get doughnuts?"
"Sure." We were surely breaking the record for the two people who could walk at the slowest speed, but it wasn't like there was anything else to do, and besides, it was hardly the worst feeling in the world. After a while I even stopped pretending that wandering around hand in hand, or with Dylan's arm around my shoulders was anything but damn nice and started to get used to the way that we fit together.
"Okay." Dylan let go of my hand and sauntered across the street towards the doughnut place while I waited outside and idly watched everyone else walk by, assigning them names and elaborate lives based on random judgements to pass the time.
He reappeared moments later, dropping a handful of tiny silver coins back into his pocket. "Jam or jelly?" Dylan raised an eyebrow and peered into the paper bag of doughnuts that the dude inside had given him, closing one eye so he could inspect the contents.
I watched for a moment as his hair fell forward and he raised his eyes before shoving it out the way. "Surprise me," I shrugged, and obligingly he dug out a jam doughnut and handed it to me, grinning impishly in the way that used to drive me crazy when I was still pretending that of course my intentions were completely innocent.
"What?" he asked, puzzled but with an amused smile.
I attempted to concentrate on my doughnut. "Nothing," I assured him, looking over at him. Bad thoughts bad thoughts bad thoughts bad thoughts.
He grinned all the same, like I had said the last part out loud, and chewed thoughtfully. "So where now?"
I pointed across the street at the record store, stuck quietly between a hair salon and a department store. "I smell vinyl and cheap records," I told him. "You up for it?"
He nodded and put his arm round my shoulder as we crossed the street again and ducked inside the tiny shop, separating to investigate the hordes of stack up CDs and old vinyl records. For fifteen minutes Dylan pored over the soul section while I happily scoured the imports, until we were on opposite sides of the same rack and he leant on the top of it and spoke.
"What happens when we're back in college?"
Way to steal my question. "Well, y'know, the way it works is, most people go to class, or else they sleep a lot. Either way you're expected to wash as little as possible," I told him, shifting around to the same side of the racks and watching idly as he absently scrutinized a non-descript CD.
He nodded mockingly as though it all suddenly made sense. "See! I knew there was a reason I chose college over McDonalds," he deadpanned, pushing his hair out his eyes as he replaced the case.
"But you'll never again get your three stars and complimentary name tag," I reminded him regretfully.
He stuck out his bottom lip and grinned. "I'll get over it, I guess." He paused. "What I meant was, what happens to us?"
"How'd you mean?"
"I mean.. like, we're in this for the long haul, right?" The question he posed light-heartedly, with a smile that suggested he didn't really expect me to answer.
So I didn't. Instead I put my arms round his waist and kissed him (seeing as we hadn't done that for at least, oh, twenty minutes), and we stayed like that until the sole shop assistant starting shuffling around restlessly and shooting us disapproving glares from behind the counter.
Dylan pulled away reluctantly. "Maybe now would be a good time to go buy my CDs," he mumbled with a smirk.
I grinned. "I'll wait for you outside."
He re-emerged moments after I stepped outside, clutching his new purchases happily in that delirious-obsessive way I had always suspected lurked somewhere about his person. Included in his new stack of listening material was a copy of 'Born In The USA', which I was pretty damn sure he had already, if his habit of regularly stealing my guitar to pick his way faultlessly through 'Atlantic City' was anything to go by. "My roommate accidentally melted my old version," he explained with a smile that suggested he was completely aware that it hadn't been much of an accident at all.
It was hard not to smile. "Seriously?"
"Yup. Only he's the kind of guy you don't argue with, given the fact he's twice as tall and about four times as wide as I am. He spent the first three months of college calling me Darren and telling me his girlfriend was a qualified hairdresser." Dylan crossed his eyes and grinned.
"Nice guy." Time for a scary visual of a guy who probably didn't care that much that he got to watch Dyl wake up every morning.
"Don't let him hear you say that." Dylan didn't look like he was particularly bothered one way or the other about the previous year's living arrangements. "How about you anyway, who's your roommate?" he asked.
"I don't have one. Well, I do, but she's hardly ever around. She drops in once a fortnight to pick up any messages and stash packages in the closet, but that's about all."
A grin spread across Dylan's face. "I like it when you're strange," he decided, and right then amid the unspectacular remnants of another Mid Western town, accompanied by doughnuts, records and mismatched socks, I think I finally found what I was looking for.
.
**A/N: PLEASE forgive me for the hideously sad U2 reference there. **hangs head in shame** Not that I don't like U2 (all hail Bono, even better than the real thing!) coz I do, lots! But I so didn't know how to finish that just there. God I'm weird. Doobeedoobeedoo.. 'Born In The USA' is an album by Brooooooce Springsteen. Which is, erm, very very good. Are CDs meltable? And hahahahahaha, the hair is back!
The smell-of-vinyl thing is stolen from real life. It's a complication I have. =p
Well, anyways, thanks to #Jess# for your review (for a *cough*fictional*cough* character he's certainly got enviable hair..) and #Yodes# (I have no idea about the ending. And the sequel is a complete blank, except for a few occurrences I already have mapped out..) ( okay, I lied, like I said to you earlier it's coming together now. =)
THE "GET YODES A MOTORBIKE* FUND" is hereby declared open for donations. (Or you could just go and read her stuff, but coppers towards her Fireblade would go down much better, probably. Did I get the bike right, hmm?) One day, dude, you can outrun all the little terrors on scooters, that do ya? **Scary visual** And then you can sit in roadside cafes with your DMs on the table reading Bikers Monthly...
*Or "hunk metal whore", as Bruce would call it.