Page 16 of Ocean's Lost Octopus
We drove outside the city, and, at first, I wasn’t sure where he could be taking us. I’d assumed we were doing something like bowling or miniature golf, possibly the zoo, but we were getting farther and farther outside the city and all of those things.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“It depends. Does my sweet boy want me to ruin the surprise?”
I gave that some serious thought. Much more than it deserved considering there was no right answer and it would be a surprise if I heard it now or saw it later.
“No.” I let out a long breath. “I like surprises.”
“Excellent.”
We ended up in a fairly large town about a half hour away and pulled into a strip mall. I looked at all the different places. There were a few clothing stores and a phone repair shop…nothing that looked particularly fun. Until I saw it—an indoor trampoline park. Not that I’ve ever seen an outdoor one, but they called it an indoor one, so there must be.
“We’re gonna go jump?” I asked.
“What do you think? Does that sound like fun?”
“That’s not just fun, that’s superty duperty much fun!”
We got there shortly after they opened, and it was already chaotic. Daddy got us the official socks you needed to wear and helped me get them on. Then we went jumping. We jumped on one for height and one to do flips. We jumped into huge pits of foam. You name it, we did it. including basketball, which I learned very quickly I was no better at when I could jump up for those shots than I was when I was shooting from the ground. But what a blast we had.
“I’d never done that before, Duncan. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. This was stop number one.” He pressed a kiss to my lips, helped me with my shoes, and then back into the car we went.
This time, we stopped at a food truck, one that I had seen on a food-channel show where they traveled around to different mobile food eateries. Not all of them trucks. Some were stands that moved from fair to fair, but none with brick-and-mortar stores.
This particular truck specialized in all kinds of grilled cheese. I had one that was supposed to be reminiscent of apple pie. Duncan chose a more traditional ham and cheese. We sat at the picnic tables to enjoy them with a huge plate of fries to share.
“This is oddly delicious,” I said.
“Why did you pick it?” He laughed. “If you weren’t thinking it was gonna be good, I mean.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t think it was good, but ‘delicious’ had been a stretch. I wanted to try it, though. I’d never heard of anything like it.”
And if it was awful, I could easily get something else.
“Here.” I held it out for him, and he took a bite.
“Oh, I see what you mean,” he said. “I would eat this again.” Then it was my turn to try his. Also extremely good, but in a different way. It wasn’t unique in flavor but had excellent execution.
I thought maybe that was it for the day…that our date was done. We had food, we had playtime, and we had good conversation. By all accounts, it was a fabulous date. But no, he had one more trick up his sleeve.
He took me to a builder lab that specialized in making things out of recycled and or broken items. It had bins of parts from random items, everything from old Barbie dolls to electronics to caps from old laundry soap bottles and CDs. You name it, they had it. They had specialized classes you could take to learn how to make particular items, but we didn’t do that. Instead, we made cool things from nothing. When he was done, Duncan’s looked like a robot. Mine didn’t look like anything in particular. I chose to call itRandom Sculpture, and Daddy swore it was one of the best pieces he’d ever seen.
No, not Daddy. Duncan. There, I was getting ahead of myself again. Or was I? I’d slipped a few times and called him that, and he didn’t say anything, not like in the beginning.
“Let’s go home and take a nap and then maybe we can go out and catch some dinner or make some dinner together.”
“That sounds great.” I kissed his cheek and spoke a little softer so the others in the place didn’t hear. “I’m assuming by ‘nap,’ you mean anap?” I tried to infuse the innuendo into it, and for a second, I thought it came out flat. It didn’t.
“We can do that. I love both kinds of naps.” He nibbled on my jaw. “I vote for both.”
Chapter Fourteen
Duncan
The only room in Ocean’s apartment with real personality was his playroom. The rest had the vibe of having had a decorator come in who didn’t know the client at all. Everything good quality, pleasant colors. A modern executive vibe. More like a townhouse used by various executives when they came to town than the home of someone as interesting as Ocean. He’d explained that after his last daddy left, he’d moved in here and paid someone to set everything up.
