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floated me down the hallway to the kitchen. He was very much with me—his scent, his voice, his heartbeat—everything about him infiltrated my mind, making it difficult to focus on anything but him.
    I was over the top!
    Throwing my keys on the kitchen counter, I rummaged through the fridge, trying to get control of my senses. He was so cute! Mental note: Shave legs and pits . My plan was to eat something quick, then maybe catch up on my fun reading in a nice hot bath, hopefully hiding from the ever-present Nathanael.
    ~ * ~
    Our house was probably one hundred years old with two small bedrooms on the left and a full bathroom in between. We had to cut through the living room at the front of the house to get to them. The kitchen was in the back and had a half bathroom near the porch. It was just me and Mom to look after the old place, and we did the best we could by painting the wood siding when it was needed—things like that. It did need new windows, as the winters were really cold, especially in my room, with chilly drafts. But I loved our little house with its huge back yard.
    The tomato sandwich didn’t really hit the spot, but at least it filled the hole. After turning the water on for my bath, I poured in some of my favorite smelly salts, then submerged into the heat. The first initial plan didn’t work. Instead of picking up my book, I laid back and closed my eyes to see Nathanael there, his perfect smile, his beautiful eyes... Oh, he really was quite handsome! Something about him was much more appealing than his brothers, even though they all looked exactly alike, other than the color of their eyes.
    For the rest of that night my mind kept wandering—he was hoarding every one of my thoughts and it was beginning to get on my nerves! Some brain-dead TV shows were in order, but that attempt didn’t work, either. It was driving me crazy! The feelings that were springing forward were new for me, because there had never been an opportunity before to feel what I was feeling. The mystery of who he was, the excitement to see him again...all the boys in my life were open books; we’d grown up together and there wasn’t anything exciting about them.
    “Get outta my head!” I yelled out to an empty room. Oh great! Now I’m really loony.
    ~ * ~
    Mom breezed in around ten in her usual graceful way. Whenever she entered a room, it was almost like she floated in, making her presence known in a nice way and it never ceased to amaze me how people always flocked to her. Mom had the uncanny ability to make people feel good just by talking to them, or maybe it had something to do with her long, shiny blonde hair, or her curves, or maybe it was simply her baby blues?
    “Hi honey,” she greeted me.
    “Hi, Mom. What did Pat have to say?” Pat, the resident gossip, always made for a fun conversation between me and Mom.
    She kissed my cheek. “Oh, you know Pat! She had a lot to whine about—not enough money, no time to do anything. You know, the usual.” She moved into the kitchen. “Anyway how was your day? How did your test go?”
    “I feel good about the test and the day really was uneventful until after school.” Following her, I sat at the table.
    She plugged the teakettle in, turned and frowned in curiosity. “Why? What happened after school?”
    I told her the whole story about Sloppy’s and the new kids . She smiled in a funny way while I described Nathanael and what a gentleman he was. However, I left out the weird stuff like the drawing and the intense feelings the triplets gave me, only mentioning that at first they gave me a slight case of the willies. Mom was a big believer in intuition and if she knew the whole story, she’d worry.
    “You already seem smitten with this young man.” Her voice shook a little, like it did when she was concerned about something.
    Shy-like, I said, “Maybe.”
    Giving me a sideway glimpse, she pulled a cup from the cupboard. “I did hear about the new people moving into the