Where Did the Time Go? : Part XXII
The flurries had turned into honest snow, though it wasn't threatening to become a blizzard. This was the kind of weather long-time Middletoners were used to so they didn't pay it any more mind than rain. The day had warm early on and the roads were staying mostly clear, though a little wet.
Still, the girl at the ice cream shop was a little surprised when one of her few customers that night actually ordered ice cream instead of cappuccino or regular coffee. Ron thought about that a moment and ordered a large black coffee as well.
Kim held onto both cups of cream as Ron drove out to the bluff on Logging Camp Road, the coffee sitting in the cup holder. There was only one other car there that night considering the weather so he was able to pull up to their favorite secluded spot. Not that the privacy mattered to most of the couples who took advantage of the usually romantic view (tonight all they could see were faint lights below them) there being an unspoken rule that this was the 'acceptable' place to go parking.
They had been up there only once since Ron got his little car. Their relationship had evolved to the point where they liked to 'go places and do things' rather than spend the evening just necking in the car and even though Kim had convinced him to buy it doing exactly that, it was proving to be a very uncomfortable place for romance. It was just too small.
The Pontiac, on the other hand, with it's wide bench seats front and back, seemed custom made for that purpose.
Kim was out of her seatbelt by the time he set the parking brake. They spent a few minutes kissing, then she just snuggled up against him and took the two cups of ice cream off the dash.
"I swear, KP, we're going to freeze to death one of these days on our dates and we're sitting out here eating ice cream."
"Ron, don't be a baby. It's only barely cold enough to snow and it's not coming down that hard. We'll be lucky to get two inches by morning." She nestled in a little closer to him as she polished off the rest of hers. "Maybe since we don't get the house on Tuesdays now, you can start borrowing this car again."
Ron ripped his cup open so he could lick the last of it out of the bottom. "I'm still a little weirded out that my Mom is pregnant. I mean, by the time she's born I'm going to be almost old enough to be her father. What's up with that?"
"You should be happy for her. If you go away to school, your parents aren't going to end up with an empty nest. Plus that will take the pressure off of us when it comes time for kids."
He put his hands on her shoulders and started kneading. "Mmmm. I like" she purred. "So what were you and your Dad talking about while we were in the kitchen?"
"Guy stuff. What were you and Mom talking about?"
Kim craned her neck and looked up at him. She thought for a moment of saying 'Girl stuff' but discarded the idea. "Your Mom effectively wants us to be Catherine Jean's god-parents."
"Catherine Jean? She's a month and a half pregnant and they've already picked out a name?"
"Baby, if I'd just spent the last fifteen years trying to get pregnant, I think I would have thought of a few names myself." She leaned forward a little so he could work lower on her back. Sitting up, Kim started unbuttoning her jacket. "Here, help me out of this."
"Don't get chilly." Ron warned. "You know how you hate being cold."
"Don't think I'm going to be cold." Instead of leaning back toward him so he could rub her shoulders again she took his face in her hands and started kissing him. She sat back and looked into his eyes, brushing his hair back slightly. "Somebody ferociously needs a haircut."
"Then I'm going to the barber. No foo-foo haircuts for me again, thank you."
Twirling a strand of his hair in her fingers, she kissed him again. "Wouldn't dream of it. I'm too much in love with this Ron to chance creating another." Nuzzling him, she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly.
They sat that way for a little while, just enjoying being with each other. Finally Kim whispered to him. "You know, what you said a little bit ago about being old enough to be a father? Remember what we almost did in Florida?"
"Or at Wannaweep?"
Kim tightened her arms slightly. "That doesn't count. In Florida we were just a heartbeat away. Remember how Mom figured out what we were up to?"
"Yeah."
"Once I convinced her we'd backed off, she still reminded me about my meds…I didn't say anything, but I'd missed taking them the morning before."
Ron sat for a few moments mulling that over in his head. "Oh." Was his only response.
"We could have been picking out names ourselves. I love you, Ronnie, but I'm so not ready for that."
