“You’re a crank.”
“I’m not a crank.” I huff. “I’m a grump.”
“You’re like next level grump, though. You’re so irritable, you get mad at people for sharing their snacks with you.”
I narrow my eyes, angling toward her and that infuriating smile. “I didn’t get mad at you.”
“You were in tears.”
I squirm again as I feel a twinge in my bladder. “That was from theheat, not because I was throwing some tantrum.”
“You refused to spit it out, so you swallowed it, instead, and then chased it with sixteen ounces of chocolate milk and a Mars bar. You absolutely threw a tantrum.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“Right, because anytime a woman points out that a man is emotional,she’sbeing ridiculous?”
“No, anytime a woman pulls a bait and switch with beef jerky that’s actually made from molten lava and then blames the guy for choking on it, that’s when she’s being ridiculous.”
“Crank.”
“Trickster.”
She laughs. “Trickster?”
“Yes, you’re a trickster. You tricked me into thinking it was normal beef jerky.”
“How?”
“Because you’re so … cute! And … bubbly and … undaunted. I half expected the flavor to be cotton candy.”
Did I just call her cute? Out loud?
For some reason, this makes her beam brighter than headlights. “You thought wrong.”
“Tell that to my mouth.”
The words hang in the air between us.
Her eyes pop.
My eyes pop.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say, the heat in my gut rushing up to my face in a way that makes me wonder if I’m embarrassed or … lying to myself.
“I can’t imagine you did,” she says.
But the corner of her mouth tugs up, and man, she iscute.
So painfully, adorably cute.
And she’s not the bubbling brook I pegged her as at first. There’s a well underneath that playful surface, one that runs so deep and dark, I can only imagine what it contains.
Oof.
I gotta stop thinking in water metaphors, especially when?—
My bladder’s going to explode.
