‘Ha! I guess that does come into it,’ he admitted, ‘but everyone who spends time on the water has to take pride in what they’re doing. Negligence leads to accidents, but our parents’ business would sink pretty quickly if anything like that started to happen.’
‘I see now why they have such faith in you,’ she reflected, taking another sip of her cocktail.
‘Oh, but I don’t tell them everything,’ he admitted. ‘They might raise a few eyebrows if they knew you were here for example.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Darlene agreed, looking a little abashed. It was his first subtle move towards taking their date to another level and he liked the fact that she was blushing, even though nothing particularly forward had yet occurred.
‘Darlene, there’s something I’m curious about,’ he then said, before backtracking, ‘but actually I don’t want to ruin a good sunset.’
‘It is beautiful, i
sn’t it,’ she agreed. ‘But go on, I’m not that secretive – at least I don’t think so.’
‘It was just something we talked about at your place the other night, but I thought you might not want to go into it with our families there.’
‘You’ve gone to such an effort with all this, ask me what you like,’ she insisted.
‘Oh, this is no effort at all, I’m just delighted to have your company,’ he said, with a shrug.
‘If you say so,’ she replied, showing her first sign of being shrewd enough to compete with whatever wit he offered. He paused a moment, considering her college degree and wondering whether, although she was inexperienced, Darlene might be twice as clever as him. But it was only a temporary detour.
‘I was just wondering if there was more to it?’ he went on. ‘I mean between you and that guy? – but I know it’s none of my business.’
‘Oh, that! If you mean am I heartbroken or something, then don’t worry.’
‘No, actually I was worried you might be scarred by something,’ he replied. ‘That was why I was a little unsure about asking you out, in case there was something you didn’t want to go through again.’
He was not being entirely sincere on both counts, choosing his words as tactfully as he could in the hope of prying. As it turned out, however, his guess proved fairly close to the mark.
‘You get that impression, huh?’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘And there’s us doing our best to show that everything is normal.’
‘Don’t worry if you don’t want to talk about it,’ he urged, while thinking completely the opposite.
‘No, not at all,’ said Darlene. ‘If I don’t feel secure enough to talk about it out on the open water then where?’
‘Secure?’
‘Yeah! What happened was, the guy turned into a bit of a stalker,’ she revealed.
‘A stalker? Jeez, I thought it was the mother you said was weird.’
‘That’s right, she was. I think that’s why I didn’t clue on that he was a little bit unhinged also, because I was focusing on her too much,’ Darlene explained. ‘The truth is she wasn’t even half the trouble.’
‘Was he aggressive?’
‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him. It all came when I decided we weren’t head over heels for each other, like our parents wanted us to be, and then his nature changed completely.’
‘He didn’t like you having a mind of your own?’
‘The best way of explaining it is that he had a real sense of… entitlement about him. As soon as I called it off he responded as if I was taking away some kind of birth right. At first he started telling me how I had to change my mind and come back to him, egged on by his mother of course, but that soon progressed to calling me all kinds of nasty names.’
‘Sounds like a real psycho.’
‘They were positively medieval. It opened my eyes a bit to some of the wacky religious types my parents still socialize with. Most of them are lovely people, but there’s always one or two at every church that act as if they are the judge of everyone.’
‘He didn’t hurt you, did he?’ Kurt asked and it was as he did so that he stepped closer, sensing his chance. The story was just perfect for making him look the concerned and compassionate type. Whomever the barmy Christian she was talking about was he felt like patting him on the back and saying ‘well played’. Through being weird and unhinged the dude had missed out on the hottest of babes, at the same time as virtually chasing her into his territory.
‘Not… like that,’ Darlene replied, ‘but, erm… I was intimidated for a while. Felt like locking myself away from the world.’