Jess Stone had breasts. He had been like this his entire teen life not quite fitting in anywhere that he had lived and at the same time he hadn’t really had the chance to. His folks moved around a lot with his dad being a hydrological engineer but they were slightly afraid of what might happen to Jess if he attended school. Some people just didn’t get it or wanted too. Jess was now attending a new school when he decided to change things...

Only it was everyone else that was getting changed!

Squires-29

 

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Image Credit: anime couple

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***Donnie…………

He’d never held his hand out to a girl before and Yasmine was just so different. Actually she was amazing and different.

And it was kind of this oh wow, oh cool moment when she took it but she didn’t just take it she did that alight thing.

That’s where you see a woman talk a guy’s hand in the movies and TV and she’s just barely doing it like in all those scenes where a guy pulls a woman out to the dance floor and it’s all like ballroom fancy.

It so made him blush, it made him feel.

It kind of made him feel like this was a deal…might not be like a big deal but this was definitely a deal…something that was going to be something even if was only going to be dancing.

She shocked a laugh out of him when she went from that once they were dancing to doing the vogue dancing thing from Pulp Fiction that Uma Thurman did with the hands and the eyes and stuff.

He tried to do the Travolta stuff but honestly he did really look at that stuff during the movie.

He knew he was getting it wrong but he wasn’t sure that it mattered because she was smiling and she looked like she was having a good time.

They went through a couple of semi-fast dances and he really didn’t know a whole lot of the popular music that Sam and Nick were D.J.ing.

Honestly he wasn’t that much into Rap and Hip-hop either or Metal and there was a lot of the regular stuff that sort of white kid music that he didn’t get either.

Beach boys, old surfer stuff, Motown and old soul music and stuff. Yeah it was odd but when he had a good place to go skateboarding he liked the mellow or he liked the whole surfing music thing.

So he really thought that him doing some of the stuff the other guys were trying to do made him look more than a little foolish.

The songs switched over about ten tunes in to something slower and he offered too Yasmine’s hands and actually just stepped up and started dancing.

Her eyes did that little flicker of surprise but she slid right into the rhythm and he wasn’t the best slow dancer either but he could at least do it without stepping on her feet.

She smelled good.

She felt good.

It wasn’t like he had his hands all over her but just dance-close and holding hands…it was more than nice it was physical contact with another human being.

Something we lack sometimes in the way society has gotten these days.

“This is nice Donnie, thank you.”

“Thank me? I’m the guy lucky enough to get to dance with you.”

“Well I don’t usually get to. Things can be…well it depends on the adults at the get-togethers and then there’s actually meeting someone that I want to dance with.”

“Really you want to dance with me? I’m not very good.”

Yasmine giggled a bit. “Well no you’re not but you’re a very good guy and that makes up for it.”

“Oh well good because I was afraid of like dancing with you and being like all Jerry Lewis.”

“Jerry Lewis?”

He stuck his teeth out and squinted and did an imitation. “Hello…pretty laydee…”

Yasmine laughed.

Like really laughed and it was this sort of high pitched bell like kind of laughter and she covered her mouth with her hand and she actually looked around.

Donnie reached out and gently moved it down. “Hey, it’s okay to laugh.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s awesome.”

“I sound like a hyena.”

“No, no you don’t.”

“I do…it’s all high pitched and stuff.”

“So like Tinkerbelle then.”

*** Yasmine…………

Oh my like Tinkerbelle…she thought mouth sort of going dry.

Guys didn’t say those kinds of things to her, and guys didn’t say that kind of stuff to Arabic girls.

She giggled and she did…she had this habit in her laugh that made her kind of nervous and sort of made her keep going.

She turned red as Donnie looked at her and smiled. “Definitely Tinkerbelle.”

She covered her mouth with her hand. “Tinkerbelle’s not Arabic.”

“Then a cousin. Aren’t there movies with them all over the world?”

She shrugged. “I have seen them but okay.”

“Hey how does Aladdin’s carpet fly?”

“Magic.”

“I say pixie dust.”

She pursed her lips and lowered her hand she’d never really thought about cartoons and stuff and here she was dancing with this boy and talking about things and actually thinking about fairies in the Middle East even if they’re all Disney fiction.

She shrugged then smiled. “Okay then pixie dust but I’m no pixie.”

He took her hands and started dancing some more. “I don’t know, you’re cute and you have the laugh and you kind of glow.”

Blush time, oh major blush time.

“Donnie…you, you barely know me.”

“I know, but you barely know me but at the same time I know you probably better than any other girl that I’ve ever met.”

Yasmine stared at him shocked. “Really?”

“Yes really.”

“But you’re?”

This time it was him looking at her quizzically. “I’m what?”

More redness. “You’re cute.”

He blushed which to Yasmine was kind of wow. There was something just sweet and cute about seeing a guy blush up close.

Oh she had no idea why it had even come out but after the last couple of days and the way that her and her mom had actually found some friends.

