A/N--I've removed the pic of Drew that was originally here due to all the hate :/ Apparently I don't have a very popular type of guy lol. Just use your imagination people, you don't have to stick to what I see in my head! That's the magic of stories! But yeah, I want the comments on here to be about the chapter and not the pic. I didn't delete the comments because that'd be kinda rude, but I'm hoping to not see anymore! There's a pic on an earlier chapter that didn't get so much hate, so if you're curious as to how I see Drew, there you go :)

"So are you ready for the best date of your life?" Drew asks me teasingly as I climb into the passenger seat of his car the next night after work. Since Drew told me a few days ago that wearing my Converse would be fine, I figured that it'd be okay to wear the same thing that I did to school on our date. Although I'm sure there's this universal girl rule out there that says that this is a huge no-no, I honestly don't care. 

I had an amazing time at work today and hadn't wanted to leave early just to change. 

And no, it's not because of the boy who I'd been laughing with the entire afternoon. I'm not going to admit to that because I know it's only going to come back and bite me in the butt if I admit to liking spending time with him again.  

No, for now I'm going to say that I worked on the afternoon of my first date ever so that I can save for college. It makes me sound smarter and not quite as pathetic.  

But Lucas and I did have a really fun afternoon; that much I will admit. Zara was out because of a dentist appointment so Lucas somehow convinced me to put the closed sign up an hour early so that we could blare the radio across the store and sing along like complete losers. Hell, I think we even threw a few dance moves back in there. 

Thinking about it makes me look out of the window towards the shop, and as soon as I do I see Lucas standing at the store window that faces us. When he sees that he's caught my eye, he gives me a slight smile, but it's not the kind of smile that he'd been giving me inside. Earlier his smiles had been filled with pure happiness, a thing I haven't seen from him in a long time. This one, though, is fake.  

I give him a slight wave and a smile of my own before turning back to Drew, back to the guy who hasn't broken my heart and who's about to take me on my first ever date. I say in response to his earlier question, "What? Taylor Lautner's going to be there?" 

"Ha ha," he says sarcastically before placing that damn hand of his onto my knee. Good Lord, is this some kind of fetish for him? Does he just love girl's knees or something?  

"But seriously though," I say, my curiosity getting the better of me, "Where are we going?" 

"Just wait," he says with that teasing smile of his gracing his lips. "You'll love it, though, trust me." 

I narrow my eyes at him in a playfully threatening manner, "I better." 

Only ten minutes later, after a car ride filled with him asking me simple questions about myself-thankfully he didn't really ask much about my parents except for if they had any other kids-and him singing the radio softly to himself-surprisingly he has a pretty good voice-we pull into a parking lot and I immediately press myself to the glass of the window to see where he's taken me.  

I see the laser green and blue sign that says Laser Tag Emporium immediately and can't help but let out a little squeal of excitement. I absolutely love this place. Lucas and I used to come all of the time when we got bored of going to the movies or hanging out at his house. His parents would drop us off here with two twenty dollar bills and we'd spend an entire afternoon shooting each other in the dark and eating nachos in the lobby. I haven't been since our friendship ended, though, and haven't really thought too much of it. 

But now that I see it standing there in all of its brightness, I can't help but be thrilled that he's taken me here. Though he's been a little too touchy feely for my taste lately, he sure knows how to pick a date place. 

I look back at him and see a satisfied and relieved expression on Drew's face before he asks me, "So you're okay with this, I'm taking?" 

"I love this place!" I say happily, not even caring that I probably sound like a six-year-old little boy. "I used to come here all of the time!" 

He cuts the car off and starts taking off his seatbelt as he says, "Good. No other girls I know like this place but I figured you would. You're cool like that." 

"Of course I am," I joke cockily before slipping my seat belt off as well and then hopping out of his car. The evening air is as muggy as can be, of course, but even the new stickiness of my skin and growth of my hair isn't going to ruin this for me. 

