Love At Last

LILY

“Sweetie?” nana called out to Jacek.

“Uh?”

“Eat quickly and go inside, okay? You need to sleep,” nana said wearing smiles as Jacek nodded repeatedly.

Few minutes later, dinner time was over and I was alone with nana for a heart-to-heart conversation.

“I thought we agreed to stay off him.”

“I know, but…,” I lacked words to explain myself to my nana. What would I say to her that would serve as a good explanation? Finally, after rummaging through my thoughts, I said, “we just said hi, that’s all,” I lied.

“That’s all?” she asked. “That’s all” I affirmed strongly to avoid unnecessary doubts as nana was good at reading my facial expressions.

“Better,” nana replied and I heaved a sigh of relief.

It’s 4:30 am in the morning and instead of getting up by the sound of my alarm clock, a call from an unknown number did the job.

“Hello,” I said on picking the call from the ‘unknown’ as I gently rubbed her eyes.

“Well, hello there,” a familiar voice cried out from the other side of the line as I heaved a sigh of irritation. ‘Why in God’s name would he wake me up by this time?” I thought as I kept the other fellow waiting for my reply.

“Hello?”

“What is your problem?” I barked completely forgetting the fact that my roommate – Jackel – was still fast asleep. I quietly got off the bed and made my way to the living room to speak comfortably.

“You haven’t forgotten our agreement, right?” the annoying voice said.

“Is that why you’d call me by this time?” I fired. “This is a breach of contract, you know? I could call off our agreement.”

“Relax. I thought you’d be up already. Your bakery gets up-and-doing by 6:30 in the morning…,” he paused “so tell me, were you still sound asleep or you just feel like whining unnecessarily?” he asked and got me infuriated the more.

“For God’s sake, Jacek was lying right beside me. What if he’d woken up?”I retorted angrily.

“My bad then…,” nana cut in by clearing her throat loud enough.

Knowing exactly what was up I immediately hung up without telling the other party. “Nana?” I called out on turning around to see my grandma who stood behind me, looking all suspicious.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Jarod!” I replied without thinking twice.

“Jarod?” nana sounded a bit skeptical. “By this time?” she looked at the clock.

“Yes. I asked him to do something for me, he just called to brief me on it,” I stylishly tried to avoid nana’s direct gaze.

We both stood at our respective positions for few seconds without uttering a word. Nana looked like she didn’t completely buy what I said but then again, it’d look rather insulting to call Jarod to confirm, or awkward to keep asking me questions in order to voice her suspicion. In no time, we retired to their respective morning duties.

As the day would have it, I went down in time and as usual, attended to the customers appropriately but today, I was a little distracted all thanks to Mr. ‘Annoying’. I was busy all day looking into dating sites – something I’d never done for myself – for the fellow who wouldn’t get off my neck.

Due to my absent-mindedness, I had to relinquish most of the duties to Jarod and the other staffs. Getting all hooked on I device, I hooked Cayden to the dating sites and a few minutes later, managed to land him a 26-year old Samantha, light-skinned, blonde with blue eyes. I sent him a screenshot of our conversations. It was clear that I played the role of a ‘middle-man’ since our ever sweet Cayden was too busy to get himself a chic.Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

Around 2:30pm, I excused myself and left the bakery after I had called Cayden to inform him of my visit and the purpose behind it – to prepare our prince – charming for the ‘big date’. After listening to his whining over the phone for three whole minutes, I hung up and hit the road.

In no time, I was in front of his house. I rang the doorbell and I a few seconds, what greeted me left me awe-struck. Cayden seemed to have just taken his bath since the only clothing he had on was a towel which only covered his lower body leaving his abs and biceps all in the open, forcing me to instantly get wild dreams.

“Umm…are you coming in or not?” Cayden asked gently on seeing me frozen.

I immediately shrugged and walked in, completely ignoring the scene that met with my eyes. With water dripping from his hair, he walked up to me – after shutting the door – and smiled. ‘Why’s he smiling now?’ I thought. “Did you get my texts?” I asked, wearing a smug look.

“You sent me texts? I’ve not checked my phone, I’ve been busy”

“You’re hopeless,” I fired with every hint of sarcasm. “How would you not have checked your phone the whole day, knowing full well we had an agreement of some sort?” I scolded. “You really are hopeless,” I finally concluded.

“I’m serious, though,” Cayden defended.

“You’re ser…”, I held myself back from lashing out on him, which I very much knew would escalate into a heated argument. “You know what?”

“What?”

“We’re only going to have a proper conversation after you’ve put a shirt on,” I said and looked in ‘the other’ direction.

Cayden chuckled and let out a mischievous smile, “why though?” he asked and walked a bit closer to me. “Do you not like what you see?” he whispered slowly into my ears, causing me to walk further away, annoyed.

“Go put on a shirt, Mr. …” I repeated, looking all serious as I tried my very best to avoid his gaze, “or I’ll leave,” I finally said and returned his stare, wide-eyed.

“Fine, fine, I’ll do it. Jesus,” he budges and excused himself. I heaved a deep sigh of relief as my heart wouldn’t stop thumping real hard and fast.