It mattered, it really did and it changed things.

So yes maybe, just maybe she might be a little less meek and mild and hiding the way she’d been taught and maybe she’d be more herself and try to live a little…maybe live at all.

What was it that Jessie had talked about?

Tilting at air-conditioners?

Yasmine closed her eyes a few moments and just moved with the music and it was freeing, there was no race or faith or anything but just the music and the feeling of herself moving and Donnie’s hands with hers.

She opened her eyes and he was looking at her and he was still sort of blushing and he was sort of biting his lip.

Yasmine smiled. “Well you are.”

“Well you’re the only girl that’s really said that.”

“I’ll wager that I’m not the only one that’s thought it.”

“Yasmine….”

“No, I think I’m right Donnie. I think there might be some others out there that think that you’re cute besides me.”

“Well no one’s ever said.”

“Well people can be shy…I am…”

“You, you’re shy teasing me like this?”

She giggled again and she still didn’t think her laugh was cute or pixie like but there was this thing there that was in Donnie’s eyes that kind of made her usual self-doubt take a bit of a back seat and that was his eyes.

They sort of softened when she laughed and that was kind of different in a really good way.

“I’m teasing you because I trust you Donnie, I’ve never ever done this before with a boy before and I’m not even sure that I’m doing it right.”

“You’re doing it right.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Yes, good…I like this, I like us and being friends and dancing and just…”

“Just?”

“You make me breath mister, and I haven’t felt like I’ve been allowed to breathe in a long time.”

He looked shocked, surprised and maybe happy?

She saw her mother waving her over with Jessie’s father and she smiled at Donnie.

“It looks like it’s time for me to go. I mean it I had a really great time and a lot of that was being with you.”

“It was?”

“Yes it was.”

Yasmine took a breath and she stepped forward and she did something that wasn’t really something she thought she’d ever have the nerve to do with someone outside of…well something traditional or family…

She kissed Donnie…it was light and it was on the cheek but it was still the very first kiss that she had given a boy, a man that wasn’t family.

She stepped back a few steps and turned and headed back to her mother and Mr. Stone and her mother smiled a little.

“Sorry mama…”

“Don’t be there’s nothing wrong with a kiss like that…especially if you like the boy and especially if he’s still has his hand over that cheek.”

“He does?”

She nodded. “Come on let’s not keep our escort waiting and we can have tea and talk about this before bed.”

Yasmine nodded and she ducked her head respectfully for Mr. Stone as he opened the car doors for them but she was still smiling.

Donnie and her mom and this all being so new…like a real new start.

She settled into the back seat of the car and just took these really long full deep breaths.

It was so nice to be yourself and to breathe.

It was actually a nice drive back to her and her mother’s house after the party and the parent’s and everyone having a chance to talk and clear things up as to what was really going on with the kids in the school and what the situation was.

There was a surprise waiting when they got home…

Mr. Stone got out of the car and he brought a flashlight and there on the steps of their house was flame…candles in some of those jars to keep them from blowing out in the wind…

Candles…

And there were some bundles of flowers and there were some cards and such there too. not a lot of them but there was some…a dozen or so.

Mr. Stone looked at the women. “Just stay here and let me take a look first.”

He sounded not wary like he was expecting trouble but he sounded instead like a man with that kind of an experience.

Yasmine watched him look things over and look into the envelopes and just checking if things might have been folded in there that shouldn’t be left on a person’s door step.

He turned to them and he smiled and he came over with the envelopes and open the door for them like a gentleman.

Her mother asked. “Is everything alright?”

He nodded still smiling. “Yes, better than I think our kids made an impression?”

“Really?”

He passed her one of the envelopes and Yasmine watched as she unfolded the letter inside and she could read over her mother’s shoulder.

“We’re sorry for your loss; we heard your husband served.”

Then the next line gave her a lump in her throat.

“Thank you.”

She wiped at her eyes as her mother started reading more of the notes that were left and most of them were just simple thank you’s and three were pictures of Arabic-americans that were serving in their uniforms and told of how proud they were and that they were happy that she and her mother had moved into the neighborhood.

Mr. Stone helped them carry their things inside and Yasmine watched this smile growing on her mother’s face and in her eyes as she read that last letter and inside the envelope was this old gold colored star.

Her mother read it out loud her voice trembling.

“Ma’am.”

“Today I got to see some young people doing the things that I swore to uphold a long time ago. I’m an old man now and I’ve seen this country and this neighborhood go through some rough times and all.”

“I got reminded though of all the whys.”

“My boys are all gone and they served too and it’s just me now and I’d like to pass this onto you and your family just as a thank you for all your husband had done and all he’d stood for.”

She watched her mother and she was crying, both of them were crying as she took the old gold star and she took a nail and tapped it into the wooden door frame and she hung it in the window of the porch door.

There was a lot of things wrong with the world but right now as she went over to her mom and hugged her she couldn’t feel a single one of them.