Excellent Catch
“Honestly, Carly, where are we going now?” he sighed.
“What? Can’t keep up?” The girl, Carly, grinned as she spun on the ball of her foot. “Wuz it leg day for wittle Twistan again?”
The boy, Tristan, thought about arguing, but held back, remembering that she was intentionally egging him on, as she often did. They had been walking around the inner city for the past four hours, and it had all seemed pretty erratic; though they had stopped in a fair bit of the areas known in certain circles as great couple spots.
This was the first time he had convinced her to hang out with him outside of school, so he had packed anything one could need on an excursion into his backpack. Now, he was fairly well-built, having had gone to the gym consistently for the past year, plus staying active. But lugging a bag that had to be at least 40 pounds for that long would put a drain on anyone. “Ooh, uh, hey, could we head to the beach now? I’m having a lot of fun.” She gave him that smile he fell for originally, so he begrudgingly agreed, recentered his bag, and marched on.
Upon arriving at the beach, the view was as stunning as ever. There was a little path one had to walk down that was carved between the stone, and from it as well. Walking down the descending path, you would eventually reach the sand, which was as soft as it was expansive, only broken by the occasional boulder, and the high cliffs to either side. It was a popular tourist spot, but also acted as a peaceful alcove away from busy city life. Tristan took in the sights again, wondering when it had been that he had walked on this silken beach last, only interrupted by Carly’s voice behind him. “Hey, do you think we could go that way?” she asked as she extended her reach in the direction across the sand. Tristan followed her long, tanned arm, past her hand and her cute, pink-and-purple-gradient-painted nail, to a spot where the far cliff retreated slightly, enough to walk around to the other side without having to set foot in the water. His appraisal of the location was followed shortly by the realization of where she wanted to go.
“B-but that’s-”
“I know where I want, Trist. Now, do you want to come with me or not?”
“Y-yeah, I’m coming.” His mind was racing, he knew that cove. That was the rumoured Crushell Cove, named for a dual purpose. Primarily for the small shell pieces you could find there. But as the rumour went, if you brought the one you liked there, the chance you would end up together was supposed to skyrocket. Looking up from his thoughts, he noticed Carly had gotten far ahead of him. He shook his head and hurried along behind her.
As they arrived at the base of the cliff face, Tristan’s thoughts re-emerged. He tried his best to suppress them as he worked his way around the jagged rocks. By the time he made his way around, he spotted Carly, crouched over by a common shell pool, and began to walk over. “Those shells are pretty cool, huh? Did you know that they–uh, what are you doing?” He had walked up to her, phone in hand, and a familiar app open. The common battle theme for Pokémon Go rang out, as she stared somewhat dumbstruck at Tristan.
“Uh, uhhh…” was all she managed to get out.
“Carly, you play PoGo?”
“..Yeah, I do. Just, please please please don’t tell anyone, it’s pretty embarrassing. It’s just that, I grew up with Pokémon Yellow.” She turned away, her face flushing in her cheeks. “I’ve been just chasing Eevees mainly, because I wanted those candies for a Vaporeon so bad. It was my favourite Pokémon when I was a kid. So…. sorry for dragging you around all day.”
“So, to make sure I have it, all day, our entire day out, was just to track down Pokémon?”
She stood up, and began to walk back towards Tristan. “Yeah, sorry, are you mad? You were hauling that huge bag around too, I was starting to feel really baaaAAAAH!” In her distraction, Carly stepped on a rock that slid out from underneath her, and fell forward. Before he knew what he was doing, Tristan’s body was moving forward, arms out, and he caught her about a foot from the ground. Her phone landed on the other side of him, and he picked it up to find a CP264 Eevee challenging him to capture it. He grabbed the pokéball, began to twirl it, and launched it at the brown furball on-screen like he had done thousands of times before. Within the 3 shakes, he had captured it, and with that returned to the present, with the girl still hanging in his arms. “Oh, uh um, there you go. All captured” he said as he hurriedly placed the phone back in her possession, as it was now his turn to turn red in the cheeks.
“Hey, how did you do that capture?” she asked, curiousity spreading on her face.
“Oh, you uh, you just draw circles with the pokéball to get it spinning til it starts shining, then you throw it at an angle so it hits your target. If it captures, you get a small EXP bonus at the end.”
“Huh, I learnt something new today. But now I feel like I can take a short break from Eevee to thank my debonair instructor and strongman,” she smiled, “do you the reason this side of the cliff is called Crushell?”
“C-cuz there’s lots of small shell segments spread across here?” Tristan stuttered, still recovering from the routine catch without his routine phone.
“Nope. Seems that I get to teach you something now” she said as her smile turned into a smirk. She shifted her body upwards a bit, leaned in, and kissed him. It was just a short one, but enough to leave them both out of breath. After taking another moment to look into his eyes, Carly pushed herself up onto her feet again. “Huh, yeah, I think I could get used to that. Now, let’s keep going. There’s another Eevee near that memorial walkway, but it won’t be there forever, so let’s get going!” She took off back to the cliff passage, leaving Tristan to take in what had just occurred. After a few more seconds, he got up, shook off any remaining inhibitions, shifted his backpack back into position, and began to jog to follow Carly to their next location.
"Wait so by 'go on a romantic walk', you meant search for Eevees?"