A Change of Needs by Nate Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

dancer” at an upscale club in Cary, N.C., for a time, which too, she seemed well suited for. He had always liked her, she wasn’t the typical teenage cheerleader prototype robot, perpetually effervescent and all “OMG’s, BFF’s, LOL’s,” …and drama. She was quiet and out of synch with it all, as if playing a necessary role or fulfilling a graduation requirement until she could walk across that stage, accept her diploma and close the curtain on that part of her life.
    He couldn’t help but appreciate that in the process she had definitely matured into a PYT, “pretty young thang,” and while he didn’t particularly like the phrase “old soul” because it conjured up connotations of sadness and “the party’s over before it’s even begun,” she had a depth about her that was uncommon for a woman of twenty-five …or whatever she was, just as he contrastingly had a great deal of the boy left in him for a man his age, and consequently, over the next couple of hours, and three or four beers, the gap between their ages and the distance between where they were in their respective lives seemed to dissipate until she was asking him if he could drive her home, feeling a little “wrecked” as she put it. “ Are you sure? ” he asked coyly, “ I’ll confess I’m entertaining some impure thoughts, ” he added with a half smile and one eyebrow raised, buffering the statement as if joking in case it was not well received. She smiled and gently bumped him with her hip, “ I’d be disappointed if you weren’t. ”
    She and her older sister, Rose, were named after her mother’s favorite flowers, ironically, of the varieties he had planted around their yard. Her mother June, and her sisters April and May …no joke, had been named after her grandmother’s favorite months… The irony of the fact that he might now be heading down the garden path to pluck one of those said flowers, and plant something of his own did not escape him, and the paradox unnerved him a bit.
    Chunk would take the diesel home after having educated some young bucks on the foosball table, and Jake would drive her decade old Honda Civic. The plan intentionally lacked some clarity it seemed, and she promptly asked if she could crash on his couch to avoid the inevitable frown and dismay that would await both of them at her parents’ house, where she was visiting for the weekend. And he obliged, with increasingly cautious hopes, but no expectations. When they arrived, Chunk was out of sight, retired as he often did after such outings to the upstairs guestroom he frequented so much he called it his.
    Jake fumbled halfheartedly with the sofa in an effort to give the appearance of being a gentleman despite hoping she would stop him, and then put on a CD he had burned of obscure alternative music he had compiled from TV show and movie soundtracks. She was again reminded of what she had always liked about him, while he had the weathered exterior of a career Marine or the Marlboro Man, he had somehow managed to grow older, but not old like so many men his age, and despite the gray in his dark hair, and the white in his goatee, the schoolgirl fascination had grown into a mutual lust for the evening. She kissed him, and it wasn’t a peck this time. She tasted of cigarettes and bubblegum and smelled like the summer after his High School graduation, which smelled wonderfully alive and full of promise as though something life-changing and unforgettable could happen any second.
    She stood there in his kitchen, her head tilted to the side as she pulled the barrettes from her hair and placed them on the counter, surprisingly clear eyed and focused for someone who claimed to be unable to drive only an hour earlier. They stood there in the surreality of the moment looking at each other, reflecting on what had so naturally just taken place, both recognizing the absurdity of it like some stereotypical midlife movie trailer playing in their collective mind’s