The Little Of Oz Series

#Chapter11-03

#Chapter11-03

My own nuggets looked fantastic. There was six of them, residing beside a lake of fries, but they were far too hot to eat right away. After the first bite, I had yelped, dropping the thing back to the plate and fanning my mouth, whimpering as the ouchie burnt on despite having dropped the culprit of the pain back to the plate.

I had expected Blake to laugh at me; I hadn't been expecting Blake to slide my plate towards him, pushing his own aside, and work on the nuggets with his knife and fork. He cut them up into small chunks, ignoring the way my jaw had dropped, before sliding it back over to me.

"They will cool quicker like this," was all he said, giving a nonchalant shrug as he slid his own food back in place.

Even Isaac wouldn't have done that for me.

"Fanks," I muttered, trying to fight down the strange feeling the action had unleashed in my chest and stomach. It was a like bubbles, a web of them floating and building up, tickling me from the inside out. It was . . . odd and new, and had my heart fluttering in a way that it never had before. It was odd, but not unpleasant. Rather the opposite.

"Do you want ketchup?" He had flipped the bun from his burger and had sprayed jets of crimson over the evil green leaves that mapped themselves over the beef. It wasn't until his eyes flicked up in expectancy that I realised that I hadn't answered him.

Stuttering out nonsense, I nodded, knowing my words were indecipherable, and held out my hand for the bottle.

"Where do you want it?" He asked, ignoring my hand completely. His words only made the strange feeling intensify. I had to cross my legs around the chair leg to make sure that I didn't float away with how giddy I suddenly felt.

"Right there. Just by the fries. But not on the fries. They can't touch. "

He didn't question my request. He simply obliged. With hindsight, that was perhaps the reason why the food had tasted so amazing. Had Blake not of cut it up and poured the sauce for me, then I was convinced that the taste would have been mediocre at best.

I was on cloud nine as we drove home. The sky was stubborn, refusing to allow the light to pass on to darkness, and the heat was still cruel and unforgiving, leaving the world with a stifling sense of stuffiness. Yet, I barely noticed. Blake claimed that his dad's car, an old Volkswagen that made a laboured chuntering noise whenever the engine was turned, was rubbish, and he couldn't wait to get his own, but in that moment, it was perfect.

For however old the car was, or for whatever was happening in the world around us, it all faded. Blake sang along to the radio, head bobbing in time to the rock-and-roll that blasted, and he was all that there was. Turned sideways in my seat so that I could watch his second mini-concert of the day, grinning so wide that my cheeks felt like they were going to split . . . he was all that there was.

Home was reached far too soon. Like a jump-scare, he pulled up and the small, squat, semi-detached rushed up to meet me, reminding me that no good thing could ever last forever. Stuffed from the food, having eaten almost everything on my plate, I felt like I was a little waddling penguin as he walked me up to the front door.

"Are you going to be okay by yourself?" he asked as he took my house keys off me after watching me struggle and drop them in attempt to find the right one. Mom had told me to take them with me as she would have probably already left by the time I got back from dropping Isaac off at the train station.

"Huh-huh," I murmured with a nod. I wasn't sure that I would. I hated being alone. It scared the socks off of me and I usually ended up turning on every light in the house, surrounding myself with my stuffed friends, whilst trying to convince myself that the people I loved were only in the next room over.

But I didn't want to worry him. He seemed genuinely concerned, which was odd, but nice. I had never really stopped to consider that maybe Blake was as much my friend as he was Isaac's, but now that he had said it, I so desperately wanted it to be true. I didn't want him to change his mind by showing him how weird and dependable on other people that I actually was.

"Good." He slid the key in the door, twisted and opened it, before handing me the overloaded keyset back. "Text me if you need me. You have my number, right?"

Another nod. I didn't trust my voice. He smiled sweetly, those wayward dimples back, cascading his beauty in a dose of added charm. I wasn't expecting the way he hugged me, a loose, one-armed hug that had the scent of his cologne branding itself into my memory, but my body responded instantly, arms wrapping around him like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Okay. Make sure you text me in the morning to let me know that you're okay. Don't stay up too late, and get plenty of sleep."

When he did pull back he did something that shocked both of us. He kissed my forehead, whispering "Bye, Odd Bod," before he turned away, his getaway being a fast brisk walk back to his car.

I only stood there gaping.

And it was only then that something dawned on me.

I may or may not have had the smallest of crushes on Blake Owen.