#challenge two

“Are you sure this looks good?” I ask my maids while I look in the mirror at my tan colored romper. It’s definitely the most casual thing I’ve worn at the palace yet, but it’s exactly my style.

“Miss, you look stunning,” my head maid, Jacie, tells me. I turn around and I give her a look of unsureness, “Prince Ben is so lucky to go on a date with you.”

I look back at myself in the mirror and mumble to myself, “I’m more lucky to go on a date with him.”

Kaiden looks up from the vanity where she is putting everything away, “what did you say?” she asks curiously, with a hint of a smirk on her face.

“Nothing,” I say quickly looking back at myself and turn to see my whole body in the mirror. Kaiden was about to say another thing when there was a knock at the door and I very unladylike run over to answer. I open the door to see Ben standing there in the most casual outfit I’ve ever seen him in, a cream colored sweatshirt and light jeans, and man did he look good. “Hey!” I said quickly with a smile.

He returns my smile with his own gorgeous one, “hey Natalie. Ready for our date?”

“Yes,” I turn back to my maid all standing by the bathroom and wave them goodbye, Kaiden gives me a little thumbs up which gives me a slight boost of confidence. I close the door and look back at him, “What are we doing?”

“Hmm,” he says as he offers me his arm, which I quickly take, “pretty much everyone so far has wanted it to be a surprise. Should I keep it that way for you too?”

I shake my head slightly almost immediately, “no, I’m super curious,” I say hoping not too anxious.

He lets out a small laugh and we start walking down the hall, “are you sure? Last chance to be surprised, Larsen,”

I purse my lips looking over at him hesitating, “should I just be surprised?” I slightly joke, but like if it’s like a death trip I’d like a little warning.

“You don’t have to, just me teasing,” he chuckles.

I use my hand and lightly hit his arm, “ugh, you and your teasing.”

He smiles, that smile I will never get used to, “it’s in my genes. I can’t help it. But I’ll tell you our date to make up for it,” he looks down at me, “we’re going to the boardwalk.”

I look up at him, my face lighting up, “really? I’ve always wanted to go to one!” Ever since Lola and I couldn’t go to one when we visited Clermont, I’ve wanted to go.

He seems pleased with himself, “then that random jar worked out in your favor?”

I look up confused, “jar?” What the hell is a random jar?

“Oh,” he smiles, “I was… pretty lost for date ideas. Got ambushed by my siblings and they helped come up with a list for dates. We picked your guys’ names out of a jar afterwards and randomly put them with a date.”

I nod, “that’s actually pretty smart.” We continue our journey down the path to the boardwalk as we talk about surfing and activities we do for fun.

We arrive at the base of the boardwalk as we both look around, the bright neon lights are gorgeous, “where to first?” Ben asks pulling me from my trance.

“Hmm, which place is the most fun?” I ask.

He bites his lip and points to a small building in front of us with a huge ice cream sign hanging in front of the door, “maybe some ice cream first?”

My face lights up, I couldn’t quite remember the last time I ate ice cream, “Oh that sounds good.”

He smiles down at me and walks us over to the shop, with a few people in line ahead of us, “what would you like?”

I stand on my tip toes to read what the flavors are and answered after a little, “I’m thinking chocolate peanut butter cup.”

“Oo that sounds good. I’m going for chocolate caramel,” he smiles, “it’s great here.”

I look at him, “chocolate person?”

“Huge. I probably like it a little too much,” he chuckles looking down at me.

“Same, chocolate should go on everything.” We continue talking about what we like best with chocolate and how everyone thinks that no one should love it as much as us. He orders for us, the person working immediately noticed who he was, because it’s freaking Ben Schreave. Ben handed me my cone and we walked to the end of the pier and watched the waves of the ocean. We each take a couple licks of our cones before he starts up the conversation again, talking about our love for the beach and where all I’ve traveled with family and friends. “I really like Paloma because of the beaches.” I look over at him taking another bite.

“Good answer. Would have been a pretty big deal breaker if you didn’t like beaches,” he teases me with a smile on his face.

I lean forward against the railing and smile, “what else would be a deal breaker?” I ask curiously.

“Not appreciating my glasses for starters, I’ve had mixed reviews,” he laughs to himself and finishes off his cone.

I look at him and imagine what he’d look like in glasses, and I could tell that he’d already look really good with them. I chuckle and smirk at him, “don’t worry, I like guys in glasses.”

“Then I’d say we’re golden,” he returns my smirk and looks back around at the boardwalk, “where to?”

I finish eating my cone and look around, “let’s go to the shops.”

“Which shop first?”

“What would you rather do? Tourist stuff or normal shopping?”

He grins, “let’s be tourists for a couple hours. I expect you to be wearing the cheesiest hat by the end of today.”

“And you’ll be wearing the ugliest sunglasses we can find.”

