What I really wanted to do this Saturday was hop on a plane to Venezuela and see if I could find Samuel. What I ended up doing was preparing to go on a date with Bobby. What does it say about me that I’d prefer breaking into a prison in a foreign country and facing down men with machine guns, to going on a date with a cute boy that might end up being my boyfriend?

Seriously though, I’m seventeen already. A date shouldn’t be that big of a deal to me. I should have had a whole bunch of them by now. Eva and James had been together forever and almost all my friends had had boyfriends or girlfriends by now. Dating someone just never seemed that important. Eva said that it was a combination of me being too busy to get to know anyone and me being clueless about boys.

I’d given up on the idea of taking Bobby to Mary’s soup kitchen for our first date. I didn’t want that many eyes and ears watching my every move and listening in. Wait, did I say first date? That implied a second date. I was getting ahead of myself. Anyways, I decided that I’d save Mary’s for a future date, if there was one. This put the date planning back in Bobby’s court and he decided to make a surprise of it all and simply said that he’d pick me up at seven and to dress casually.

Eva came over in the afternoon and helped me pick out an outfit. I didn’t think that I needed any help. Jeans, a flowy blouse and slides wasn’t rocket science, but Eva insisted and I didn’t really care much. If it made her happy, I could play along. Twenty outfits later, I wasn’t so keen on the whole thing anymore and I ended the process. Jeans, a different, more summery, blouse and sandals.

She also made me swap out my ever-present scrunchie pony-tail for a few well place hair clips and applied some very minimal makeup. I’d never been much for makeup. Makeup and blacksmithing or makeup and Kung Fu don’t go well together, so Eva had to put it on for me. It was one of those times where I really missed my mom. I thought about how she should have been the one to teach me about makeup and help me pick out clothes for my first date. Then again, if she’d never gone missing, I wouldn’t have appreciated her as much as I should and I would have gone full teenager on her and not let her participate. I almost started crying just thinking about her, but I managed to hold it in and keep the light layer of mascara from running down my face.

Bobby pulled up at seven and somehow dad managed to answer the door before I could. He also managed to answer the door in his blacksmithing gear. Work boots, jeans, t-shirt, safety goggles, and a heavy leather apron. He looked huge compared to Bobby and he was definitely going for the whole intimidation angle. Dad only wore the apron for certain specialty work and he never, ever, left his workshop wearing his apron or his safety goggles. He also rarely answered the door before I could get there.

I almost felt bad for Bobby and I watched him appraising dad’s solid build, but Bobby managed to say his ‘Hello Sir’ in a steady voice and forced a laugh from dad as he continued with, “You and your daughter are the two most intimidating people that I’ve ever met.”

With a smile still on his face, dad welcomed Bobby inside and soon returned to his workshop with a simple exhortation to ‘have fun’. He’d gotten his message through loud and clear. There was not point in his hanging around and embarrassing me any further.

As soon as dad left, Bobby and I shifted from being awkward because dad was around to being awkward because he wasn’t. We’ve hung around each other plenty of times over the past several months and it had never been strange before. Pin the label ‘date’ onto it though and everything changes.

Bobby got us going with the old classic, “You look great, Abby!” and the ice was broken; easing some of our tension.

Putting on my best Valley Girl slash Southern Belle voice, I said, “This ol’ thing? I wore it to the Finklestein Bar-Mitzvah last year. Daddy said that it was WAY too casual, but I felt that since the Bar-Mitzvah boy was wearing a sweater instead of a suit that I could rock this chemise. I mean I know that it’s like so two seasons ago, but my friend Deliah told me that her friend Christi though that it was totally rad.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Shut up, Abby.”

“Ok. Sure thing. This is me shutting up. Not another word out of me. Not one peep.” I mimed locking my mouth up with a key and then opening my mouth to swallow it. I gulped audibly.

I got a great facepalm from Bobby and he took my hand and dragged me to the door. I suppose that’s one way to get straight to the hand holding portion of the date. Very smooth.

“We should get going. If we’re not there on time, then nothing changes.”