"I'm not either, though I have a feeling we're going to be taking care of Mom's baby a lot. I'm a little scared, thinking about Mom's age and all. Dad too. Did you know he's taking heart pills?"
"No, I didn't, but that doesn't surprise me. Your mother mentioned his health wasn't the greatest." She let go of him and sat up. "That means you need to be careful too, if it's in your family."
Ron leaned back on the headrest. Barkin stopped him from eating a Chimirito once, saying it would "Shave years off your life," then dragged him to a rugby match that had pummeled him within an inch of it.
"Kim, I was just thinking about something. You and Bonnie seemed to reach some kind of understanding when the two of you got stuck together. What happened to that?"
She just grunted. "That lasted all of a week, then she was right back to being a queen you-know-what."
"Yeah, but, you know, now you kind of know what she's really like. You think maybe things would be better if the two of you were friends."
Kim sat up and crossed her arms. "Ron, it's a two-way street. I can only take so much of her insults, not just a you and me, but everyone around her. She's just so…grrrrrrrr."
Ron put his good hand on her knee. "It is a two-way street, Kim. I just think if more people treated her nice, she'd come along, eventually."
"Well I tried that and like I said, it lasted about a week. I'm tired of trying with her. A few more months and we'll be rid of her, probably for good."
"But what if…"
"Ron, just drop her, okay. The more you talk about her the angrier I'm getting and this is supposed to be us time, not 'her' time, okay?"
"All right. I'm just saying."
"You've said it. Now drop it." Kim sat back in her seat, apart from him.
Ron sat in his seat behind the wheel, watching the snow starting to obscure the windshield. Reaching for the key he cranked the old car up.
"We're not leaving, are we?" Kim asked, a little distressed.
He shook his head. "Just turning the heater on."
Kim rubbed her bare arms. Picking up her coat she draped it over herself like a blanket. A few moments later she leaned back against Ron.
"You ever think about names?" He asked, rubbing her shoulder under the jacket.
"I don't really think about babies, at least where I'm concerned." She admitted.
"I thought you wanted to have kids."
"Yeah, I do, but that's so far in the future…and considering my love life before us, I really didn't think about it at all before."
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close again. "Somehow I think we're going to turn around and we'll have a couple of kids and we're going to wonder where all the time went." He pulled her chin up for a gentle kiss. "It seems like we've been together forever now, even though it hasn't been a year but at the same time it seems like it was just yesterday you were kissing me at the Prom. I used to think I'd never have a real girlfriend and now we've got both our parents mentioning grandkids and we're talking about the rest of our lives."
Kim started singing softly. "Could it be, you and I never imagined…"
"Could it be, suddenly I'm falling for you." Ron sang in his halting falsetto.
She kept humming as she snuggled into his chest again.
"You're named after your grandfathers, aren't you?" She asked finally, kneading the small of his back, her eyes closed as she drank in his body heat.
"Yeah. Eugene Stoppable Sr. and Ronald Rokowski."
"That's it, then. We'll name our first boy after our fathers and our first girl after our mothers." She pulled his shirt tail out of the back of his pants and lightly scratched his skin with her fingernails.
Bending over, he kissed her, starting gently but letting his passion grow. Before long Kim sat up a little big, wrapping both arms around his neck as she returned that passion.
"I like that." He said as she kissed his neck just above his collar.
"You're so good at it." She breathed, loosening his tie then pulling it out of his collar. She started working on the top button.
"No, I mean about the names, though I like Donald for some reason."
"Donald, you want to name our son after a duck?" Finally getting the button loose she kissed his neck a little further down, getting some of the remains of her lipstick on his collar.
"Didn't think of it that way, but I like your idea better."
"Mmmm, hmmm." She hummed as she kissed him again.
After a bit, he turned the heater down a little, as the car was starting to get quite warm.
"KP, are you starting to feel romantic again?"
"Very." She breathed, kissing his neck again. The she backed up and looked into his eyes. "But this is as romantic as we're getting. I think we've learned our lesson, don't you?"
"I do like this very much. Guess if I decided to unzip your dress," he touched her neck just above the tab, "Drakken would sit up in the back seat and hit us with some freaky beam."
