Never in my life had I been a planner. I was Kai, the guy who flew by the seat of his pants and pretended it was just going with the flow. I didn't go with the flow either, the flow turned into a tsunami pretty quickly. Now I was Kai, the guy bugging out about meticulously planning a thing that probably wasn't even a real date...even though I wanted it to be.

I had promised AJ a while back I'd take her on a real tour of downtown Charleston, and I felt like I owed her big time after acting like the stereotypical junkie I swore I wouldn't be anymore, so I had every minuscule point and place planned out, down to the god damn cobblestones.

I changed my shirt three times before realizing that no matter what I wore, I'd still smell like cigarettes. I'd still probably stare at her for too long, and I'd still stumble over my words when she told me things that I didn't deserve to hear. I was also realizing that maybe she just liked my cigarette smell. Maybe she liked my loud laugh and my shaking hands when she reached for them. Maybe this was actually just going to be...good.

AJ picked me up around noon, and after climbing into her Jeep, I put a tiny pot on her dashboard.

"What's that?" she asked with a grin.

"A pot." I shrugged. "Maybe if you water it and put it in sort of direct sunlight a little eucalyptus might grow out of it. Or it could be one of those man-eating plants from Little Shop of Horrors. Guess you'll have to take care of it and find out."

She laughed. "You're something else, Kai. Sometimes...I don't know, sometimes I don't even think you're from this universe."

I sighed and leaned back into the passenger seat. "It's funny, I feel like I say the same thing about you."

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, and a grin worked its way across my face as I caught the last remnants of red in her cheeks.

AJ played her new favorite coffee shop playlist as we left the island and I navigated her through downtown. She talked even faster than normal when she was excited, and even though I probably should have been listening to her, I just studied her. I took in every curve and angle of her jaw, her lips, her nose, and I counted every freckle on her cheeks like they were a map of stars that could guide me wherever I needed to be. Maybe that's what love was - not pain, and not pleasure, but someone who just felt like home.

"Kai, I need to know where to turn!" she snapped me out of my daze, and it took me a moment to get my bearings. I had her pull off onto a cobblestone side street towards the harbor, and when we got out of the car I could smell the ocean.

"I figured we'd start with something really cliche so you can get it out of your system." I slipped my cheap wayfarer sunglasses on.

"You know, cliches are cliches for a reason." She grinned and jabbed me in the side. "I mean, it has to be overused for it to be a cliche in the first place, which means enough people liked it to use it."

"Yeah but you're a writer. Aren't writers supposed to hate cliches?" I asked. We stepped into the sunlight, and even though I felt like I was baking like a potato, she just glowed.

"Not necessarily. Writers should just know how to use them appropriately." She paused and pinched her lips together. "But I mean, what the hell do I know? I don't know how much of a writer I am if I'm uninspired, unemployed, and have writer's block the size of Mt. Everest."

I felt a familiar sting in my chest, but the dismalness was short-lived as AJ grabbed my hand and pulled me across the street to the row of pastel painted houses, their windows dotted with hanging fern and old gas lamps.

"Oh my god, I've seen these all over the postcards," she squealed in delight. "They're even prettier in real life."

Rainbow Row was all over every postcard in every shop you could buy them, but when you've seen it once, you've seen it a hundred times. Watching AJ marvel at them and go on and on about which house she would live in was the better view for me.

"You'd really live in a purple house?" I asked with an eyebrow raise.

"Oh absolutely," she grinned. "And then I'd have pink flowers in the window boxes, and stupid squirrels wouldn't eat them like they would in New York."

"But then people would be taking a thousand pictures of your house like every single day."

"Well, when you put it like that..." AJ gave me a faint grin, then whipped out her phone. "Let's take a picture!"

Before I could say no, she grabbed my shirt and yanked me down so our cheeks were almost touching, and I could smell the coconut shampoo in her hair.

"You're too tall," she groaned. "Crouch down more."

After she took the picture, I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I was holding in.

"Aw, this is actually really nice." She smiled and turned her phone to me. My hair was already a windswept mess, and I hated the creases in my forehead, but I looked happier than I had been in a while.

After we walked through the residential area of downtown, where AJ pointed at six more houses she wanted to live in, with tall white columns and three-story porches that wrapped around the entire house, we walked through the courtyard of the College of Charleston.

"Do you ever want to come back to school here?" she asked, casually admiring the old stone pillars and foliage that grew up the brick buildings.

"Well, I was technically expelled so..." I shrugged. "But maybe I'd go back to school. Somewhere."

A few months ago, going back to school seemed intangible, like a needle in a haystack made up of all my problems and shortcomings. But now? Maybe I'd finally found the needle.

I cleared my throat in an attempt to change the subject and gestured out to the open space. "You know, they filmed scenes of The Notebook here."

"Oh really?" AJ perked up. "Which ones?"

