"So you've decided that there will be absolutely no sex in your and Taylor's relationship?" Noelle asked from within the confines of the dressing room. Hallie stood outside the small room, holding a few dresses in her arms.
"Well, not unless it lasts a long time and gets really serious. There are just too many chances and possibilities." Hallie heard Noelle laugh.
"I don't even know how many times Ike and I have done it. Either the condoms are highly effective or there's something wrong with Ike's or my plumbing. We've been very lucky. No pregnancy scares or anything." Hallie heard the door unlock and she turned around. "How does this one look?" Noelle stood before her in a floor length dress. The bottom layer was emerald green satin and black netting was draped over it, small, shiny, black beads sewn into it. It was a Titanic style dress. It looked perfect on her.
"This is the one," Hallie said, nodding. "Ike will love it." Noelle turned around and looked at herself in the mirror.
"Yeah, I like it. And green is his favorite color," she said, turning to look at herself from a different angle. "I'm gonna get it," she said, turning back around to look at Hallie.
"Great. I'll wait for you up at the front of the store." Hallie replaced the other dresses and began making her way up to the front of the store. She stopped dead in her tracks as a voice rang out behind her.
"Hallie Mitchell, how are you?" Getting ready for the big night?" Helen Chambers asked. Hallie turned around and smiled dishonestly at her.
"Hi, Helen," she said simply. Helen smiled and held up a red tube dress.
"Isn't this nice? I'm wearing it to prom."
"Really? Who are you going with?" Hallie asked.
"You wish, Hal. I'm one of the other sophomore servers for that night. You and your cute little boyfriend get to spend the entire evening with me." She looked over at the dress she was still holding up. "Yeah, red is Taylor's favorite color, so I figured that this would be a wise decision."
"Why do you think that he's going to care what you wear?" Hallie asked, her attitude kicking in.
"Well, seeing as a certain someone saw you getting nice and friendly with Ryan Taylor at the community pool yesterday and that very same someone called Taylor Hanson not too long ago and bestowed that valuable information on him, I wouldn't be too very surprised if, while Tay is on the rebound, he looks elsewhere for companionship. For love. For affection. And where will elsewhere be? With me." Hallie stared at Helen, speechless and shocked.
"I cannot believe that you think that you could get to Taylor and I like that. I wasn't doing anything wrong. He'll understand that once I tell him."
"Yeah, Hallie, you're probably right. If only I hadn't gotten to him first." Hallie glared at Helen, a disgusted look on her face.
"What kind of a warped world do you live in? Taylor trusts me and I trust him. It will take more than a little whore like you to break us up. He really dislikes you a great deal. I don't think that you could do anything or produce anything that could change his mind." Helen grinned confidently.
"I bet I could think of something that could sway his judgement." She raised her eyebrows up and down.
"You're so crude. Get out of my way. I'm not wasting anymore time on you," Hallie said, walking past Helen, roughly brushing shoulders with her.
"See you at prom, Hallie!" Helen called out cheerfully to Hallie's quickly disappearing figure. Hallie held up her right hand over her head, her middle finger extended.
Noelle quickly followed Hallie out of the store and into the crowd of people in the mall.
"Hal! Slow down!" Noelle called, weaving in between groups of people, trying to keep Hallie in sight. Noelle finally caught up with her and grabbed her arm, pulling her to a stop. "What's wrong with you? What happened?" she asked. Hallie shook her head.
"Nothing. Helen's just being an ass. Did you buy that dress?"
"Yeah, I got it," Noelle said, holding up the plastic bag in her left hand.
"Good," Hallie said, turning on her heel and walking toward the other end of the mall. "Now, it's time for me to get a dress."
"But I thought you already had a dress," Noelle said, hurrying to follow her. "That one navy blue one."
"Nah, I need a real dress. We're talking a tight, low cut, short dress. I need to keep Taylor's attention on me," she said, poking herself in the chest with her index finger.
"But I thought that you were going for a stricting abstinent relationship," Noelle said, practically jogging to keep up with Hallie.
"I'm not going to have sex with him, Elle. I just need to keep his interest."
"So, you're going to tease the poor boy."
"Precisely." Hallie began heading toward the end of the mall she originally had made a dash for. "Red," she mumbled, "it has to be red."
Hallie hung the plastic covered dress in her closet and then slid the doors, shut, more than a little worried. She was worried that her parents would have a heart attack whenever they saw her dress.
Grabbing her remote control off her night stand, she pushed one of her curtains aside and climbed onto the bed, lying on her stomach. Just as she was about to turn on her TV, the doorbell rang. She got up and walked out of her room, down the stairs, and to the front door. Looking through the peephole on the door, she saw Taylor standing on her front porch. He had a cute little thoughtful look on his face. His hair was in a ponytail without any tiny wisps of hair hanging down. Smiling, she opened the front door.
