And I Don't Know What I'm Doing``Ade;;INACTIVE

[mabs]

Of all things, Reed never expected to take Adrienne out on a date. They had cheerfully prodded at each other, back and forth over emails and Facebook, but Reed had suddenly vacated himself. Obviously. If he were in his right mind, he would have hardly taken to asking her out to dinner. Real dinner. With him picking her up.

In an effort to make the date less formal and more of a casual...friends with benefits type thing, Reed had opted for a trip to his single favorite place in New York: Coney Island. It was dorky and childish, but he'd always loved the place. His father had despised it, and if had been in the elder Armstrong's power, he would have bulldozed the place solely because of his son's attachment to it, but Reed loved it just the same. In the effort and chaos of trying to find a place to go that would hardly set up the pretense of a conventional, exclusive relationship, Reed missed the billboard of a sign that said that he was inviting Adrienne into a bit of his past and his more personal side and nature. If he wasn't so distracted, he would have invited her to an uncomfortably formal dining evening out, with his driver and his black Mercedes, suit and tie and dress necessary.

Instead however, he'd told her to dress casually, and he was parked outside her apartment complex in his own personal car, his black Shelby convertible, leaning against it without a care in the world. He had opted for a pair of dark jeans and a black shirt, rolled up at the sleeves and unbuttoned slightly, and he was hardly as made up as he usually was. His hair was a wreck, as he had left it the way it look after he'd woken from an involuntary nap, and his stubble was a little gruff looking, not perfectly trimmed, but he still held that devil-may-care look about him.

It's complicated. Well it was certainly going to get that way if Reed didn't set the record straight. Casual. That's what they were. He could screw who he wanted, he just happened to want Adrienne for the moment. She was just like Vivien to him, but then again, he felt a tug at putting them in the same category. Hell. He was thinking too much. For all he knew, his goofier Coney side would turn her completely off him. It would be a shame, that perhaps she was only attracted to his lawyer side, because the sex was great. But hell, it didn't really matter to him in the long run.

Reed looked up when he heard the door to the complex open and he grinned, a lazy and smooth grin that he was prone to giving. "Hurry up, Red. I'm illegally parked." And he smirked and winked at her pushing off the car. He was in his element now. Reed Armstrong, Charmer-of-Women.

[rocky]

Reed Armstrong had shown up with his penis extension, Adrienne noted wryly. She had dressed casually, as requested, and she looked as eclectic as ever; her red hair tugged into two braids and tucked under a hat she was immediately glad she had picked, since he had shown up in a convertible without so much as a hint of warning. She paused to take him in, impressed to find him out of his suit and looking a little rough around the edges -- although it was hindered slightly by his mid-life crisis car. She hadn't left a scrap of skin below the neck uncovered, and she was wearing a knee-length tartan skirt; the only flesh that was visible was the tips of her fingers and her face, which was as unreadable as ever.

She clasped her hands behind her back and stopped, dawdling deliberately in the face of his playful urging. She had only one response to him, and that was to be contrary, she couldn't help it. Even when she was amenable to his presence she wanted to tug against him, move against the flow.

"And... where are we going, in such a rush?" she asked him, betraying herself the moment she spoke: she'd been driving herself to distraction all afternoon trying to work out where he would take her. She had even considered dressing a little more traditionally, just in case, but she'd caught herself and decided instead to make her personality heard as loudly and clearly as was possible. If he wanted her, he would get her and nobody else.

There was evidence to suggest that a rejection on those terms would sting far more, however. Adrienne had wrestled with that notion, too. She didn't quite know how to express what constituted 'rejection'. He had made his intentions towards her physically abundantly clear, and she wasn't going to allow herself to admit there was the prospect of anything else on the cards. She was going with him as a social experiment, she decided.

For the column. She would write a column about... dating the upper class, perhaps. Dating men with idiotic cars. Dating Reed Armstrong, however that turned out.

This had better be fun.

[mabs]

Well, she could certainly make an entrance.