"Well uh...I'm not too sure," I chuckled and rubbed the side of my face. "I've never actually seen it. But I just know it's the thing the tour guides say when they bring people here."

AJ gave me a sideways grin. "How disappointing. And here I thought you were a romantic."

"Oh please," I rolled my eyes, hoping to deter from my reddening cheeks. "I am when I wanna be."

On our way back, we ducked through a bunch of hidden spaces in between old buildings, and jumped over gates into private gardens. We stopped and got ice cream at the best spot in town, where the smell of their homemade waffle cones carried from five blocks away. We made it back closer to where we parked, and I led her down to the Battery, which was the edge of the city that touched the harbor. Old oak trees with hanging moss dotted the park, providing some much needed shade from the afternoon sun. A group of dogs ran around by the fountain, and AJ picked a bench for us to sit at.

Our knees brushed against one another as we sat down on the bench, and I couldn't stop looking at her. Sunlight poked through the trees and gave her this glow, like a halo I probably always knew was there.

"Hey Kai..." she said softly, and my head was spinning at the realization that I'd never get tired of her saying my name.

"Yeah?"

"Uh...your ice cream is melting." She pointed to my hand, which had little rivers of gooey cookie dough and vanilla trickling down to my wrist.

"Oh shit." I jumped up from the bench before it got all over my only clean pants, dumping my poor, half-eaten ice cream in the trash can. When I sat back down on the bench, AJ scooted closer to me.

"People watching in New York was fun." She sat up and looked around the park. "You can make up a story for almost anyone. Like...look at them over there."

I followed her gaze to a couple about our age, where the guy was trying to coax the girl up onto the old gazebo in the center of the park.

"He's proposing," AJ continued. "There's a photographer over there." She pointed behind another tree, where a tiny girl with a huge camera was waiting.

"She's really not going up there," I said as I watched the guy try and get her up the stone steps. "I mean, I wouldn't want to marry a guy who proposes wearing a shirt with jellyfish on them either."

The girl finally made it up the steps, where jellyfish shirt guy did in fact get down on one knee, and the girl looked like she was about to pass out. Eventually, it was all happy tears and posed, fake candid pictures.

"I think it's sweet," AJ said with a half smile, her hair catching in the breeze. "I mean, if I was being proposed to, I'd rather be surprised and hilariously unprepared instead of trying to plan and control everything."

I leaned forward on my knees and rubbed the back of my neck. "Yeah, I guess I kind of understand that. The surprise makes it special."

AJ smiled, white teeth and all, as she leaned back on the bench. "One day Kai, you'll make some girl very happy."

I smiled back at her, inwardly hopeful that girl might have been her.

✗✗✗

It was after 6:00 when we slowed to a stop in front of my house. I wasn't ready to say goodbye, and I didn't think she was either. She killed the engine and gave me another grin.

"There's one more thing I want to do today."

"Okay, what?" I shifted uncomfortably in the seat, but I didn't expect what came out of her mouth.

"Paint."

"Oh no," I shook my head. "I painted you already. You only get one."

"No, I don't mean you paint me." She kept grinning. "I want to paint, and I was hoping maybe I can get some lessons from a real artist. Pretty please?"

If she asked me to rob a bank with that look, I'd do it, no questions asked.

"Alright, alright, fine."

We got out of her car and I led her right back to the shed, hoping to avoid any awkward confrontations with my parents, or worse - my sister.

I peeled open a fresh 8x8 canvas and set it on the paint-stained easel on my desk. AJ scooted the stool forward and stared at the blank canvas for a few moments.

"Well...I need paint, don't I?" she asked with a chuckle.

"Oh, right, sorry." I mentally kicked myself and fumbled through my drawers for open paint tubes. I pulled out a box of acrylic paints and started twisting them open. A tube of light blue was all stuck and crusted over with dry paint, but when I finally pried it open, it exploded in my hands, sending paint in every direction.

I thought only I'd be caught in the crossfire, but when I looked up at AJ, blue paint dotted her face and her hair.

"Holy shit, I'm sorry, don't move," I said as I backed away. "I'll get a towel or something."

Before I could get far, AJ grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to her, squeezing a tube of yellow paint in my hair.

"There," she said with a satisfied grin. "Now we're even."

She reached up and wiped a glob of paint off my cheek, then smeared it on the canvas.

I gave her a grin and grabbed another tube of paint, squeezing out a chunk onto the canvas and running my hand down it. "You know...I think you might be onto something."

I pulled out a bigger canvas from the back of the shed, almost as tall she was, and we went back and forth, smearing a myriad of colors onto the canvas with our hands. By the time the canvas was full, paint stained our elbows, our shirts, our necks and our foreheads.

"A masterpiece," AJ said with a satisfied sigh. "I'd pay a million dollars for it."