"Tay, hey. I was just getting ready to call you," she said. He looked up at her, a worried expression on his face.
"Please tell me that you've never met a guy named Ryan Taylor and that Helen Chambers is full of bullshit and should burn in hell," he commanded. She sighed.
"Would you come in so that we can talk?"
"No. I'd rather stay out here."
"Okay." She walked out onto the porch with him, pulling the door shut behind her.
"Answer me, please." Hallie looked off behind and into the trees. A robins flew out of one of them.
"I've met him, yes."
"At the pool, right? In that red bikini, without me. Jesus Christ, Hal, he's like Ike's age and he has a kid that will be starting kindergarten next year."
"He didn't have any interest in me, Tay. We just talked and I kept a T-shirt on over mybathing suit. It really wasn't a big deal."
"Yeah, right. Hallie, he has interest in anything female. Not to mention good looking, nice ones. You probably kind of liked him a little bit too, huh?"
"I cannot believe that you're saying that! Do you think that I would give up on you for some guy that I talk to for a half hour at the pool just because I think that he's pretty good looking? Don't you trust me more than that?" I agreed with you that we should be a couple. I like you a lot. I said that I was committed to you and we shared a very intense moment. You didn't take a fucking word I said seriously, did you? Well, I was very serious, Taylor. That was the most serious I'd ever been about anything in my entire life. If you can't take me seriusly and know that I will try my very hardest to keep my word, then maybe you should just leave and go screw Helen or something," she said, her face red.
"Oh, so you're totally innocent and I'm the bad guy? I'm the horrible one who misinterrputed your divine, God-like, perfect actions?" Taylor ran a hand over his hair, messing it up a little and then ripping the hair thing from his tresses. "All right, so, explain why you hugged him! Why did you even touch that son of a bitch? If you and I are this totally devoted couple who are never going to screw up or quit loving each other, then we need to alert the authorities because one of us has something seriously wrong with them. No one is perfect. There isn't a single person who hasn't screwed up before in their lives!"
"Where exactly are you going with this?" Hallie asked, folding her arms over her chest.
"I want you to admit that you aren't right. I want to hear you say that you're wrong. Not just a nod of agreement when I say that you're wrong." She stared at him, her eyes wide.
"You want me to say that I'm wrong when I don't think that I am?"
"You don't think you're wrong?"
"Not at all. Am I not allowed to talk to other people now?" Hallie asked.
"It's not that, I'd just rather you not talk to him. He's not the best person in the world for you to be involved with. He's a father, for heaven's sake, and can't legally drink!" Taylor said loudly.
"He's not a bad guy."
"You only think that because you like him."
"Taylor, I don't like him. I think that he's good looking, that's it. I think that Ike is good looking and I don't like him!"
"You hugged him!" Taylor yelled. Hallie looked at him incredulously.
"You're so crazy!"
"Whatever. I'm leaving. Let's talk about this later whenever we've both calmed down." He turned around and walked through her yard and to his truck, getting inside it and driving away. Hallie groaned and sat down on the front steps. She ran one of her hands over her hair and rested her head on her arms in front of her. She wasn't going to cry. That would just be stupid because it wouldn't accomplish anything. Nothing would be better because of it. She raised her head and opened her eyes, watching Taylor's truck's break lights disappear around the corner as he made a left turn out of Rockafeller Estates. Shaking her head and getting up, she walked into her house to call the only person that she knew who knew Taylor better than she did.
Picking up the phone on the coffee table, she turned it on and dialed Taylor's number. Isaac picked up in the middle of the second ring.
"Hola, Hanson residence, Ike speaking," he said. Hallie grinned.
"Hey, Ike, this is Hallie."
"Taylor isn't here."
"I'm not calling to talk to him. I wanted to talk to you."
"Oh really? What about, Hal? I'm all ears."
"We just had our first fight and I don't know how to handle him whenever he's angry." Hallie explained to him what had happened. After she was done, he sat, silent, contemplating the advice that he would hand out.
"Well, I can see certain time and instances in this big mess where both of you are right and both of you are wrong. For example, Taylor should know better than to ever take Helen seriously. She's not quite right in the head, if you ask me. He also, I don't think, should get that upset because you talked to Ryan. He shouldn't, but I understand why he would. You know how Taylor has sort of a bad reputation because of the number of girls he's dated and stuff? Well, Ryan has that times ten. His son will be in kindergarten with our little brother Mackenzie. Mom and Dad are a little worried about that.
"But also, you need to understand that if Taylor has told you that he wants you guys to be committed to each other, he's very serious and very protective of the bond that you share. He didn't tell you that he liked you just because he could. He really does."
