Like Rapunzel, but Not Really ✔

Chapter 10

My eyes zoomed on the hand placed (now) awkwardly on his shoulder. I slowly extricated my hand from his shoulder, unsure of what a sudden movement could entail. I emitted the fakest laugh ever while maintaining a strong non eye contact with Eric.

"AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA! Good one!" I laughed out loud robotically.

I even slapped him on his shoulder (awkwardly) just for good measure.

He gave me a deep stare that almost felt like beaming hot lasers resting its heat on my skin.

"Oh, did you hear that? I think Hunter is calling. I should go and see if he had accidentally trip over a loose cable again. Make yourself at home and help yourself to anything. Uhh... yeah...," I rushed through the sentence as if I could not wait a moment longer to escape the conversation and then dashed off to Hunter's. I could feel the burning gaze on my back.

Oh, my God, oh, my God, Eric likes me? Has Hunter been right all this while? Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

"Oh, my God, that was so weird," I whispered to Hunter the moment I closed the door to his place.

"What is?" Hunter asked absentmindedly while nursing his foot with an ice pack.

I looked at his foot and asked puzzlingly, "What happened to your foot? You were strutting fine just three minutes ago."

It turned out I was not lying to Eric when I said he might have tripped over some loose cables.

"You know, you really need to clean up the house once in a while. I don't know how you have not caught anything yet and died," I said, taking my eyes off the offending cables and shifting them to take in the piles of things strewn everywhere in his living room.

It wasn't even just the clothes that lay waste everywhere but also the unfinished spoilt food, spilled crumbs, general waste and dirty dishes. I swear the red plate covered with a layer of unknown green thing beside the TV had been there since he first moved in a year ago. The worst part was the living room was probably the cleanest of all the other places. His place was significantly smaller than mine- how hard was it to clean up once a while? Would it have killed him to be a little bit more hygienic?

I didn't even want to get started on the kitchen.

Hunter scoffed. "It's not my fault that that Cinder-what's-her-name girl is such a crap maid." He cradled his injured foot for a few seconds longer and then paused in an afterthought. Looking at me, he frowns. "Now that I think about it, I don't think I saw her today?" he asked me. "Or yesterday. Or any day, in fact," he said in realization. "Wait, do we even have a maid?" Now he was just looking around his house as if just realizing how disgusting the house had become. I could actually smell toxic fumes from rotting food.

I vomited a little in my mouth.

I had never been able to stay very long at Hunter's place.

I sighed. "First of all, her name is Cindy, not Cinder," I corrected. "And now that you've realized we don't have a maid, you might want to start thinking about cleaning up the house before you breed the next American plague."

Hunter made a face.

"Secondly, your boss is still here. And I can't go back to my place until he leaves and I would really appreciate it if you two would just go do some work already," I pleaded.

The blonde in front of me had his eyes wide open. "Did he try to make a pass at you?"

I hesitated. "I guess you could say he said something a bit weird."

"And then what happened?"

"I ran here," I smiled sheepishly.

He rolled his eyes. "I knew it would happen sooner or later. I'm telling you. The guy really likes you. I swear, sometimes we don't do work because he would ask so many questions about you and makes the flimsiest excuse to come back here," he sighed. "At first I thought I could use you as an offering to make me advance in my career faster but - OW! Woman, must you be so violent? It's not like anything happened!"