To meet You Again (6 page)

               
“I said we were together,” he replied.

               
“And then?” I pressed on.

               
“Nothing,” he answered. “She stormed off. I wouldn’t really blame her. But
that’s why I thought she maybe talked to you about it.”

               
“She didn’t,” I pressed my lips together. Oh, right. We weren’t really together.
That was the reason there was tension between me and Angelo.

               
“But it’s good,” he comforted. “It means
it’s
working.”

               
“That’s good,” I grimaced. Oh yeah. That said it all about my progress.
Down the drain.
Did I even stand a chance? Should I keep
trying.
Change topic. Change topic. “So,” I broke the
silence. “Why do you love Valentine’s Day?”

               
“Well,” he began, “I guess that’s because of my grandmother.”

               
“What about her?” I asked, half genuinely curious.

               
“Well, she died when I was kind of young, so I didn’t know her very well,” he
said.

               
“I’m so sorry,” I looked down.

               
“It’s alright,” he shrugged. “It’s just that I figure she was a really nice
lady. When I was looking through the attic… This was when I was maybe ten… I
saw this chest full of love letters addressed to her. Man, did they have really
nice handwriting back then. But there were a lot. And they weren’t all from my
grandpa. I read some of them, and they were pretty hard core. Undying love and
all
that.Like
she was that beautiful.”

               
“That’s nice,” I smiled. “Do you see pictures of her?”

               
“Yeah, she was really beautiful,” he replied. “But the best thing about that
chest I found was this recipe for chocolate cookies.
Choco
choco
chip?
Like, the cookie itself was chocolate, and there were chocolate
chips. I had my mom make them, and it was absolutely delicious. Probably the
best dessert I’ve ever tasted.”

               
“Yeah?” my smile grew.

               
“Yeah,” he nodded. “And so, my mom makes them every Valentine’s Day, because to
make them during my birthday or Christmas is too mainstream or something. I
guess I just get really excited for those cookies.”            

               
“You really like those cookies, huh?” I chuckled.

               
“Yeah,” his eyes lit up, and I knew that he truly loved them. “They’re the
absolute best. I can finish a single batch in one sitting, just because they’re
that good. They’re sweet but not so much that you get sick of them.”

               
“Sounds good,” I smiled and then looked down. And that was when I realized what
One Direction meant when they said “but when you smile at the ground”. I
chuckled once to myself.

               
“What?” Don asked, chuckling himself. I noticed that he was particularly
susceptible to laughing.

               
“Just thought about the smiling at the ground thing,” I chuckled as I answered
him, wondering if he even understood what I’d managed to blurt out.

               
“Well, you pull it off really well,” he remarked. I looked up at him, my smile
fading into neutrality. “You still remember?” he asked. “That time I took your
picture?”

               
“Of course I do,” I said. “I never forgot.”

               
“You still have the same smile I liked back then,” the corner of his mouth
twitched up to form that candid asymmetrical smile I loved.  “And I still
like it now.”

               
I could feel myself blush, but this time was a little different for some
reason. There was no feeling of embarrassment attached, perhaps. It was just
this nice warm feeling, like taking a shower with warm water, except: instead
of the warmth travelling from the skin inwards, it was travelling from the
chest outwards towards my extremities. It was easy to trace. My
cheeks.My
upset stomach. The energy my limbs suddenly got.
It was a nice feeling, except for the fact that I felt the need to punch and
kick something… Or crush some stuffed toy. If only Don was my classmate in
History.

               
Then, I found myself leaning into Don. His face was only a few inches from
mine. Was this the moment I’d been fantasizing about for so long? Was it really
going to happen?
Finally?

               
Just then, Angelo came back in, and I found myself very abruptly moving away.

               
“Alright,” Angelo stretched as he sat at his keyboard.
“From
the chorus, everybody?”

               
“Yeah, sure,” I nodded and looked at Don from the corner of my eye. He looked
at me and then at Angelo, and then back at me.

               
“One, two, three,
four
…”

**    
*     *     *

Once Don and Angelo left, I stared at the empty
space in the garage.

               
Somehow, I was missing Don. We weren’t really together. I knew that. He
confirmed it. But something about what he said…

               
“You still have the same smile I liked back then, and I still like it now.”

               
His voice very faintly echoed through my mind.

               
“You still have the same smile I liked back then, and I still like it now.”

               
He liked my smile… He still did… Even after all this time…

               
What on earth was that supposed to mean?

               
This is exactly why I find boys to be completely and utterly frustrating. They
think us girls are irrational? Granted, we are. I would know, because I am one.
But they’re just as cryptic as we are. Jeez. Why couldn’t he just tell me
straight up that he wasn’t interested? Granted, he has explicitly expressed his
interest in another girl. But still! Why would he say things
like:

               
“You still have the same smile I liked back then, and I still like it now”?

               
Huh? Somebody please explain that to me. Otherwise, I shall interpret it as
such: He does have feelings for me…

               
Don might have feelings for me…
Which means I have a
shot…Which means I need to do something.

               
And I know exactly what that something was going to be.

               
At that moment, my fate was sealed.