"Okay, but why is he so touchy about all of this?"
"What would you do if I told you that I saw him hug Helen yesterday while she was in her bathing suit?"
"Point taken," Hallie said without hesitation. Isaac smiled.
"Okay, great, so what are you going to do now?" he asked.
"Well, I'm probably going to apologize to him, but only if he does the same to me."
"Of course." Ike thought for a moment. "Hey, Hal, why did you hug him?"
"He made me realize that there is a lot more to a relationship than just the physical aspects. That I need to be very careful with Taylor and that right now is one of the few, rare times in my life when I don't have many responsibilities and that I need to just have fun and be a kid. I don't need anything to stress me out."
"Wow. Ryan Taylor taught you that?"
"Yeah. Perhaps we shouldn't shun the people who make mistakes, but learn from them."
"Damn, Hal, that was really deep sounding," Isaac said. Hallie grinned.
"Thanks. Hey, Ike, would you mind if I came over to your house in about a half hour?"
"Not at all. I'm the only one home besides Zac. As long as you are okay with meeting one of our younger brothers, it's fine," he said.
"Okay. Thanks a lot, Ike. I'll be there in a little while."
Taylor gently pressed his foot to the brake pedal as his car slowed to a stop behind the red light. Being very frustrated, he turned the knob on his stereo up and the volume hightened to a loud level. Soundgarden blared and he slammed his foot on the gas, the tires squealing, as the light turned green. He was pissed.
The lap in Bates took a person about twenty minutes to complete. Going through East Cedar Park where all the local druggies hung out, smoking various things and kicking around a hackey sack, it then pulls out onto the highway. Passing numerous fast food restaurants, one is greeted by seven different stoplights. Slowly, civilization slips away and thick trees begin lining the sides of the twisting highway where no street lights are to be seen. Taking a right turn onto a well worn path between the trees gives way to a clearing fairly deep within the woods in which one large oak tree stands. Cars were often pulled off in all directions around the clearing while others that were just on the lap circled around the oak and exited the woodland sanctuary where so many teenagers, mostly Bates High School students, went to escape parents and find the opposite sex.
After pulled out back onto the highway, the lap was repeated until the driver got bored, ran out of gas, or his or her curfew reared its ugly head.
Taylor turned off the lap after completing it three times, bored with the same old stuff, and drove toward his home. Upon reaching his house, he saw Hallie's mother's Jeep and assumed that Hallie was there. He sat in the truck for a few minutes after he turned it off. Sighing and pulling his keys out of the ignition, he decided to venture inside.
He opened the door to silence. No one was talking. The TV wasn't on. Nothing was being broken. Absolute quiet. This is so rare in a house in which nine people live in that when it happens, it's a scary thing.
Taylor dropped his keys on the end table by the couch and turned on the lamp which bathed the empty room in light. Then, he went upstairs. After passing four other doors, he came to his bedroom door which was slightly ajar. Feeling that perhaps there was a surprise visitor in his room, he listened quietly for the sound of someone breathing, coughing, sniffing, clearing their throat, living. He heard none. He reached his hand inside the room and flipped the light switch on the wall on and then nudged the door the rest of the way open with his knee. He was greeted with a surprising sight.
Someone had made his ben, which was a very extraordinary thing to have happened since he never did it. On top of the navy blue and cream colored quilt that his grandmothers had made together whenever they had found out that his mother was pregnant with him, the words "I'm wrong. I'm sorry. I love you." were spelled out with deep red velvety rose petals. A smile slowly spread across his face and the tense irritation in him dissolved and soothing warmth replaced it.
"So, I take it that I'm forgiven?" Hallie said from behind him. Taylor turned around quickly to see Hallie before him. She had a hopeful look on her face.
"Where did you come from?" he asked.
"I was sitting on the window seat at the other end of the hall. You walked right past me." He grabbed her hand and glanced back at his bed and then smiled down at her.
"You're forgiven. I'm sorry too. I overreacted," he said, pulling her body to his and wrapping his arms around her.
"Thanks. I feel better now that I know you don't hate me."
"Oh, I could never hate you, Hal."
"Nor I you."
"Damn, that was poetic sounding."
"Thanks, I try."
"So, what do you want to do now?"
"Well, I did rent a couple of movies before I came over here in case you forgave me. We could go back to my house and watch them."
"Aw man, I thought that there was some reason that you left me that message on my bed and there was no one home and . . . you know what I mean." He arched an eyebrow suggestively and then winked looking down at her. She laughed a little and then patted his stomach, walking away.
"Oh, you wish."
As Taylor and Hallie walked back out to the Jeep, Taylor playfully nudged her.
"So, do I match up to Will yet?" he asked, grinnning. Hallie looked up and him with a mock questioning look on her face.
