I REALLY like this story. It's exactly what I needed to write, and hopefully I'll be able to finish by the end of July. Hope y'all like it! Tell me what'cha think. Enjoy:

one

She was swinging her legs back and forth. Her feet just barely grazed the water beneath, but it was okay, because she wasn’t wearing shoes. And as I watched her watch the sun set and dusk paint over the sky, my only thought was, “Why the hell is there a seemingly-hot girl sitting on the Greens’ dock?” I couldn’t see her face because of where I was and how the light was shining, but I could distinguish the outline of her body and her hair, which was being swept away by the light breeze. Her shoulders were cloaked in a sweatshirt, and I had to assume that she was wearing shorts, due to her bare legs. And then there were her shoes. They were right beside her. Just a simple pair of flip-flops. She looked about my age, and since these summers were always boring and hot-girl-less, I decided to go find out whom that girl on the Greens’ dock was.

           So, with about as much swag as a timid peacock, I got up from my lawn chair (and it really was mine—my mom had gotten my name engraved on the back a few summers ago) and walked along my grass lawn until I came to the short stone wall that served as a fence, separating the Greens’ property from ours. Typically, I was a firm believer in front door usage, but there was a girl who looked pretty from a distance, so I hopped the wall with little remorse. Well, actually, it wasn’t so much of a hop as it was a nice climb. I just climbed over the wall, being careful to not scrape my khakis on the moss, and then I was on the Greens’ property—sans the awkward door-bell-ringing delay.

           The girl was still sitting on the dock, and her legs were still swinging and brushing the water. She wasn’t humming or singing or even talking to herself. She was just silent, so I decided to take her lead and kept that going. Well, that was of course until I came to the beginning of the dock and contemplated stepping on it or not. Actually, I was still pretty quiet then, but when I physically stepped onto the dock and stopped mentally ruminating over the act, well, that was when noise happened. I took a single step onto the dock, and then the wood beneath me elected to freaking creak, because why wouldn’t it? But it was probably for the best, because if the wood hadn’t creaked, then my presence wouldn’t be announced to the girl, and she wouldn’t know that there was another person there. And that would’ve been creepy. So I made sound, but she stayed still and didn’t even flinch or twist her head to see what all the commotion was about. 

           Upon realizing that she either didn’t care that I was here or was deaf, I kept walking. I only stopped when I reached the edge of the dock, where she was. My standing figure cast a shadow over the girl, but she still didn’t look up. She just continued to gaze out at the water and the setting sun. And I couldn’t really blame her. It was beautiful. The contrast of sparkling blue to hues of oranges and reds and yellows and even the occasional pink or purple. It was enchanting, and though I had just been lounging on my lawn texting, sometimes I used the same time to sun gaze, too. It was one of those minimal things that happened everyday, but felt special, regardless. 

           So then like the smooth as chunky peanut butter idiot that I was, I ruined the moment and said, “Hi.” That was it. No cheesy, “Isn’t the sunset beautiful?” or even an intruding, “The sunset is pretty, but not as pretty as you.” I didn’t even go with the elongated version of, “Hi. I’m Will.” I just said, “Hi,” and left it at that.

           And you know what she said back? She said, “Hi,” and that was it. She didn’t even look up to see if the person talking to her was attractive or not (which he was, just for the nonexistent record). Just a simple, “Hi,” like I had started with. It was pretty pathetic of me, to be perfectly honest. Normally I could at least introduce myself fluently when I was talking to a girl. But right now I could barely get out a simple freaking greeting. 

           After another moment of silence, I was like, “Uh, I’m Will. William Brooks. I live next door. In the white house. But not, like, the actual White House. Like, where the president lives. I live in the one over there,” I pointed, in case she wasn’t sure where the big, white house was. And then I apprehensively used my extended hand to scratch the back of my neck, because that was just a thing that I did when I was nervous. “So, uh, what’s your name?”

           At the question, she finally looked up and smiled. And, oh, what a gorgeous smile it was. Even though the sun was still casting sketchy shadows in her direction, I could now see her face. It was a nice face. A really nice face, actually. Her cheekbones were high, lips thin, skin bronzed, and eyes darker than mahogany. But the actual logistics of her face weren’t all too important. What was important, however, was her smile. 

           With glistening teeth that were lined up next to each other like soldiers at attention, she smiled. It was a happy smile. Actually, no, it wasn’t. It was an exuberant smile, though the exuberance was toned down and muted, veiled in a guise of nonchalance. It was a beautiful smile, and I didn’t really want to look away. But then she spoke, so the smile broke.

           “Smooth,” was the first word and dig that the girl said to me. “I’m Lilah. Lilah Tov.”

           And what did I say to that? I, William Henry Brooks, III, said, “Oh,” after a hot girl had properly introduced herself to me. Because I was an idiot who at times lacked all basic skills in the art of communicating. But then I totally didn’t recover because I frantically added, “That’s a really nice name. Lilah. It sounds kind of like a flower. I don’t know which one, but, uh, flowers are pretty cool. And pretty. Yeah, flowers are pretty. And, uh, so is your name. Lilah. Wow.”

           The girl stared at me for a moment, and then a stream of laughter so pure that it could’ve been from an angel emitted from her mouth. She just laughed and laughed and laughed. But I couldn’t really blame her, because while I may have looked like a total D-bag drenched in Ralph Lauren, when I got rambling, even the most serious of individuals cracked. Like, I had once made my grandma spill her tea due to shock from one of my digressive spells. HER TEA! And now Lilah was laughing and it was a beautiful laugh, but it was still demeaning, because she was laughing at me, and getting laughed at by pretty girls was never fun. Even if those said pretty girls were strangers.