               
The kitchen would be, more or less, covered in chocolate.

               
I rushed into the kitchen. My parents weren’t home yet. I knew this because the
fact that we had space enough to practice in the garage… I had plenty of time
to bake something, clean up, and then act as if nothing happened.

               
A recipe! A recipe! My kingdom for a recipe! …
If I had a
kingdom…And if I didn’t have the internet on my side.

               
I rushed upstairs, our big brown Labrador, who, up until a few moments ago, had
been lazily lying on the front mat, chasing after me. I ran into my room and
turned on my computer. I accessed a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, and then
carried it with me downstairs, running a little more carefully with Mocha still
chasing after me.

               
It should have occurred to me that Mocha was probably hungry and that he
probably assumed that I was rushing to the kitchen to fix him something. That
was my first mistake.

               
I psyched myself up. So I’d never baked a thing in my entire life. How
difficult could it be? After all, I had a recipe… Ranked four-point-five
average by about three thousand users. It had to be a good recipe.

Okay… one cup of butter, softened… We had a bar
of butter… How many cups is that? Well I figured that butter makes everything
delicious, so I decided to take out the whole bar.

               
I started murmur-singing to myself as I moved around the kitchen. “We don’t
have any walnuts so I’ll just lessen the sugar… Make it one cup instead and add
some all-purpose flour… Mocha, please stop barking, why
are
you
barking…”

               
Salt?
Are you supposed to put salt in desserts? Well,
it was in the recipe, so I shrugged and added just a dash.

               
And about that softened butter… I mixed everything else, and that butter was
still more or less solid. I had the best time trying to mix it up. I probably
spent about five minutes just stabbing at it. And now there were giant lumps. I
spent the next ten minutes very violently trying to flatten them and break them
up.

               
That was when all the chaos started.

               
I had lost my grip on the bowl and the whole thing tilted onto its side, all
the thick, chocolate-y contents spilling onto the counter, flowing over the
side and plopping onto the floor. I quickly stabilized the bowl back to its
right position, but more than half of the mix had been lost by then.

               
Just then, I spied Mocha sniffing the mess on the floor, and I was sharply
reminded that dogs couldn’t eat chocolate; if they did they’d die.

               
“Mocha, no!”
I shrieked.

               
Mocha then proceeded to trample over the puddle and run between my legs,
causing me to lose my balance. I tried to grip onto the counter, but my hand
slipped because of the chocolate. I fell into the mess of chocolate. I tried to
get up, but Mocha passed me again and I just slipped some more, making an even
bigger mess of that area on the floor. When I finally managed to regain my
balance, I looked all over the kitchen to find that there were paw-shaped
chocolate prints all over the floor. I remembered that I still had to catch
Mocha before he managed to lick any of it off. The next five minutes consisted
of me trying to restrain her and, as a result, messing up another big section
of the floor.

               
That’s when I noticed the front door closing.

               
“Ruby, we’re home,” I heard my dad call from the hallway.

               
Oh no…

               
Just then, my dad was standing frozen at the door of the kitchen.

               
“Honey,” my mom soon entered the scene as well, “what’s…” She stood there
staring at me as well. He mouth gaping open.

               
I stood up and looked down, realizing how much of
my self
was covered in chocolate…
Almost everything.
It looked
like I went mud wrestling.

               
“Okay. Before you say anything, I think I have the right to explain why
everything is covered in chocolate.”

               
That’s how it all happened. I told them about the fiasco with the dog, and my
dad laughed, saying that I was probably overreacting to the whole “dogs being
allergic to chocolate thing”. The rest of the night was spent as such:

               
First my mom had me shower. I rinsed my clothes while I was in there before
putting them in the hamper. By the time I got back to the kitchen, my mom had
cleaned up the entire floor. She was a miracle worker. Then I had to lie and
say I was making the cookies for Angelo, saying he was having a particularly
bad Valentine’s. They accused us of being in a relationship, and I had to sit
through an hour of “the talk”.
Waiting until
marriage.Family
planning.Love
.
Ugh. It was a wonderful night.

               
By the end of it, my mom agreed to help me finish the cookies. There were still
a lot of them by the end, so you could imagine how many more cookies could’ve been
made but, instead, fell victim to my sheer stupidity. They were okay.
Very sweet.
The way Don described his grandmother’s recipe,
my cookies must’ve ended up being very different. Oh, well. I hoped he would
just appreciate the effort.

               
Unfortunately for me, Angelo turned out to be correct. Just because you will
something to be so, doesn’t mean it will be so. Just because you wish with all
your heart that something will happen a certain way, doesn’t mean it will. I
knew this all along, and I chose to believe.

               
I happily walked down the halls, holding a Tupperware in hand. So I wouldn’t
get points for presentation. I was happy. I was almost skipping. I’d tried
something new, and I was excited to see Don’s reaction.

               
That excitement was crushed when as I was approaching Don’s locker. There he
was, kissing Melissa Kier.

               
I should’ve known.

               
I turned around so I wouldn’t have to see it. I started to walk away when Don
called me,

               
“Hey, Ruby!”

               
Asshole.