I meet Drew by the front of his car and then together we walk into the big stone building, my excitement growing tenfold when we step inside of the familiar lobby. Huge plastic pillars rise up to the black tiled ceiling, blinking laser lights wrapped around them to give it that outer space feel. Arcade games line the dark grey walls, mostly boy teenagers standing behind them either playing or cheering on their friends.  

It brings back so many memories, pictures of me tugging on Lucas' hand and leading him to the front counter so that we can get to playing as soon as possible playing like a black-and-white movie inside of my head. I can just see us sitting at that table in corner of the lobby, throwing cornels of popcorn at each others' face because we got too hot playing laser tag. My heart warms when I remember that one time when Lucas caught up to me while playing the game, the two of us having been playing a cat-and-mouse game the entire time, and wrapped his arms around my waist and twirled me around while laughing "I got you!" in my ear before shooting me with his little plastic gun. 

All of a sudden, I feel like crying. Although the two of us are getting along so much better now, it's never going to be like that anymore. The two of us are never going to have such an easy, natural-as-air friendship. Though we may try to act like it never happened, that awkward air of rejected feelings and two years of silence is always going to surround us.  

We're never going to be that happy before. 

"Hey, you okay?" Drew's voice and the feeling of his warm hand wrapping around my tiny one effectively snaps me out of my emotional stupor. I immediately feel terrible for thinking about Lucas on a date with another guy. This is about Drew and me, not Lucas and me. I need to remember that. 

So while pushing all old-movie like thoughts about Lucas and I out of my head, I intertwine my fingers through his and then give him a reassuring smile. "I'm awesome," I say, before letting him lead me up to the counter and watching him buy three games worth of tickets for the both of us. 

Our first game doesn't start for twenty minutes, so Drew and I battle each other at Guitar Hero, air hockey, and skee ball. While he crushes me at both skee ball and air hockey, I kick his ass at Guitar Hero, stunning him into silence for a few minutes.  

So by the time that we slip on our black vests and are preparing to enter the laser tag room with eighteen other people, I can honestly saying that I'm having the best time that I've had in a really, really long time. While some awkward, acne-ridden teenage employee gives anyone who has never played instructions, Drew takes a step close to me and asks, "You ready?" 

"Hell yeah," I tell him happily, hitting the area of his vest that's over his chest with my black plastic gun. "I'm going to kick your butt." 

"Oh we'll see about that," he smiles evilly at me just as the buzzer goes off and the lights in the holding room start to flicker, letting us know that the game is about to start and that we're free to enter the arena.  

Everyone stampedes through the double doors to get into the room, making Drew and I pretty much the last ones to enter. There's a giant projection the only wall that's visible from every spot in the room that is counting down the seconds until the game starts. As of right now, we have two minutes to disperse into our hiding spots. 

I go to run away from my date that's on the other team, but he quickly grabs me by one of the loose straps on my vest and pulls me back to him. I look at him bewildered, wondering why he's not letting me run away from him. That's the whole point of the freaking game! 

I get my answer, though, when he leans in and whispers, "Game on," before leaning in and pressing the lightest of kisses against my shocked lips. He pulls away and looks at my completely stunned expression, gives me a little wink and then darts off into the shadows of the room. 

It takes me a few seconds to recover from the feeling of actually having been kissed, of actually having had a guy put his mouth on my own, but once I do, I know that I have to kick his ass for doing that to me. Who the hell does he think he is kissing me like that? He gives me my first kiss in a dark laser tag room where any pre-pubescent boy could have seen? 

Oh, he's going down. 

OoOoO 

"I had a lot of fun tonight." 

Drew says this clichéd, totally over-used line as he walks me up to my front door later that same night, after I-though he's been denying this the whole drive home-kicked his ass in two rounds of laser tag. While he barely managed to beat me the first game we played, I slid through in the last two games and killed him.  

I smile at him as I look on at his handsome face, wondering why the hell this popular basketball player asked me out on a date. He could have his choice of anyone at that school and he chose me. I just don't understand it. Not even a little bitty bit. But, while it lasts, I'm going to enjoy it. I say, "I did too. Thanks for taking me out, I needed it." 

