A Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

It was finally going to happen. I was finally going to have my date with Cole. Or so I thought. Here’s what really happened. He said he was going to ask me out, but at the last second he chickened out and just ended up asking me if I would put Alex back on the phone, which, I didn’t. I just told him ‘Alex’ was otherwise engaged, and I hung up.

I’m going to skip over all the tears and whining and the unbearable woman pains and woe-is-me tantrums here, and skip to about a week later after ‘men bewarenes’s week is over. Trust me, you don’t want to hear the sob story from that week, it’s horrendous. Let’s pick up the pace again with, hmm... how about Hunter’s apology.

Hunter showed up at my home a week after the incident at Cole’s party looking like a...well, a guy who looked really guilty. How else do I describe that look? Oh, yeah! Like a kid who had just been caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar and was coming to apologize to whomever it was he needed to apologize to. Okay, that was a bad description, but I’m sure you sort of get it. Right? Sure you do.

“I’m really sorry about what I said the other night,” was the first thing Hunter said when I opened the door. “I didn’t mean that I didn’t want to be around you...I mean, I did, but I didn’t. It doesn’t matter what I meant, I suppose.” 

I stared at him, not sure whether to believe my ears or not. Hunter? Apologizing? I though he was too stuck up to do something like that. Okay, well, maybe I didn’t. He’d apologized before, but I didn’t expect him to be so nervous about it this time. And I definitely didn’t expect him to show up at my house at...what time was it? 9:30 in the morning on a Saturday.

He didn’t make eye contact, but stared at his hands as his twisted his fingers together anxiously. “I just...  Sometimes you can be really weird and annoying, and sometimes you are really dumb. No! I didn’t mean that either! I meant sometimes you act really dumb. I’m sure you’re not as...um, you’re not dumb. I...uh-”

I held up a hand to stop him, about to burst into laughter if he kept going. He seemed so awkward. So...not Hunter-like. Not that I knew him all that well.

“You’re really botching up this apology,” I remarked.

Hunter raised his eyes and looked at me. “Yeah...sorry about that.”

“It’s no big deal. Besides, I should be the one apologizing. I was just over reacting, and I know I said some hurtful things too.” 

We smiled awkwardly at each other.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked. “I’m cooking breakfast.”

~

The kitchen smelled of burning toast, and the smoke was beginning to make it hard to see. I coughed a couple of times like an old smoker. An ear piercing beeping sound announced to anyone in earshot that I had failed once again. I had burned yet another pancake. If it could be called a pancake, it was more like a hockey puck.

“You suck at cooking,” Hunter yelled over the clamor as he fanned the fire alarm with a newspaper to try to make it stop wailing.

“Thanks for the encouragement,” I yelled back as deadpanned as I could make my voice while yelling, and chucked the...um...crispy thing into the trash can. Turning, I threw open a window. Grey streams of smoke wafted out into the world as fresh air poured inside.

Finally, the beeping stopped.

“Thank heavens!” I cried, turning back to the stove where a pan was, still hot and reading for my next attempt at making breakfast. Unfortunately, though, we were out of pancake mix. I frowned at the box. “Well, I guess we’ll be eating eggs and bacon?”