He lets out a small laugh, “then it’s on Larsen,” he states as we start walking over to the very tourist looking shops.

“So how cheesy are we thinking this hat will be?” I’m only imagining the kind of hats we are about to come across.

“I’m thinking… dad cap with an awful logo,” he raises an eyebrow at me, “what kind of sunglasses are we talking about?”

I think for a second, “big big frames, maybe some glitter?”

He snorts, which is adorable by the way, “glitter?”

“Do you like glitter?”

“I don’t exactly have a problem with it, I just didn’t imagine I’d be wearing it anytime soon,” he says as he gives me a lopsided smile looking down at me.

I reach up and rest my hand on his shoulder, “oh you will be.”

He chuckles, “I have no doubt you’ll find a pair just like you want,” he points out at a tacky looking shop, “let’s start there.”

I nod and we walk in immediately starting to look for our designated object for the other. I hold up a huge pair of bright orange glasses that have glitter all over them, “these?”

He purses his lips and then shakes his head, “no, not those,” and then he goes back to his journey of finding me the perfect hat. I continue looking around for the ugliest sunglasses I could find for him, but I’m slowly giving up and join him on his hat adventure. He keeps looking while I’m next to him but then all of a sudden he has a big grin on his face, “I’ve got one,” it pulls it out to show it to me, in big bold hot pink letters ‘I’m with handsome’ with an arrow pointing to the right on the most bright neon green baseball cap I’ve ever seen. “It’s perfect.”

My jaw drops to the ground, “oh my god,” my hand reaches up to cover up my mouth and I start dying laughing, “that is it, it’s perfect.” He puts the hat on my head and adjusts it to make it look perfect before he places his hands on my shoulders to turn me around to look in the full length mirror behind me. I’m just a laughing mess while he is standing to my right behind me with the biggest grin on his face laughing at our reflection in the mirror.

“We look great.”

“We look amazing.”

He makes eye contact with me in the mirror with the smile still on his face, “we just need to find me some shades and we’re all set.”

I quickly turn around to find the best sunglasses in the whole world, I’m looking at every single rack this place has to offer when out of the corner of my eye I see them. I gasp and run over to them and grab them, “Ben! Ben! These!” I say as I am running around the store trying to find him and hand them the bejeweled black frames with a giant glittered palm tree on one side with the same sized glitter flamingo on the other.

He takes the sunglasses and laughs, “oh my god, yes,” he puts them on and gives me a big smile, “how do they look?”

I have the biggest smile on my face because we look like such dorks right now just laughing at each other. “Amazing. You’ve never looked better.”

He laughs and takes off the glasses, “let’s pay for these so we can show em off. Everyone deserves to see them.”

I take off my hat and hand it to him, “everyone is going to be so jealous,” I smirk at him. He takes the items to the register and pays for them, then handing me the hat back while he puts on his glasses. I adjust the hat so it fits me perfectly.

“Ready?”

“So ready. How do I look?” I asked placing a hand under my chin posing for him.

He laughs and smirks, “you look like you’re with handsome.” I squint my eyes at him and shake my head, “you also look great, don’t worry.” He holds my hand as we walk out of the store and back down the pier looking around as we go. We start getting looks from people some are even laughing, which I’m not used to. I start to feel insecure, I don’t even realize that I am slowly leaning into him and hiding my face in his shoulder.

I let out an awkward laugh, “so many people are laughing.”

He looks down at me with a small smile, “wear it proudly, I look just as ridiculous,” I try to straighten up a bit and put a small smile on my face but it doesn’t last long because I can only just see the weird looks people are giving. And Ben is just grinning at complete strangers, not giving a care in the world about their reactions. How does he just do that? How can he just walk around looking like a complete fool and not even care? He can tell that I went back to my insecure state very quickly, he bites his lips looking down at me. I feel a tug at my hands, “come on, let’s go over here,” he says as he walks us off the boardwalk.

I feel like a complete idiot, I just messed up everything. I couldn’t keep my smile on my face. I’m literally on my dream date with my dream guy right now, I couldn’t just suck it up for 5 minutes and put a smile on my face. I can’t look up at him, “sorry,” I let out really quietly.

He shakes his head and pushing his ugly sunglasses onto his head, “don’t be. I don’t always have a problem with stuff like that, but that’s just me.” he gives me a reassuring smile, “want to head under the pier?”

I nod, “I just feel bad, that was supposed to be something fun and I ruined it.”

He bends down to meet my eyes with his perfect smile still on his face, “don’t feel bad, alright? It was still fun to me,” he taps the rim of my hat lightly and I put a small smile on my face, “good.” He stands straight again and takes off his converses. I follow him and doing the same taking off my sandals and holding them by the straps. The sand feels so good against my feet, they have been stuck in heels so for long the soft sand felt so good. We walk to the edge of the water and just stand there, the waves rising against their feet every few seconds then disappearing again. We get back to our usual talking, he makes fun of me for being a “party girl”. I look around at the view around us, I notice one of the pillars holding the boardwalk up and look back at Ben with a mischief look and smirk on my face.

