The Best Candidate

Chapter 3

A/N: The image above does not belong to me. It belongs to the person who uploaded it on the internet.

Tul's POV

"Here let me do it for you," I said to Ella when I noticed that she was having some difficulty cutting into her honey garlic pork chop.

"Th...thank you," she said, stammering and blushing when I took her knife and fork from her and my fingers accidentally brushed over hers.

"Don't spoil her this early," Mook said, sending a teasing smile to Ella.

"I'm a spoiler of women," I said as I continued to cut Ella's pork chop into bite size strips.

"I wish you were my..." Mook started to say and then abruptly stopped mid sentence.

"Go on," Max prodded her. "I'm very interested in hearing the rest of your sentence."

Mook leaned towards Max and lightly placed her hand over Max's.

"I was just teasing Ella," she said in a honey toned voice meant to placate Max.

"You can tell that to your deaf grandfather," Max said with a pronounced smirk on his face.

I was starting to feel uncomfortable with the undercurrent that suddenly developed at table so I turned to Ella.

"What type of movies do you enjoy watching?" I asked her.

"Mystery and suspense thrillers," she replied. "How about you?"

"Same," I replied.

"Liar," Max cut in. "You prefer documentaries."

Shit, how did he know that. I had been trying to pave my way to asking Ella to a movie date with me and Max just had to go and make it into an obstacle course instead.

Anyway at least I had managed to dissipate the tension that had started to build between him and Mook and now we were all back to light hearted conversation.

Throughout dinner Mook and Ella took turns pumping me with questions about my interests, my likes and dislikes, the kind of work that I did and so on.

I was a bit spooked when Max would supply answers to some of Mook's and Ella's questions and he got them all correct except for one.

"What's your zodiac sign?" Ella asked.

"Aries," Max said at the exact same time that I answered "Leo".

"What made you think that I'm an Aries?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Because you exhibit some or even most of  the Aries traits," he replied.

I was almost sure that I had just imagined the slightest tinge of pink creeping into his cheeks.

"Anybody care for coffee?" he suddenly stood up from the table and quickly made his way to his kitchen.

"I do," I replied standing from my chair to join him in the kitchen with the intention of helping him prepare the coffee.

"We both do," Mook answered for Ella.

"How do you want your coffee, Ella?" I asked before asking Max where he kept his coffee cups.

"Cream no sugar," again it was Mook who answered for Ella.

"What the hell, Max," I couldn't help saying when suddenly the cup that I had just handed over to him went crashing to the kitchen floor.

"Fuck," I heard him mutter as he went down on one knee to pick up the broken pieces.

"Don't touch them," I told him. "Where do you keep your broom and dust pan?"

 "Over there in that narrow closet," he said standing from his kneeling position, the earlier hint of pink now blossoming into a full blown blush.

As I pulled the closet door open to take out the broom and dust pan it dawned on me that he had dropped the coffee cup at the exact moment when I had happened to cover his hand with mine. But why the hell would a small skinship between us make him edgy. And then again perhaps I was just overthinking things. Perhaps it had just been an accident. Yeah maybe that was what it was, just a pure and simple accident.