Adrienne was an eclectic wreck, a mish mash of patterns and stocking and boots and scarf and God only knew what else, and Reed loved it. The look seemed to work for her, and it for some God forsaken reason made her a little sexy (since he did know what exactly was under those wrappings). He raised a brow at her as she shuffled her feet and he looked down his nose at her, though in a challenging and not conescending way. She was trying him, and it was really amusing. Of course, Reed wasn't worried about his parking situation. The chance to poke at her had been too much a temptation to pass up.

Then her curiosity broke, and Reed laughed as he opened and closed the door of his car for her. "That, you'll just have to wait to find out," he crooned out before throwing on a pair of far too expensive sunglasses and starting up the car.

The Shelby was a man's toy, a plaything Reed had bought himself after his first big settlement. It was sort of a representation of his new life, away from his father. His father would have died at the sight of the ostentatious car, and he would have made clear that the car was irresponsibly purchased. A lawyer needed a Mercedes, not a Ford. And frankly, Reed didn't give a damn.

He revved the engine and settled into a comfortable speed, once they got out of the bustle of downtown, and he relaxed a little.

"Though you may want to shed a few of those layers for what we're doing. I'm sure you'll get hot." And he'd let her interpret that how she wanted. Walking around the pier and the rides and game stalls would definitely heat a person up, and it was already a fairly mild afternoon, thankfully. Reed loved driving with the top down, especially at the perfect timing they had right then. The sun was low in the sky and looked to be hanging by a thread almost. Perfection.

Reed turned on the radio, which was crooning out soulful jazz and blues medleys written by the greats and redone by Michael Buble. A decidedly intoxicating combination. And he wondered just what Little Miss Muffet would think about that. He had no idea what she expected of him, but he was certain it was nothing good. Superficial and shallow, she'd expect him to be. And she'd be right. He was selfish and shallow and greedy to a damnable fault, but he liked it that way. And nothing else really mattered.

[rocky]

"Oh, really?" Adrienne raised her eyebrows, settling into the car despite her misgivings on his hinting, and made a point of buckling the seatbelt. She didn't trust him to drive his muscle-car all that safely, and she'd already been in enough traffic accidents that month.

She couldn't believe she was there with him. She had a hard enough time believing he wanted to be seen out with her in the first place, they looked like the odd couple. They looked like the beginning of a terrible movie in which Adrienne would eventually strip the colour from her hair and squeeze into some sort of body-shaping device, paint her face in so much make-up that she was suffocating, and alter her fashion sense so dramatically she would need to burn her entire wardrobe just to be right for him.

She had done many humiliating and dignity-destroying things in her life, but that, she knew, would never happen. It felt as though he was coaxing her to step out on to thin ice, and she didn't know why. She'd had repeat lovers before. She'd had more than one at once! Why she had such misgivings about this one she didn't know.

As much as she had mocked the car internally, it was a dream to ride in -- smooth, the air was warm... she didn't feel at ease, though. It was as though she was sitting in someone else's place, in that car. She didn't really belong there, but she didn't let it gnaw at her too much.

He had chosen an open-topped car and driven her out in the middle of the afternoon. If he was ashamed of her he wasn't showing it, and that was chipping away at the back of her mind, too.

What were they doing? What was he doing? This didn't exactly scream 'one night stand', did it? Did it? Oh, Lord. She shrugged the thought off, and decided to keep it playful:

"You know, if you don't tell me where we're going, it could be considered kidnapping," she said, with a smirk on her lips.

[mabs]

"Alright you caught me," he playfully called to her across the car as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. There was always something a little liberating about it, Reed had felt. He let a smile curl up on his face and he revved the engine again, switching gears in the car. He was a smooth operator, naturally, and driving the six speed came naturally to him. If asked, he would have said it was a lot like having sex. 

"I hope you like popcorn and corndogs,' he mused as he pulled into a parking space close to the pier. Reed reset the hardyop of the convertible and got out of the car, taking a good look at the scenery as he walked around to open Adrienne's door. The chivalry was really second nature:  he learned long ago that catching the beauties meant playing their game. 

