The Replacement Girlfriend

Chapter 32

Immediately his cheeks grew red. “Well no. Not precisely. After I calculated my mathematical hypothesis, I went back to the stand and ran a series of experiments. It’s hard measuring the force of each throw, you see, and since I didn’t have the instruments to measure the air resistance, I ended up running trial and errors until the amusement park closed.” As if his cheeks weren’t red enough, they suddenly lit up in a bright scarlet as his eyes stared nervously at the ground. “So in the end, the boy at the stand felt bad for me and told his boss, who in turn gave me the bear as a gift.”

Butterflies ambushed Krislynn’s stomach as she bit down on her lower lip. “You stayed the whole night trying to get me the bear?” She whispered.

“Well no.” His eyes still stayed fixated on the concrete floor. “They close at three so...”

“But still...”

A brief moment of silence swept through them before Jace looked up having finally composed himself from his embarrassment. “Will you accept this?” He asked extending the bear.

Krislynn lifted a hand and lightly touched the bear on the ear before letting her hand drop to her side. “You went through so much trouble to get it though,” she murmured. “Shouldn’t you give something like that to LaCienega instead?”

Her question surprised him, and for a moment, Jace’s mouth parted in a little O before he finally shook his head. “LaCienega doesn’t like things like these.”

“Well, what does she like? She seems to be madly in love with you. I can’t imagine her not liking anything you might possibly give her.”

“That’s true,” Jace openly admitted as he rubbed his chin in deep thought. “She’ll love anything I give her regardless, but her sort of happiness is like... well like when Chase’s mother used to knit him reindeer sweaters every Christmas – nice, but not really at the same time.” He laughed to himself with the recollection of the memory. “Poor thing had to be a reindeer each year too. It started out with Rudolph and then Dasher and Dancer until he eventually had all nine of them.”

Krislynn smiled at the thought of Chase wearing something like a hand-knit reindeer sweater. “But I really can’t accept something you put so much effort into,” she persisted. “It would feel...”

“Oh dear. It’s nothing more than a token of my friendship. Really!” Jace blushed. “You’re Chase’s girlfriend and it would honestly mean a lot to me if we could be good friends as well.” He held out the bear again. “So will you take it?”

Krislynn hesitated, but then reached out and clutched onto the bear below its stubby arms. Her lips curved into a smile and she tried her best to hide how much she really wanted the stuffy away from him. “Well okay. Thank you then.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Jace excused himself after that, explaining LaCienega was probably finished doing her hair and he needed to grab the last few things from their room. Krislynn was heading back the same way, but for some reasons, she let him walk ahead and waited until he was out of sight before she started walking back.