Mackie, May I?

Mackie, May I? Chapter 6

Three hours later my eyes are growing heavy and my mind has stopped absorbing any new information.  Instead I’m lying on the carpet of the den, my head tossed to the side and my eyes closed, not wanting to do anything but rest.  We’ve been reading and talking in Spanish for hours and it’s gotten progressively more and more horrid, and now I’m just so done with it.

“Mackie wake up!” I hear Fred yell animatedly from beside me, “Carly’s coming over!”

I halfheartedly open my eyes, and when I see Jesse sitting beside me and not Fred, my heart jolts a bit.  He gives me a half smile before looking away, and not long after I hear Fred whisper to him something about getting on top of me.  Jesse responds with a “dude, no,” and I can’t help but smile to myself a bit at his response.

“Do you have something with my roommate?” I ask when my eyes roam upward and see Fred sitting on the futon with his hands folded behind his head.  I can’t help but be curious.  Obviously they talk, due to the fact that he got my number from her and they set us up last night, and now he’s inviting her over?

He wrinkles his nose, “No offense, but no.  Don’t like her like that.  She’s fucking awesome, though.  As a friend.”

“As a scheming partner?” I ask, hitching an eyebrow up at him.

Jesse snorts a laugh, and then Fred says, “Damn straight.”

I giggle, “You’re so weird.”

All of a sudden a huge roar of thunder echoes across the apartment, causing my body to shake against the floor.  I wrench myself upward and cross the room towards the window, saying, “I didn’t think it was supposed to rain today.”

No one responds to me, but as I look outside I see that dark storm clouds are swirling against the dark night sky, the trees across the street shaking and bending in the wind.  It looks like the weather’s going to be wicked, and I feel a burst of excitement in my stomach at the thought.

I’ve loved bad weather ever since I was little, as I find it both thrilling and relaxing.  But we never seem to get really bad storms up here, so when we do get them I get overly excited.  A flash of lightening then strikes across the sky, illuminating the window in a bright spark.  It makes me jump a bit, but not as much as when I feel Jesse come to stand next to me and peer out the window as well.

I slyly peer my eyes to the side to check him out as he looks at the weather, and can’t help but wish I had the nerve to lean in and peck his cheek because of the adorably curious expression on his face.

So instead I just look back out and see another brief stroke of lightening, this one much further from the first.  I turn around from the window and tell Fred, “Put the weather on or something; I wonder how long this is supposed to go on.”

“Okay,” he says, bending over his knees and grabbing the remote from where he’d chucked it on the floor earlier.  I go over and sit next to him, watching as he clicks on the small TV across the room and then goes to the weather channel.

At the bottom of the screen the forecast for the next few hours scrolls by, and when I see that there’s a ninety percent chance of thunderstorms for the rest of the night, I feel my heart beat pick up.  “Sweet,” I say happily at the news, and when I see the surprised faces from both boys, I quickly explain, “I love bad weather.”

“I hate it,” Fred says solemnly, “My uncle died in a storm like this.”

My body immediately goes cold.

 “No way…oh my god, Fred, I’m so…”

Jesse walks over and smacks Fred behind the head, “Mackie, don’t listen to him.  He’s a jack ass.”