Reed wasn't consciously worrying about what they were, though he probably should have. He was going to let the attraction run its course, and have fun while doing it. 

Reed offered his hand to help Adrienne out of the lowest car, and he grinned crookedly. "It's not dinner really, but I have a childish streak, Red. I couldn't help myself." He winked at her before leading her towards the gate of the place, a rush of nostalgia putting a little wider grin on his face. 

[rocky]

"Coney Island?"

Adrienne was a mixture of pleasant surprise and sheer disbelief. She had expected something either frosty and formal or else something gaudy and over-thought -- some sort of horrendous picnic in the park scenario where she would have to pretend to be oblivious to the fact that he wanted to have sex with her on a blanket in public. Adrienne loved the idea of old-fashioned romance, but in practise it was rarely anything but cheesy and awkward, the sort of thing that was so lacking in originality it was painful. She was yet to meet anybody who could pull off Cary Grant better than Cary Grant could.

"Coney Island?" she repeated incredulously, and laughed, then stripped out of her coat and tossed it back into the car, with her scarf. She was wearing a long sleeved, high-necked sweater underneath, so it didn't reveal much more than the outline of her.

She closed the door and leaned on the car, briefly, eyeing him -- and then looked down in surprise, at his hand in hers. This was a twist. He wanted to date her as if they were fifteen years old? Really?

Adrienne hadn't even been a virgin at fifteen years old, so she was perhaps in no position to be judgemental over the sheer innocence of it, she hadn't been an innocent long. She shoved aside her doubts about what everything meant (if it meant anything at all) and focussed on the fact that she fucking loved rollercoasters.

"All right, Armstrong. Colour me intrigued. You better win me something."

She squeezed his hand and nudged him as they walked, and then looked up at him.

"Something enormous. And tacky."

[mabs]

Reed laughed at her reaction to the place he'd brought them, the disbelief and amusement on her face putting a delightful light in her eyes that Reed watched for a moment too long. He grinned at her words as she squeezed his hand, and the surge of affection he felt was both foreign and terrifying. The back of Reed's mind tugged and rebelled at the feeling, but it wasn't all so uncomfortable. The outing had little meaning to Reed, and neither did Adrienne's reaction. Though the look on her face....

"Obnoxiously tacky," Reed confirmed with a nod. "Though I never said I'd win anything for you, doll." Reed's teasing tone was punctuated by a smirk of a grin as he paid for their entrance to the carnival and led her inside. The lights that lit up the pier after dark were coming on, though the sun still hung low and would for around another hour or so, it seemed. Reed himself hung back, still holding Adrienne's hand childishly.

He had never been particularly innocent either. He never had been, not in highschool. Reed had seen his first encounters with the female anatomy upon his freshman year, and once he learned the joys of it, well he couldn't exactly take it. the female body always had a power over him, if only for a little while. It was a weakness and a strength of his, his knowledge and love of the female's body. And the elder Armstrong had considered it his son's fatal flaw. Regardless of Reed's past track record, he treated each woman with the attitude the situation warranted. Adrienne was a difficult one howeve.r She was new and fresh, and completely different form his normal conquests. He felt a strange desire to show her the oddness of him, as though that would dissuade her from seeing any more in their relationship than purely physical. Reed didn't do attachement and he wasn't about to start now.

"Where to first, Red?" Reed asked, pushing all the complicated thoughts back in lieu of the carefree light he wanted to maintain. He was at his favorite place on earth, with a sexy, sultry woman. Things could have been worse.

[rocky]

"I think we should go on everything that might make us throw up before we eat anything," Adrienne said rationally, finding it hard to believe they were actually doing this.

Still, she hadn't ever been to Coney Island. It wasn't the sort of place you went to alone and her friends were disinclined to humiliate themselves (in that particular way) which was unfortunate. She had heard about it, though, and she was determined to see the best of it. She wanted to go on the wooden roller coaster, and the Ferris wheel. She hadn't quite connected his fear of falling elevators with a fear of heights, it seemed rational to be deathly afraid of... well, death, when it was looming.