As we come to a stop right in front of my door, he comes closer to me, so close that I can smell the citrus from the gum he's been chewing all night. He bows his head closer to mine and says softly, "Any time." 

Even though there's a somewhat hollowed out, almost sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I lift my face to meet his and let his lips lightly press against my own. No words were spoken about the kiss earlier on in the arena, but I know that it's been running through both of our heads because throughout the night, I'd catch him looking at my lips. 

It'd been a strange feeling having someone look at my mouth like they wanted to taste it, but it was kind of flattering. I've only ever looked at one person that way and those feelings were, obviously, not reciprocated, so it was nice to have someone actually feel that way about me. For a while I thought that maybe my lips seemed unattractive or something. 

But they're obviously not to Drew because the moment that he brushes my lips with his, he brings his arms around my waist and pulls me closer to him. I immediately start to panic at his closeness and go to break away from him, but the sound of the front door opening causes him to break away from me first. 

My heart pounding inside of my hollowed out chest, I cautiously look up and see my father standing there and looking at me like I deserve to be at the bottom of a swamp or something. I go to say something first so as to fix this whole situation, but he beats me and says, "First that blonde guy and now him." 

"Dad, come on," I say breathlessly, my mind still reeling from the kiss with Drew and now getting even worse because my dad has seen. "It's not..." 

He lets out a dry, dark laugh, "Not what I think? So you weren't shoving your tongue down this boy's throat, then?" 

I want to yell that there was no tongue involved whatsoever, that I was never going to let it get that far simply because I wasn't ready, but by the look on his face I know that doing so would be a terrible idea. My voice coming out in a terrified whisper because I know exactly what's going to happen when I get inside, I tell him, "I'll be inside in just a second." 

He just shakes his head at me and heads inside, but not before I hear him whisper, "Fucking slut," underneath his breath. 

Tears quickly starting to rise upwards, I slowly look from the empty area where my dad was just standing and back to Drew. He has a confused yet somewhat angry look on his face and I immediately find myself wishing that Lucas was here because he'd know just what to do in this situation. He's always been able to say just the right things, hold me just the right way, and right now I need nothing more than his comfort. 

Thinking of this, I take a step closer to Drew as if he'll hug me and just make everything bad go away, but he instead takes a step backwards, away from me. He asks me slowly, "What blonde guy is he talking about?" 

Almost angry that he's going to bring this up right now, right when he can see the tears in my eyes because of my dad calling me a slut, I ask, "Seriously?" 

He nods, "Who was he talking about, Naomi?" 

"Lucas," I say in a tight voice, angry that I have to explain to myself to him like we've been dating for weeks or something. "I left my jacket at school the other day and he brought it back to me." 

This seems to cool him down completely, his once stiff posture fading back into his confident, relaxed stance. He comes to take a step towards me, as if he wants to pick up where we left before my dad interrupted, but I'm not having it. Not after he's just acted like my dad saying that kind of stuff means absolutely nothing to him. I've never seen this selfish side of him and I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. 

I say dejectedly, "You should go." 

This stops his advances cold. "What?" 

Did he not just see what happened between my dad and me? Does he not realize that I'm practically shaking in fear because I have to go back inside and face him while he just gets to climb inside of his fancy little car and drive away with no consequences?  

I take a step away from him and say, "I'll see you at school on Monday, alright?" 

He shakes his head, his expression completely annoyed that this thing between us didn't go any farther, and says, "Whatever," before disappearing down the front steps and into his car. I watch as he turns his car on and then flashes past the house and down the road, his headlights illuminating the otherwise dark and almost creepy road. 

If I didn't have to worry about walking into the house and dealing with my father, I'd be overwhelmed with anger that I just let that ass steal my first kiss. That was all he wanted from me. I was just some action to him. He didn't think I was special like he told me, he didn't like that I was different. He just liked that I had boobs and a pair of lips. 

