Free Unraveling by Micalea Smeltzer

looked out the window, shrugging my shoulders. “You can have any girl you want, Jared. Just look at you.”
    “So, you’re saying, that because I’m good looking, I’m a douchebag?” he looked at me with a raised brow. With a sigh, he continued, “Katy, I don’t know what kind of guys you’ve dealt with in the past, but I’m not like that. At least not anymore,” he muttered under his breath. “As for the, ‘any girl I want’ part, did you ever think that , maybe, I want you,” he whispered the last word. It seemed to hang there, suspended, between the two of us.
    You.
    A word had never affected me the way that one did.
    “I’ve said it before, Katy,” Jared adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, “but I’ll say it again. You don’t know me, so don’t pretend you do. I want you to know me, but you don’t, not yet. So please,” he begged, “don’t make prejudices’ against me. I’m not judging you, the least you could do, would be to show me the same respect. Deal?”
    “Deal,” I gulped.

11
     
    We rode in silence for a good thirty minutes before we entered a small town.
    I figured Jared was going to stop at one of the various restaurants, but instead, he kept driving.
    Five minutes later, we came to a small park; Jared turned onto the gravel parking lot and parked.
    “We’re here,” he announced, unbuckling his seatbelt.
    I looked around.
    “We came all this way, to go to a park?” I asked, incredulous.
    Jared chuckled. “Oh, how you doubt me, Katy.”
    “But I’m hungry !” To further drive home my point, my stomach growled, loudly.
    “Don’t worry, I’ve got the food part covered,” he hopped out of the car and jogged around to open my door. He held his hand out to help me. I glared at his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you, Katy,” he whispered.
    I took a deep breath and placed my hand in his.
    Just like at the club, I didn’t feel much of an urge to pull away.
    I let him help me out of the monstrous vehicle and promptly removed my hand, before I did something weird, like hang on.
    Jared laughed and shook his head.
    He moved to the back of the SUV and opened the trunk. He grabbed a cooler and a couple of blankets.
    “Are we planning on sleeping in the park?” I asked.
    “Only if you want,” he winked.
    I gave him a horror stricken look.
    “I’m just kidding, Katy,” he assured me.
    I almost wanted to tell him that my scared expression had nothing to do with his words, and more to do with the butterflies attacking my stomach.
    “This way,” he nodded for me to follow him.
    I shook my head to snap myself out of my thoughts. “Want me to carry something?” I asked, when I saw him struggling with the blankets.
    “I got it,” he said, adjusting his grip.
    I snorted. “Jared, I won’t think you’re less of a man if you ask me to carry something.”
    He chuckled and looked down at me with those chocolate eyes. “You’re funny.”
    “I’m really not,” I said, struggling to keep up with his long legged stride. The guy was easily, six foot one, and I was barely five foot.
    “And that, my kitten, is precisely why you are,” he stopped and looked around. “This is the spot,” he said, sitting the cooler and blankets on the ground.
    I looked around and saw that there were other people sitting around with blankets and snack food.
    Jared had picked a spot a fair distance from everyone else and closer to a line of trees.
    He took one of the blankets, shook it, and spread it out , doing the same with the other.
    He sat down and opened the cooler, rummaging through it.
    When I continued to stand there, he looked up at me. “Sit down, Katy,” he patted the blanket beside the one he was sitting on. “Look, I even brought you your own blanket, I thought it would make it seem less like a date if we had separate blankets,” he grinned.
    “I do not understand you,” I sat down on my blanket, a good two feet of space between us.
    “Ah, on the contrary, I find you