The Bad Boy's Heart: When The Dust Settles...

🥀19🥀

The rest of the week flew by, and before I knew it, Saturday arrived. Not that I was mad about that: I had been eagerly anticipating it, after all.

Just as he'd done throughout the week, Angelo called me in the afternoon. I had been in the middle of cooking with Nabila when he called, but I smiled and answered as soon as I saw his caller ID. "Hi!" I said breezily, stretching out the syllable.

"Hey, hey!" He chuckled. "You sound happy to hear from me. Missing me already? It has been nearly a day since we last spoke; the wait must have left you in agony."

I rolled my eyes, still smiling. "Don't flatter yourself. Anyways, are you coming over today?"

"Nah."

"Yeah, I figured. So we'll go tomorrow then?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know, our plans..."

There was a moment of silence, then Angelo replied, "Huh?"

My smile faltered. "So you did forget."

I'd been hoping for Angelo to bring up our plans, so I hadn't reminded him the day before, even though I'd been dying to confirm if they were still on.

"Plans...oh, the art center trip!" He chuckled sheepishly, "Not gonna lie, I did. I'm sorry!"

I sighed. "Whatever, it's fine. So, what time should I be ready tomorrow?"

"Ooh...um about that, tomorrow doesn't work for me. I have a shitload of work I have to finish before Monday."

My shoulders slumped. "Oh, alright."

"I really hate to have to cancel; how about next weekend? I should be less swamped then."

I brightened. "Alright, sounds good. Good luck with your work."

"Thanks! Matter of fact, I'm gonna head back to it, so talk to you later."

"Okay, later."

Angelo hung up. I sighed, then dropped my phone and went back to cooking.

Nabila turned her focus to me. "He canceled?"

I sighed again. "Yeah, he said he's swamped with work at the moment, so he rescheduled for next week."

"Ah. Well, I'm sure you both will have a lot of fun then!"

I smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, we will."

. . .

Although I spoke to Angelo on several days of the following week, he didn't mention anything about the plans we had coming up. As much as I itched to bring it up, I decided to leave the ball in his court; he'd canceled the last time, so it was up to him to reschedule.

Saturday rolled around. When he called, I waited with bated breath for him to bring up the plans.

Not so much as a word on it.

Which each minute he spent rambling about inconsequential topics, my patience wore thinner. I was silent most of the time, only forcing out half-hearted nudges of agreement from time to time with a stony expression on my face. Angelo was too high to notice that there was something wrong.

Eventually, my line of self-control grew taut, so I had to blurt out a half-baked excuse to get off the phone. I immediately headed to the kitchen, burying my attention into the task of baking brownies; as much as I wanted to curse Angelo out, I decided to give him the chance to bring it up the following day.

That Sunday, it took a few minutes of lackluster banter on my part before Angelo finally realized that something was wrong. When he did, he said, "Are you okay? Your energy seems to be lacking."