Bobby opened the car door for me and walked around to his door. Unlike me, Bobby had started the process to get his driver’s license as soon as he turned fifteen and had gotten his full driver’s license months ago. I’d only decided to start the process to get my permit a few weeks ago and hopefully I’d have it in a few weeks. I couldn’t get my full driver’s license for a year and half after that. Now that I wanted it, it kind of sucked that I had to wait. Besides, I’d been driving my car in R2 or L2 for months and I felt that I was a great driver, as long as I didn’t have to obey any speed limits or watch out for other cars and could ignore nearly all the road signs.

“Where are we going?”, I asked as I put on my seat belt.

“Can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.”

“Really?”

“Yup. I wracked my brain trying to figure out where we could go on our first date and I couldn’t think of anything truly spectacular, so I decided to go in the other direction.”

“So our date is going to be tremendously boring?”, I asked. Don’t think for a moment that I missed his use of ‘first’ before date.

“No. Not boring. I’m going with cliché.” As he said this last bit, he gestured up in the air as if the word was being displayed up on giant billboard lights.

“Wow. You really know how to sweep a girl off her feet. You’re such a charmer.” I delivered all that in my best deadpan voice.

“Hold on. Hear me out. Clichés are cliché for a reason. Cliché dates are the meat and potato of dates. They’re the best kind of dates because every time you see them in a cheesy Christmas movie or read about them in a book, you’ll think back and remember our date. A cliché date connects you to society. If we were do something awesome, then we’d probably forget all about it over time because we’d never be reminded of it in popular culture.”

Now it was my turn to facepalm. “Truly, you have dizzying intellect.”

“Wait ‘til I get going!”, Bobby replied enthusiastically. And there was the real reason that I’d agreed to go on this date. Bobby was able to quote lines from the Princess Bride almost as well as I could.

“Seriously, now that you’ve successfully lowered my expectations about this date and referred to me as either meat or potatoes, would you care to tell me which of the many cliché date locations we’ll be going to. Dinner and a movie. Movie and dessert. A stroll along the beach, a walk in the park under a full moon. Your house for dinner to meet your family, including your quaint Nana that says all sorts of curmudgeonly things that we’re supposed to be scandalized about but in reality find hilarious, all while your little sister giggles at us, making kissing sounds, and your puppy Snowball begs adorably for scraps and yips all around the room?”

“Holy shit. That was descriptive. You sure you don’t write Christmas movies in your spare time? Anyways, no, none of those cliches. For you, only the best cliché will do. We’re going to a carnival. The state fair is two counties over and I’m going to buy you a hot dog, take you up on the Ferris wheel, check out the bearded lady, win you a stuffed animal, get upset when the guy in the dunk tank insults you, and hold you while you’re terrified in the haunted house.” He beamed with pride at his mediocre plan.

I couldn’t help laughing. It was the most cliché date I could think of and it sounded wonderful. He even managed to pull off most of the things he’d planned to do. We ended up changing the hot dog to two slices of greasy pizza, the bearded lady wasn’t there so we settled on seeing the world’s smallest horse, and he did dunk the rude guy in the dunk tank, only the guy insulted Bobby’s manhood and not me, so Bobby was defending his own honor.

One other difference was that I won my own stuffed animal, a fluffy red lion that I named Red. It was at the balloon dart game and I may have bent the rules just a smidgen and used my field to break the balloons when my dart throw was off by an inch or two. Some might call it cheating, but I can definitely say that it takes more effort and skill to fake a successful balloon pop using a field that it takes to successfully pop a balloon the normal way.

Other than that we walked around, holding hands, and went on lots of rides. I even pretended to be scared in the haunted house ride so that Bobby would hold me tighter. Not that there was a chance of my being surprised on the ride, as I’d sent out my field all around me and could see where all the ghouls and ghosts were going to ambush us. The giant spider surprised Bobby quite a bit and he held me more tightly for awhile after. Yay giant spiders!

Bobby ended the night at my front door by holding me again and kissing me in a way that was movie style cliché, yet still amazing.