Noise Complaint // Alex Ernst

twenty-nine

Alex

Mara handed her phone to a nice gentleman who offered to take our photo. "Thank you so much!" Mara grins and thanks the man. "Aw, look it! Our first nice picture together!"

"What? We've had nice pictures before! Like that one we took at Osteria Mozza," I point out. "Yeah, except for you flipping the camera off," Mara reminds me. "Oh yeah," I laugh, remembering the nice dinner that we went to with David and Liza a few weeks ago.

"Okay, time for stop two," I tell Mara and pull the blindfold back out of my pocket. "No, we just got here," Mara whines. "Mar, you live in LA now, do you really think you'll never come here again?"

"Fine," Mara gives in. I place the blindfold back over her eyes and I lead her back to the car. She steps into passenger side, but not without banging her head on the top of the car.

I make it to the drivers seat and start the car.

"Mar, are you okay?" I ask. Mara's holding her head, which looks completely ridiculous considering that she has a blindfold on. "Yeah, just concussed my head severely," Mara shakes her head.

"Oh, well that's fine," I turn my attention to the road. "I would totally smack you right now if I could see," Mara frowns. "Yeah, I know."

About 20 minutes later, we pull to the stop. I turn to Mara, taking in how beautiful she looked with her stupid grin on her face. She always smiled, and I loved that about her so much. I don't even think she knew that she was smiling.

I slammed on the breaks just to watch Mara go flying forward. "Alex, you jerk!" Mara screams and grabs the little bar thing on the ceiling.

"Did you seriously just grab the ceiling handle?" I asked. "Yes, I thought I was going out the windshield!" "I think you're the ONLY person I've ever known to actually use that."

"Well maybe if you didn't drive like a 15 year old teenage girl who just got her temporary license..," Mara mutters.

"What?" I ask. I knew what she said.

"Oh, nothing," she laughs. I get out of the car and open her door. "Whatever, dumbass, just get out and take your blindfold off."

"Ouch, Alex. How romantic," Mara muses as she successfully (somehow) climbs out of the car. She takes her blindfold off.

"Aw, a diner!" Mara exclaims. "Yeah, it's a little diner from the 1980's," I smile. "Can I get pancakes?" Mara asks.

"Mara, we drove 35 minutes to a small diner for you to get pancakes? We can get those any other day at iHope."

"Fine, then I'm going home."

I smile. "Then get your damn pancakes."

We walk into the small diner and Mara's face lights up. All the waitresses are wearing clothes from the '80s, with their hair all crimped and hair sprayed.

There's a red and white checkered tile on the floor with red cushion seats. '80s music plays from the '80s jukebox in the corner of the room. I turned my attention from the atmosphere to Mara.

She's so... unexpected. You could look at Mara and never know all of her different sides. She's truly one of a kind, and I adore that more than anything. She's unbelievably annoying and stubborn, but she can make me laugh harder than anyone else.