I gestured down to our clothes. "I could probably sell my shirt to a museum. But...maybe we should go clean up?"

I led AJ through the side door in the kitchen, where we could slink by my parents in the living room without being detected.

"I'll get you some clothes to wear while yours get washed." We made it to the upstairs bathroom, and I turned the shower on for her.

"You sure you know how to use a washing machine?" she asked with a chuckle.

I rolled my eyes at her and left the bathroom. I fumbled around my bedroom, trying not to get paint on everything while I pulled out the cleanest clothes I had for her. When I got back to the bathroom, her paint stained shorts and t-shirt were folded on the sink, and I was fixated on the silhouette of her body behind the shower curtain.

"So uh..." I cleared my throat, trying to clear my head along with it. "There's a pair of Nike shorts and a t-shirt here, just until your clothes get washed and uh..."

AJ poked her head out of the shower, wet hair already clinging to her neck and her shoulders. "So you're just gonna stand around soaked in paint while I shower?"

"I uh...well...I mean, I guess..."

She gave me one of those all knowing, brilliant AJ smiles. "Just get in here you space cadet."

"What happened to taking it slow?" I asked.

"I lied. Slow is overrated."

My entire body burned like I had just swallowed gasoline. I stripped off my paint-stained clothes and tried not to eat shit as I fumbled into the shower. It was barely big enough for just me when I was in it, and I found myself backed into a corner while AJ scrubbed paint off of her perfect, bare body, and the water that pooled on the shower floor turned into a sea of green and purple and blue.

"You want this?" she turned to me and handed me the bottle of soap.

I nodded and went to take it, but it slipped out of my hands and went clattering to the floor. I groaned and went to pick it up, but so did she, and we ended up bashing out heads together and nearly slipping right out of the shower. I didn't know how, but I managed to catch her, pulling us back into the corner of the shower with my back pressed against the cold tiles and her hands pressed into my chest.

"Uh...this shower is not big enough for two people," I said with a slight chuckle.

"Yeah, I can see that now." She kept her hands on my chest and her eyes on my mouth when she spoke, and even though we had kissed before, I hesitated. She inched closer to me, water dripping off her nose and her eyelashes, and the seconds and centimeters between us were agonizing as we waited for the other to make a move first.

"You can kiss me, you know," she said softly, her lips close enough to my own that I could feel them brush against mine ever so slightly.

"I know," I replied breathlessly.

So I did.

It was nothing like our first kiss, all sweet and delicate, like we were just trying to figure each other out. This was hot and heavy the moments our lips touched, our tongues exploring each other's mouths and our hands desperate to memorize every dip and curve on each other's bare bodies. I ran my fingers down her stomach, tracing the lines in her skin where her hips met her thighs.

"Is this okay?" I breathed into her neck, parting her legs with my hand just slightly.

"Yeah it's...it's more than okay." Her words fluttered against my ear, and it pushed me over the edge.

The water started to run cold, but I was lost in the moment. I was lost in space, on another planet, in another galaxy, and I think I finally understood why she called me space cadet. I was not on earth, and I didn't want to come back.

A pounding on the door was enough to send me crashing back to reality, and AJ nearly jumped into my arms as my sister's screeching voice came through.

"Kai, you're using all the fucking hot water! Stop jerking off and get out!"

"Fuck off Stella, I'm done anyway!" I shouted back.

I groaned and turned the shower off. AJ and I exchanged glances as we got out, our faces still red even in the reflection of the steam coated mirror.

"Sorry," I sighed out. "She's a terror sometimes."

"It's okay," AJ said as she pulled on my shirt. "Shit happens."

I sucked in a breath, desperate to steady my pounding heart.

"Go on a date with me," I blurted out before I could second guess myself. "I mean like a real one."

"A date?" she echoed with a grin.

My face blanched. "I mean...shit, I mean if you don't want to, I-"

"I'm just kidding," she rolled her eyes at me and gave my arm a shove. "I'd love to."

After I had snuck AJ back out still wearing my clothes, I went back to the bathroom and brushed the knots out of my still wet hair. A spot of blue paint had splattered on the side of the sink. I looked at myself in the mirror again, and something looked different. I couldn't quite place it, but maybe I was just looking at guy who finally wanted to start living.

✗✗✗

hi so fun fact - I've completely inserted myself in this chapter, because lets face it I need some cute dumb shit for y'all before I rip your hearts out....oops did I say that out loud?

Anyway, this chapter was really fun for me to write because this is where I live, and I love everything about my city. Pretty much everything I mentioned is real and true, and I'll never forget the first time I came to Charleston (before I lived here) and took a thousand pictures of Rainbow Row when first I saw it. Even the ice cream place is real, it's called Jeni's! So...can you guess where I am in this chapter?? HERE'S A HINT -

(peep the jellyfish shirt)