Dapper Carter's 8 Rules of Dating Read Free Page A

going to explain. I usually went to bed shirtless, so wearing
a sweatshirt to bed would surely send up a red flag to my already distrusting
wife.
    I struggled to choreograph the simple task of
placing one foot in front of the next, causing me to stumble up the six steps
leading to the front door. I stopped, momentarily recalling how I never liked
the flower pot of Azaleas by the front door, so I decided that I would give
them a little energy drink and pissed out the Grey Goose and Red Bull I had been
consuming hours earlier onto them.
    After I finished showering Kennedy’s plants I
finally tried to enter the house, but as I turned the door knob, it unexpectedly
and violently swung open. As a matter of fact, it swung open so violently that
my shoulder was almost ripped from the socket. It was obvious that she had
waited up all night for my return.
    KC had the sweetest, most angelic face you’ve ever
seen…if it weren’t so pissed off. Her eyes were beet red and her lip quivered
uncontrollably.  They were puffy and swollen, indicating that she had been
crying for hours. I noticed how she had her tiny little fist clenched next to
her side like she may actually swing on me.  
    I remembered the first time I laid eyes on her. We
had a dance at my high school, Saint Vincent, and the surrounding area private
schools were also allowed to be there. That’s why we had girls from the three
neighboring all-female high schools in attendance, which contributed to our
teenage hormones raging at these dances. It was my junior year and I was pretty
introverted, even though I was becoming a budding basketball star averaging
just under twenty points per game.  In spite of this, my bashfulness kept
me from getting the attention and notoriety other athletes had.
    Lisa Lisa’s “I Wonder If I Take You Home” started to
play and I caught a glimpse of my angel stand up and start to sway to the melody.
    She was tiny, standing only five foot and three
inches, but solid. She was also a gymnast and a cheerleader, so she had
powerfully built legs for her tumbling and somersaults she had to perform. Her
auburn hair was curly and her chestnut eyes were inviting.  She had a
broad, cheeky smile that was contagious.
    Kennedy was an angel in every sense of the word. She
sang in the glee club, read to the elderly, and fed the homeless in her spare
time. She was the type of wife that if you mentioned you wanted something, the
next day she would have it for you.
    I tapped my boy Trace, the star of the team, and
asked him to let Kennedy know that I wanted to dance with her. I was taking a
chance by sending the future Arizona All-American over to speak to her.  Most
girls gushed over him and he always got what he wanted.
    Despite that, she was unimpressed with him as well
as my lack of courage, stating that if I want to dance with her I would have to
ask her myself. Reluctantly, I began that looooong walk, dreading the
possibility of her turning me down and having to take that loooong walk
back across the dance floor to stand against the wall.
    Halfway into my hike across the gymnasium floor my
legs grew heavy like I was dragging two tree trunks.  My palms were sweaty
and my mouth was dry.  My fight or flight response was in full effect and
it took everything for me not to act upon the latter.   I desperately
needed a sip of water so my tongue could cooperate with the roof of my mouth. I
stopped off at the water fountain and lapped up as much of the thirst-quencher as
I could handle.
    I was running out of time as the second verse to my
favorite song had just started. I navigated frantically through the other
desperate sixteen year olds that had already latched on to one another.  I
finally reached Kennedy just as Full Force kicked in with the “take me, take
me, take me home” part of the song. 
    Confidently, I asked her to dance. Confidence
will take you places you never thought you could go. She smiled and said
yes. We awkwardly danced for the