Mackie was beginning to squirm, so I sat him down. He promptly ran off. I straightened up with a smile and looked at Taylor. "He's cute," I commented. "Looks just like Zac."
Tay smiled. "Yeah, he does, doesn't he?" He watched his baby brother disappear down the hill, then sighed and looked back at me. "Uh, listen," he began shyly, "I'm gonna go blade around a little, you wanna come with me?"
I flashed him a cheeky smile. "Love to!"
As we bladed out of the hockey rink, every girl in it was giving me the evil eye. It was a really weird feeling, but I chose to shrug it off. "Oh well, they'll grow up someday," I thought.
It was only when Taylor laughed that I realized I had voiced my thoughts aloud. "Grow up?" he questioned.
I grinned. "Well, yeah, eventually they may be mature enough to know that you can't be with all of them. And furthermore," I continued, "they're eventually going to have to realize that you can't stay single forever either. I mean, you're a teenager, right? Teenagers date. This is the way of the teenager."
He burst into laughter. "You're very different from them - from anyone, I guess - in just about every way I've seen." He blushed slightly. "If I thought you would expect anything from this, I would never have asked you to come with me," he stated honestly.
I nodded. "I know. The fact of the matter is, you can't go out with every single girl you meet, and I would be insane to expect you to fall head-over-heels in love with me. And besides that, I don't really even know you. As far as expecting anything from being with you, well... let's just say I blade with my brothers all the time, and that doesn't have any sentimental significance to me. So why would this?" I asked, gesturing between the two of us.
He shook his head with a smile. "You're cool, Lin." There was silence for a moment, then he asked, "So how old are you?"
"Fifteen in October," I responded.
"I'm sure you know how old I am," he commented, smiling.
"Yuppers!" I squealed. "You're five months younger than me!!!" I giggled insanely.
"I think you enjoy that a little too much," he observed playfully. There was a short pause before he continued his interrogation. "What are you like? I mean, what do you like to do, what interests you...?"
I took a deep breath. "Well, this could take a while," I remarked. "First of all, I think you may find it somewhat interesting that I am in a band."
His eyebrows shot up. "Really?"
I nodded. "With Heidi, Lucy, and our brothers Todd, Jonny, and Ricky. Well, Todd and Ricky are my brothers. Jonny is Lucy's."
"Are Heidi and Lucy just friends of yours, or are you related somehow? I mean, Lucy seems a bit younger," he said.
"Heidi and I are best friends," I told him. "Lucy is my cousin, though. Those two are the only ones that come remotely close to matching my personality. We all basically have the same interests, like the same things, and the same music! That works out well."
"What are all of you interested in?"
"Well, first and foremost, music!" I offered. "We all love music. Writing it, playing it, or listening to it, it doesn't matter. Besides music, we all talk on the phone way too much - mostly with each other - we love shopping, sports - baseball, basketball, hockey, volleyball, and just about everything else you could imagine - and we all severely dislike teenyboppers. I know it sounds mean, but it's the truth. No, no, let me re-phrase that. We like the teenyboppers themselves - in fact, we are good friends with some - what we dislike is the obsessive attitude."
Tay nodded in understanding. "That's tough to deal with sometimes," he admitted. "Like, I don't want all those girls up there to hate you, but I don't want to stay away from you for their sake. I like talking to you, and it doesn't seem quite fair to either of us. I really do appreciate my fans, though. Without them, I would be nothing."
I smiled affectionately at him. "That's one of the things I like most about you guys as artists. You're so positive about everything."
"You seem a little that way yourself," he mused. "You just generally seem to be a happy person, to love life - you're very...." his sentence trailed. "What's the word? Um..."
"Charismatic?" I suggested.
"That's it!" he exclaimed. "People tell you that a lot?"
I smiled and nodded. "That along with spunky, hyperactive, weird, insane, mental, messed up - all that good stuff." I winked at him.
He laughed. "There's one you forgot - straightforward. I think that's a big one with you."
"I tend to speak my mind," I agreed. "I tell it like it is, whether you wanna know how it is or not."
He looked up the hill. "You wanna head back?" he asked.
I looked up as well, and realized that we had circled the track. "Yeah, let's go."
We smiled at each other, then started back up the hill.