Sam--short for Samantha, if you please--has been living in Crawley, Maine for about a year in her grandfather's lighthouse. A promising advertiser, she works from home and the local coffee shop, where she gets her daily hot chocolate fix. For her, l...
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Bang, bang, bang!
I awoke with a start to the loud noise echoing from downstairs. Rotating my head to the side, I read my alarm clock:
1:34pm
Sniffling a bit, I sat up and hurriedly laid back down again once the world started to spin. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I closed my eyes and counted to twenty.
Again, three loud knocks from downstairs.
"Coming!" I tried to yell out, but all that left my throat was a hoarse croak. I coughed a little, attempting to clear my throat.
"Com-- coming!" I managed to rip out. I sat up achingly slow, methodical to a "t," and eked over to my slippers resting in front of the heater.
Dragging a blanket from the bed around my shoulders and stepping down the stairs, I made my way to the entryway. Peeping through the hole in the door brought my heart to a solid thumping. Andrei was standing on my doorstep, holding, what looked like, a steaming disposable cup of something liquid.
I hurried to open the door and was met with a blinding smile and crinkled, deep brown eyes.
"Hello, Sam." He held out the cup, "I bring your hot chocolate."
I resurfaced a hand from inside my blanket and clutched the proffered gift.
"Thank you, I needed that this morning," I tried to say, but it came out more like,
"Dank oo, Aye nee-dud dat dis moan-ink."
Andrei's eyebrows pressed downwards.
"You okay, Sam?"
I gently waved the cup in a general sign of dismissal,
"I just woke up, so I'm just feeling a little under the weather right now." Again, the stuffiness in my nose clogged my ability to communicate clearly.
He rested a hand on his leathered hip--leathered?!--and one of his eyebrows rose.
"I think you are not good."
"Not... good? Oh! You mean sick, right? Or unwell?"
His concerned scowl broke into a puppy dog grin,
"Yes! Unwell! You are unwell. Water make you unwell, yes?"
"I mean, I guess maybe it did. I--" a bout of coughing broke off my next sentence, and Andrei startled forward. His hands reached for my shoulders, hesitated for a considerable amount of time, then settled gently along my upper arms.
"I will help. My, uh, uh, uh, problem. No, not problem--"
"Fault?"
"Fault! Yes! You are good with words, Sam."
"My mom was an elementary school teacher. She started me on reading early; I started reading chapter books by second--that's beside the point. Andrei, it's not your fault that I got sick. It was my own, remember?"