           “What’s, uh, so funny?” I dared to ask.

           “You said that my name reminds you of a flower,” she grinned, “and you couldn’t be more off.”

           “What do you mean?” I looked down at her and scrunched my eyebrows together in perplexity.

           “My name isn’t light like a flower. It’s dark—like night,” she said, her eyes never leaving the disappearing sun. A small smirk found its way to her face as she uttered the words, but I wasn’t sure why she was being smug.

           “Oh, well, uh, night is cool, too,” I went on, “but, uh, I really think that your name sounds like a flower. Lilah. I don’t know. It’s just kind of flowery and stuff, ya know?”

           “No,” she said with a slight shake of her head.

           “Well, maybe it’s not, I guess.” She was wrong. It totally was flowery. But I wasn’t really in the mood to tell this pretty girl that she was wrong, so I lay off the topic for a moment. “So, uh, what brings you to the Greens’ dock?”

           “I’m staying with them for the summer,” she replied. “My parents were fed up with me and thought that a summer here would do me some good.”

           “How do you know the Greens?” I knew I was being a bit intrusive, and if my mom were eavesdropping, she probably would’ve grounded me for prying. But my mom was inside drinking pinot, so I didn’t really care how far we got into this one-sided game of 20 Questions.

           Lilah glanced down at the water, seemingly mesmerized by the sheen of the glistening substance. “They’re my aunt and uncle.”

           “Oh,” I said, “that’s nice.” The Greens seemed a little young to have a niece Lilah’s age, but I wasn’t really sure what that age was, so maybe that assumption was wholly wrong. “How old are you?”

           “I turned sixteen back in February, but I just got my permit last week, because I’m lazy.” She smirked a bit at the mention of her lethargy, and then probably figured that it would be polite to ask me the same thing: “And how old are you, Will?”

           “Sixteen as of November,” I said, and then added as an afterthought, “and I got my license in May.”

           “Mazal tov,” she muttered.

           “Mazal tov,” I repeated, the phrase sounding weird coming from a guy as WASPy as me. “Is that the same ‘tov’ as in your last name?”

           “The very one,” she sighed. “It means ‘good.’ So, like, even though it actually has something to do with the zodiac sign or whatever, ‘mazal tov’ means ‘good luck.’”

           “In what language?” The only languages I spoke were English, fragmented Spanish, and French, because G-d knows everyone needed to know French in this modern age… Freshman year, my parents made me take both Spanish and French, but then they thought that the workload was too much, so I dropped the more practical of the two, and now I knew how to ask where a bathroom was in French (Où est la salle de bain?), in addition to all the random phrases one never needed to know. And it didn’t even make sense that I stuck with French, because we vacationed more in Cancun and Spain than we did Tahiti and France. But my parents thought that French was more “refined,” so there was no more dialogue on the matter.

           “Seriously?” Lilah said, for the second time lifting her head to look at me. Her eyebrows were arched up in incredulity and a hint of repugnance. But her eyes—her eyes looked directly at me. They were brown. Not, like, shit brown, but, like, dark espresso brown. They kind of shined in the light. And just like flipping rest of her, they were beautiful.

           “I do English, French, and, like, some Spanish,” I defended. “That’s it.”

           “It’s Hebrew,” Lilah said, her dark eyes averting back to the sun. “Did you actually not know that?”

           “Nope.”

           “G-d you are so white!” Lilah stood up to emphasize her point, though, I wasn’t really sure how that added any emphasis whatsoever. Now, we were both around the same height, but Lilah was shorter by a few inches. Which wasn’t that surprising.

           “Thank you.”

           “It’s not a compliment.” And I had to give it to her. It wasn’t compliment. It was more a statement. The grass was green. Lilah was pretty. I happened to be extraordinarily white. It was just a fact, though it was probably meant to be a way of saying, “Wow, you are so unbelievably sheltered in your white-centric-totally-WASPy-life.” Which was true. I was.

           In an attempt to switch topics, I then shifted back to her name: “So, if ‘tov’ means good—in Hebrew—then what does Lilah Tov mean?” Maybe Lilah wasn’t fluent in Hebrew, and maybe she didn’t know the meaning of her name, but I had a strong hunch that that simply wasn’t the case. She knew.

           “‘Good night,’” Lilah said.

           “Actually, it’s still, like, sunset or dusk, which isn’t really night in my book,” I corrected, mentally berating myself for my ever-growing lame factor.

           “Oh my gosh, you are so stupid,” Lilah mumbled. “‘Lilah’ means ‘night.’ So my name, idiot, means ‘good night.’”

           And the brilliantly clever thing I had to say to that was, “Oh.” While my mom was hypothetically off grounding me for being too nosy, my older brother, Charlie, would simultaneously be pummeling me for the lack of urbanity in my method of conversing with Lilah. Charlie was really good at talking to girls. He taught me everything he knew, which evidently, wasn’t that much.

           “Well, I guess I’ll see you around, Will Brooks,” Lilah said, beginning to hike up the length of the dock. Like, even her freaking stride was something else. She put one foot in front of the other, just like everybody else, but somehow she made it seem like she was more confident and poised than the majority.

           “Uh, yeah,” I nodded in a stunned manner. “Good night, Lilah Tov.”

           Lilah momentarily stopped walking and turned back to face me. “One: it’s not night—it’s ‘dusk.’ And two: that was repetitive.” Then she walked away, into the darkness of dusk.

           And because I wasn’t a fan of being caught trespassing, I quickly got out of dodge and hopped back over the stone wall.