She started giggling, covering her mouth. Sitting back a little she started laughing out loud. "The thought of Drakken suddenly rising up behind us…" She laughed a little more.
"Silly, huh?"
"Not so much. Now I almost want to call Wade to make sure he's still in prison." She picked up her clutch purse, then set it back down. "Nah, better make sure first hand."
Ron looked puzzled. "I'm not driving this old thing all the way down to Mississippi." That's where they were holding him in a special facility until he could have a real trial.
"No, not unless somebody else wants to take us down there." She turned around and clumsily climbed over the back of their seat, almost kicking him with her boot. She landed on her rump in the back of the car and made a show of looking around.
"Coast is clear. No Drakken, no Shego, no Monkey Fist back here?"
"What about Frugal Lucre?" He leaned over the back of the seat, grinning at her.
"He's hiding in the trunk, but he's no big." She laughed, patting the seat beside her.
Ron demonstrated even less grace climbing over, almost landing on her in the process. There was no way in the world he was going to get out and use the back door, letting all their warm air out."
By the time he got in his seat, Kim pointed back to the front. "Maybe you'd better shut the engine off. I think it's plenty warm in here, don't you?"
"Oh yeah." He threw his body back over the seat, straining to reach the key.
Kim took that opportunity to enjoy the view. Not only that, she put her hand on his backside, giving it a good squeeze as the car sputtered off.
"Mmmm, Monique and your mother are right. Very nice." She smiled warmly as he sat back down.
"You know, for somebody who wants to be romantic, you sure know how to kill a guy's mood." He laughed as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
"Doesn't look like your mood is suffering much." She whispered as they both slipped down on the seat, locked once more in a loving kiss.
Bonnie locked her bedroom door behind her and threw her purse on her bed. He date had ended just like all the rest had since breaking up with Brick. The guy had made certain assumptions based upon her reputation and when he found out those assumptions were not correct, he had quickly taken her home, exchanging only polite words before speeding off.
Growling softly, she sat down at her dresser and lit a cigarette. She had tried quitting for a while but being around her sisters, who both smoked themselves, that had proven impossible. The longest stretch she had gone without one was while she was in Japan. The moment she got home from the airport, she was in that very seat, pulling a pack and her lighter out of her drawer. At least since she was eighteen her mother couldn't complain about her being too young now.
Feeling a little better as the nicotine filtered though her system, she sat back in her chair, crossing her legs. Maybe it would have gone better if she had given in to the guy, maybe just a little something? No, that was a line she just didn't want to cross. Much as most people thought she was a certain way, she only wanted to venture that far with somebody she actually cared about.
That line of thinking took her back to a familiar place. The smiling face that inhabited it would never force her in that direction. That made her think about it all that much more. The thought of Ron and Kim being fully intimate made her feel both lonely and angry.
Somewhere along the line her image of Ron Stoppable had started changing, from the skinny, bird chested boy she had known all along to what he really was today. He was still skinny, but it was somehow 'man' skinny instead of 'boy' skinny. Maybe it was simply because he was taller or maybe because she had been given a peek at the real Ron. She didn't quite know and she didn't quite care.
A little over a month since deciding that it was somebody like him she really wanted she was starting to realize just how unique he really was. Most of the shy, sensitive, almost nerdy types turned into touchy feely horny boys the moment they were alone with her and the thought of that almost sickened her. They always quickly asked her out when she started showing some interest but it turned out they only saw her as being 'easy.'
Very few people knew she was still a virgin.
Somehow, though, she knew that wasn't the whole reason Brick dumped her. It was a big part and he'd as much as said so, but there was more to it than that.
Putting that thought out of her mind, she opened her closet and took out a black clothes bag. Glancing at her door, she opened it and spread the solid black clothing out on her bed, smoothing out the edges before stepping back and staring at it.
Almost as if she was in a panic, she put it back into the bag and zipped it up, hanging it in the middle of her other clothes bags, sliding the other hangers so it looked as if it had not been disturbed.
What was she going to do with it? Why did she even have it?
Lighting another cigarette, she sat down again, trying to think.
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