Feeling used and terrified, I slowly make my way towards the door and hesitantly pull it open, knowing that if I stay outside much longer he'll think I'm even more of a slut. The scene before me is nothing if not familiar, the red carpet still stained and old looking, the wood walls still peeling in random places. My father sits before me on the striped couch, a bottle of beer in one hand and the television remote in the other. 

Since it looks just like every other night, I think that it's okay to just walk past him and act like five minutes ago didn't just happen. But of course the moment that I step foot towards the hallway, he's raised himself out his seat and made his way over to me. 

His lips are curled into his disgust, but his eyes are showing entertainment and I think that's what scares me the most. My sadness is amusing to him, him berating me and calling me names entertains him. His breath pungent as it fills my head, he says, "That was quite the quickie out there." 

"It's not like that," I retort quietly, too scared of what he's going to say and what he's going to do to say it with any more confidence. 

His voice booming across the quiet house, he demands, "So you're calling me stupid then?"  

"Not at all," I say quickly, not liking where this seems to be heading. Sure I've heard him yell at my mom like this, but never at me. He usually just gives me these underhanded little verbal jabs that'll hurt, but he's never yelled at me. With me, he's more of a silent but deadly kind of guy. 

Not tonight. 

And it's terrifying. 

"I just...I don't want you to think badly of me, dad," I say, trying to flatter him or sweeten him up so that he doesn't get too mad at me. Maybe he won't be mean to me anymore if he thinks that I love him more than anything, if I act like I respect him. 

He scoffs, "And you do that by giving oral to guys on the front steps?" 

"I wasn't giving him oral!" I scream, finally having had enough with him saying that I did something I didn't really do. Why does he keep saying that I did all of these things when in all honesty, I was just kissing someone? Hell, we weren't even open-mouth kissing. It was a simple kiss and I was going to make it stay that way and yet here I am, getting punished for it. 

I feel the stinging pain across my cheek before it even registers with my eyes that his hand is coming for my face. It scorches my skin in more than ways than one, in physical pain and in mental. My father has slapped me across the face. He has gotten physical with me. Never, not once in my life has he ever gotten physical with me and now, well now I feel as if I've been reduced to nothing. I'm nothing in his life. 

He doesn't love me. You cannot love someone that you hit with no regrets. You cannot enjoy verbally using someone that you love.  

My dad, my own father who gave me life, doesn't love me. 

My hand flies to my cheek and I gasp at him, the tears that I'd previously been holding back now falling like a river across my cheeks. While the tears cool the cheek that's now on fire due to his strike, it doesn't bring me any kind of comfort. 

Not bothering to watch my dad's expression and how his hitting me has seemed to not affect him in the slightest, I dart out of the den and into my bedroom, slamming my door shut and making sure that the doorknob is locked. It's then that I can see the trembling in my fingers. 

Wanting to waste the smallest amount of time possible, I run over to my closet and pull out the duffel bag that I used in middle school the carry my gym clothes back in forth. I then fill it with enough clothing to last me a couple of days and the essential toiletries. After packing up its charger, I reach into my pocket and then shakily dial the phone number that has been etched into my brain for years. 

He answers on the first ring. 

"Naomi?" 

Just the sound of the confusion in his voice makes me burst into a whole other round of tears, these just as heart wrenching as the first. His voice has always soothed me, has always made me feel better, and right now it feels so good to hear it that I can't help but cry. 

Brokenly I say into the phone, "I need you...I need you to come pick me up." 

Immediately he asks me, "Where?" and on the other side of the line I can hear him rustling around in his bedroom, his dresser drawers flying open and making a loud banging noise. 

"My house," I manage to croak, "My dad. He..." 

"Naomi," he says in that voice of his, that voice of his that I'd been aching to hear earlier outside when my father first saw is. It's that voice of his that just wraps me up in a warm blanket and makes me feel safe. 

"Yes?" I ask him, wiping the tears away with my fingers. 

He says, "I'm going to be there in ten minutes, go wait outside for me, alright? It's going to be okay. You're going to be fine." 

And for some reason, even though the same man who so easily swung at me just seconds ago is right in the next room, I believe him.