Seals and Elephants ch. 3

Chapter Three: Exclusive
“I’m not seeing anyone else”
Song:  Shine- Collective Soul
There’s something about Red Bank in the middle of the summer.  It’s a pretty small town all things considered, but there’s a kind of magnetism associated with the name because of all the quaint shops and the riverfront property.  On this particular evening we were in the Riverside Park.  With another summer night settling in the twilight was a sight to behold.  The group of reformed hippies providing the soft background of jazz filled the place with an atmosphere of hip indifference as we sat at a table on the stone terrace up by the park entrance.  She was off the walls, all sugared up on pixie sticks and soda- a lethal combination for a five-foot-nothing seventeen year old with the charm of the girl next door.  She couldn’t stop fidgetting and as I reviewed the fresh picture in my camera it was hard to believe that there was no blur.  She got up and started hanging of a lamp post as she chatted incessantly about her love of ska bands and Degrassi.  I got out of my cast iron chair and locked my fingers in hers, twisting her in circles as she spun lightly in my arms.  If the day on the beach had taught me anything, she fit perfectly in the light embrace that I gave her before she spun away again.  “Don’t you think it’s weird,  I mean, it seems like I’ve known you forever…” I brought her up close, hips pressed up against my own and dipped her so one of her feet reached out behind me with her toes grasping at the air.  “Not really… I mean we did go to preschool together,” I responded before kissing her lightly on the nose.  “I guess that’s true, but you barely remembered who I was.  I just think it’s strange that there’s such a connection here.  I haven’t realy thought of anyone since last week.  I haven’t even thought about Chris.  And we did date for like four months… I don’t think I’ve ever dated anyone that long before”
“Relationships can be a little fickle sometimes, not everybody can be as lucky as to run two years and eight months… not everyone’s lucky enough to run the emotional gauntlet,”
“True…”  “I know what you mean though, I’m not seeing anyone else right now… really I feel too much of a conection to think of you as a random hook-up”  Her eyes were fixed on me.  The motion had stopped and she was completely stil in my arms.  “Let’s go to Jack’s, you know they’ve got a lot of good ska stuff there…”  It’s all I could muster to say after she looked into me.  She was captivating, and she had me hook line and sinker, I just wasn’t sure if she’d realized it yet.  She pranced about the aisles in Jack’s, stopping every so often to look at a CD cover, or to hand me an album that she thought was funny.  She skipped along “Louie Armstrong’s Greatest Hits”, an aisle up and to the left “Metallica” back towards the front of the store… “Oh my god, they have it!  They have “Keasbey Nights”!  I love this album, it’s still on a burned CD in my car,”  She said it with such excitement that the lifeless register clerk looked up from his magazine.  I was almost embarrassed but her slight, girlish figure had me walking over to see the album that Tomas Kalnoky made a Jersey underground cult favorite.  Any respectable kid from New Jersey knew it, and the management at Jack’s was well aware that anything by Tomas was well worth keeping in stock.  “I love Tomas- he’s a genius with his composition.  I’ve never heard punk and horns sound so good”  She smiled infectiously and I found myself grinning.  I showed her the Streetlight Manifesto album and picked up the first Collective Soul album off the discount rack on the way out.  We made our way back to the park and sat on the outer wall at the entrance.  She was lying down while I sat next to her when she asked “Where do we stand anyways?”  “Like I said… I’m not seeing anyone else...”  “Well Sam and Saverino wanted to know what was going on…”  “Well, will you go out with me?”  That infectious smile slowly snuck back onto her face as she gazed through me looking down at her “Of course”  When I kissed her  the smile still hadn’t left her face.  We sat down in my car listening to Collective Soul biding the time until she absolutely had to get home in her little Tracker.  I sat there holding Kate’s hand as the first song played on the album and I got lost in the bliss of trespassing into another’s soul.