He raises an eyebrow at me, “why do you look like you just figured out a sneak attack to push me into the water?”

I curl my lips in, “maybe I did,” I turn back towards the pillars, “I’ll beat you!” I shout and start bolting towards the pier.

I hear a laugh come from behind me and runs after me, he catches up very quickly and then passes me soon after, “not today!” I hear before I see the figure run right past me. I try to pick up speed but there isn’t much speed for me to pick up. He just keeps going and going, getting faster and faster and then reaches the pole and leans against it to catch his breath. “It was a good attempt.”

I reach the pole a little bit after him and almost fall to the ground. I did not think the pillars were that far away nor did I think I could run that fast for that long. “Th-that’s… unfair.” I say in between breaths, I look up and point at him, “you’re fit.” I look down resting my hands on my knees.

He chuckles, “doing alright?” resting his hands on his hips.

I stand up laughing, “I haven’t run that fast since high school.”

“And what was the reason than to run so fast?”

I laugh thinking back to the memory, the whole group was there, give or take a few people, sitting around in a circle in my backyard. All talking about whatever was going on then. Adrian decided to give me a special gift, something I would quote-on-quote ‘never forget’, “for my birthday my friend put a very angry squirrel in a box and give it to me.”

He makes a face and lets out a short laugh, “a squirrel? Why would she do that?”

“He actually, and he did it because the day before I accidentally ran over one with my car and I was crying because I killed it. He, of course, thought it was the funniest thing ever and I guess he wanted the whole squirrel species to go against me,” I look over at him and laugh, “don’t worry I made it into the house before it could get me.”

Ben steps a little further into the water and turns his back towards the ocean and sticks his hands in his pockets, “I hope you got him back,” he laughs.

“I actually haven’t yet. I don’t know what to do.”

“Hmm. I’ll see if I can come up with anything to help you out.”

“Is there a way we could send him something?”

He smiles at me, “definitely. What did you have in mind? Something he’s scared of?”

I think about to a time where I could have done something to piss him off, or a time when he ran out of the room because there was something he disliked in it, I remember back to the perfect time, “he really hates pine cones.”

“Pine cones?” you could hear the amusement in his voice, “what had a few fall on him as a kid? Couldn’t stand the trauma?”

I laugh thinking about Adrian, “I actually don’t know why, but I threw one at him and he just got all weird. He said something about them not being ‘natural’” I put in air quotes.

Ben snorts again, “they come from trees, how much more natural can you get?”

“He’s a weird kid but I still love him,” I shake my head laughing.

We just continue to stand in the water, Ben asks if I was the mom friend of my little friend group and I just laugh but then he remembers my little comment on my partying and decides to take back what he had said.

“Then what friend are you?” he asks.

“I’m the type of friend that will get my friends out and go do something. I like adventures and going places. But I’m also the friend who will curl up under a blanket and watch movies forever. What about you?”

“According to Wyatt, I’m the clueless friend,” he rolls his eyes at that, “he’s only half right, because I tend to stay at home working or doing something ‘boring’, but I’m sort of the same way, I like going out and doing stuff but people have to try to get me out first. And I don’t mind staying at home, not doing much.”

“If you ever need a going out or staying in buddy,” I nudge his shoulder with my own, “I got you.”

He nudges me back, “thanks, Larsen.”

“No problem, handsome,” I say in reference to the hat.

He taps the brim of the hat with a laugh, “handsome is right.”

I take the glasses from off his head and put them on my own, “I’m the whole look.”

He smiles widely, “you wear them a whole lot better than I do.”

I pose in such an awkward way, “I know.”

He chuckles, “let’s get you back to the palace and really show off the look.”

“The girls are going to be so jealous, also I’m not going to get embarrassed this time.” I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of him again.

“You shouldn’t because you’re with handsome,” he smirks and takes hold of my hand again walking us back on the path we took there. We make it back to my room just fine, we’re standing outside my room.

I take off my hat and put it on him, struggling a bit because he’s taller than me, “now you’re with handsome.”

He grins, “I’d probably use a different word,” he taps the palm trees on the glasses I’m still wearing, but I don’t even notice because I’m trying to figure out what he meant by the ‘different word’ thing. “Try not to get too crazy until next time we see each other, alright?”

“I’ll try…”

He switches our special accessories so they now belong to their proper owners, “you’ll succeed. Especially with that hat.”

I point to his glass that are lying on the very edge of his nose, “wear those to your next meeting.”

“That’ll really convince my advisors I’m ready to be kind soon,” he chuckles, “I’ll see you around, Larsen.”