She didn't think for a moment he might not want to go on the white knuckle rides.

"Don't they have a wooden roller coaster here?"

[mabs]

Reed somewhat paled at the thought of the roller coaster. He'd never ridden it. Never.

Reed's fear of heights didn't just stop at imminent death by falling elevator. Anything remotely above ground scared him, but he was none to be outdone here. He was the masculine male, and he could handle it. Even if he had to close his eyes. Reed enjoyed ever ride that spun and twirled and made you want to throw up our breakfast, and he loved all of the dorky carnie games that were totally pointless--like the strength testing hammer and bell and the baseballs and the milk bottles--but when it came to the roller coasters and the miserable Ferris Wheel, he was at a loss.

But, he wouldn't tell her that. "Alright," he said, squeezing her hand and tugging her over to the short line for the coaster. Most of the tourist traffic was gone with the season it was at the moment, and so mostly the locals, old and young alike, were gathered at the park. Reed placed a hand on the small of her back and pushed her forward through the gate wihen it was their turn, a decidedly aloof and carefree smile about his face. Even though his stomach was rolling at the thought of the almost ninety foot drop that this coaster had.

"Ladies first," he crooned to her, enjoying the closeness of them if nothing else. And if all else failed, he could cling to her like a child. Maybe she'd find it endearing. And have more hot and passionate sex with him after. It sounded like a winning situation to him.

[rocky]

Adrienne made a point of batting her eyelashes at the attendant, who was a lad after her own heart -- he had a stripe of blue in his mohawk, and an enormous ring in his lip. He pointed at her.

"Pretty girl with the Coca-Cola hair in the front!" he said, and beckoned them forward.

Adrienne glanced over her shoulder at Reed, and grabbed his hand to tug him to the front of the train, oblivious to his inner-turmoil. Had she been aware of it she would have been far more calculating in her supposed obliviousness, she was nothing if not prone to episodes of cruelty. Besides. She had screamed for him.

She settled into the foremost carriage, adjusting her hat so that it was definitely on as firmly as it would go. The attendant fastened their restraints, and spent a little longer than was necessary leaning over Reed to tug at Adrienne's. She pretended not to notice.

"Hold on tight, now." He winked at her and stepped back, and the train shuddered and clicked on to the train, trucking out and beginning the climb towards the first drop. The rollercoaster creaked and swayed deliciously, and Adrienne loved it.

[mabs]

Reed felt like a helpless pawn as Adrienne tugged him towards the front and the boy with the wretched mohawk and piercing beckoned them forth. Reed despised most of the brightly colored hair fads and piercings, and was wasn't sure why Adrienne's tendencies didn't bother him that much. They suited her, he decided. If she wore a regular shade of blonde or brown, he would have thought her to be ill. However, the red-haired mistress tugged him along even as he tugged back against her, but he decided it was useless.

Reed took a stern countenance as the attendant flirted with her, and regardless of what they were or were not, Reed felt a rip of jealousy. "He enjoyed strapping you in a little too much," Reed mumbled bitterly, and had he been on the ground and in his element, he wouldn't have given a flying fuck. But he wasn't. He was in a death trap, climbing to the top of a rickety, tall, wooden hill to be dropped at gut wrenching speeds. Reed wanted to throw up already.

He gripped the bar until his knuckles turned white as the coaster climbed and swayed and creaked and cracked, and he took to staring straight forward. He wouldn't look down. God help him if he did.

[rocky]

"Do you blame him?"

Adrienne rested her wrists on top of the bar, her fingers limp and relaxed. The obvious difference in their body language was immediately apparent to her, and she glanced from his white knuckles to his grimly set jaw and realised, at last, just what that had been that night in the elevator. Oh.

Her own stomach had begun to fizz pleasantly at the prospect of the impending thrill. She squirmed a bit, turning, as best she could, to face him, and then trailed the tip of her finger over the back of his hand.

"Reed?" she said, and bit her lip. The peak of their climb was steadily approaching, and they had long ago cleared the roof of the ticket booth. "Are you all right?"

She tried not to sound too amused. It wasn't that she was mocking him for being scared, exactly -- but the situation was sort of funny, she supposed. He'd brought her here, and he was terrified! She didn't understand him at all.

[mabs]

"Of course I don't. Though, if I were strapping you to anything, you know exactly where it would be," he remarked to her bawdily. If he could combat the situation with something ridiculous like anger or flirtation, he wasn't so bad off. Reed's fear of heights wasn't necessarily crippling, in that he could handle them if the situation arose. But he was nothing if an ogre about it.

"I'm just fine," he snapped in a lower, less jovial tone, settling into the wooden seat. And then the peak came. Reed's curiosity betrayed him--he'd never been on the coaster before. And he peered down, but then he grew woozy and settled back against the seat with a much paler and subdued look about his face. "Holy fuck," he groaned out and closed his eyes tight as the coaster started it menacingly fast decline. Of course, it was not faster enough for Reed.

He gripped the bar as hard as he could and clenched his jaw, though once his eyes were closed it wasn't so bad. Then he couldn't see just how high he was. Reed was thankful for the lurching stop of the ride, and he couldn't scramble out of the car fast enough. He dusted himself off as he waited for Adrienne to get unstrapped, and he tried to salvage some of his dignity, though there was little left in his mind. One didn't have to ride the roller coaster as Coney Island to enjoy it, he'd always known. And now it was just solidified.

"Where to next, Ade?" he asked, raising a brow, and pulling her into his side. Mostly because the attendant was still watching. Reed was selfish, but possessive as well, when he wanted to be. And right then, Adrienne was his. But he waited for her to direct them elsewhere. Ultimately, Reed was playing the part of the good sport. And ultimately, he knew that if he did, there would surely be some good sex in it for him later.

Eyes on the prize, Armstrong, he chided mentally, tossing a crooked smile on his face for good measure.

[rocky]

Adrienne made a point of whooping and putting her arms in the air as the rollercoaster whipped around the track, as if to counteract Reed's obvious discomfort with excessive enjoyment of the ride -- and then they came off, she rewarded his bravery with complacency over his obvious jealous posturing.

She looped her armed around his neck and leaned against him, swaying from side to side a little, as if trying to make up her mind. She didn't spare the attendant another glance, although she knew that he was watching her and that if she did, Reed would be irritated. She considered it her gift to him.

"You pick," she said, deciding to save the suggestion of the Ferris wheel when he was a little more amenable to her. She wasn't leaving without going on it, that was for sure.

[mabs]

Reed chuckled softly at her behavior towards him, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He was jealous where he shouldn't have been, but that was just the double standard of men. They expected women not to care about their behavior, and to respect their affections until someone better came along for them. It just happened that way. But Reed grinned and tugged her towards one of the saucer rides, his absolute favorite in the whole park.

The afternoon was spent between the motion-sickness inducing ground rides (thankfully) and the pointless, carnival games, but there was a bit of casual happiness in it. Reed didn't feel so much friction with her anymore, not as much as he had when he just assumed they'd be a flaming one night stand and nothing more. Of course it wasn't much else more, than maybe a casual sexual relationship, but he felt the need to charm her, regardless.

Which explained why he had a massively obnoxious panda tucked under his after playing almost a dozen rounds of the baseball and milk bottle game.

They had taken to sitting on the pier with their naturally greasy but tempting carnival food, and the sun was just a sliver against the horizon then. It was romantic, so romantic, but the picture was skewed a little by the stuffed panda sitting to Reed's left. He was busy nursing a massive ice cream cone and looking out lazily at the water. It was peaceful, and Reed had always loved that part of his days here. But he pushed the nostalgia away to look over at Adrienne, offering her a quirked brow and a tug of the lips.

"So what do you think, Red? Good day?" he questioned tentatively. If she liked it, good. If she didn't, well that panda could sit in his front seat on the way back home.