The Thing About Flip Flops

Chapter Nineteen: Carrot Candles To Go On Top Of The Carrot Cake

"Do you regret it?"

Chocolate. Chocolate colored eyes stare at me intensely. I can't figure out if they're Hershey's or Ghirardelli or some other brand of chocolate, but I'd be happy to stare at Jack's eyes for as long as it took to work it out.

"I..."

"Do you?"

"No. I don't," I say. Suddenly, it feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

"Then you don't need to feel like it's your fault," Jack says. "You don't regret it. If someone that used to make you happy doesn't anymore, you don't need to still be with him. If you cry, it just shows that you feel bad even for somebody who hurt you. I think that says something good about you, A."

I take these words in, wiping away the tears. "I don't even know if he made me happy in the first place."

Jack looks at me in a strange way but doesn't say anything else, until:

"Alright. So, now for the important thing. Ice cream or cookies?"

I crack a smile at him and how nice he's being, and suddenly I start to wonder if I broke up with Chris for more than one reason.

Jack comes back into the room a few minutes later with his arms full of ice cream, cookies, brownies, chips, and much more. He dumps it all on the bed, and I notice a bag of baby carrots as well.

"You wouldn't choose, so I brought everything."

"What are the carrots for?" I ask him.

"Oh." Jack looks at the carrots. "Those are in case you start feeling sick from all the junk."

"Unlikely. But thanks."

"No, really! They're a great palette cleanser," he lies with a grin, flicking my arm playfully.

"Uh-huh," I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Why did you actually bring carrots?"

I look at him in silence for a second, and then he sighs, his ears reddening.

He reaches behind him and holds up a Tupperware full of cake. He opens it and I see that it's all smooshed up with orange and white frosting.

Jack rips open the package of carrots and sticks one straight up in the cake. "Carrot candles to go on top of the carrot cake." He tells me, knowing full well that I'm about to say that he's weird.

"You're weird," I say to him. "Plus carrot cake is gross."

"Yeah, true. Wait..." He gasps dramatically. "I mean about carrot cake! I'm not weird, you're weird."

We watch the cake in silence for a few seconds. Then the carrot falls off from where it was sticking up, and we both burst out laughing.

I grab a bag of Cheetos and am about to dig in when he says, "You'd better share. Otherwise I'm kicking you out of here."

I laugh and toss a cheese puff at him. "Here you go."

He lets it fall onto his foot without bothering to try and catch it. "You're a terrible person."

"Am not." I reach over to mess up his already-messy hair but he stops my wrist.

"Don't touch the hair."

Then, as I'm distracted by the feeling of his hand on mine, he snatches the Cheetos from my other hand.

"You twisted jerk!" I yelp, forgetting to be as quiet as I can since it's two in the morning. "There are, like, five more packs!"

"So why don't you get one of those ones?" He teases, holding the bag out of reach as he eats my food. I move to take it from him but he stops me with his arm, pushing me back. It doesn't help that we're both laughing like crazy now.

I take one of the blankets and toss it over his head, disorienting him and causing him to flail his arms around in an attempt to remove it. "Cheater!" He accuses, finally taking it off to reveal that his hair is somehow even messier and now covered in fuzz balls from the blanket.

"Oh, you're in for it now," he says to me with a smirk, and I laugh and duck away from him.

I try to grab for the blanket again, reaching across the pile of junk food, but he moves away and tackles me with it instead.

I'm laughing so hard my stomach hurts. It feels so good. I haven't laughed like this in ages. I find the edge of the blanket and wrench it off me, and suddenly notice that Jack is essentially on top of me. On his bed. At two in the morning. Shit.

I stop laughing abruptly and shut my eyes. When I open them up again, he's still right there. His smile is fading. It's quiet again.

I can't help but drag my eyes to his lips and start to lean in.

Then he smooshes a Cheeto into my face and I shove him off of me, resuming our previous hysteric state.

Leave it to Jack to diffuse any tension. Funny, if I said that to anyone other than my best friends, they would put me in a mental asylum. Hell, if I heard before we met that Jack Golden, notorious "bad boy" of our school, would be laughing and throwing Cheetos at me now...

I rip open a pack of popcorn and start throwing. Thus officially starting the most fun, insane, two-person food fight in the history of the world.

It lasts two whole hours.

By the time we're done, he's covered in cheese dust and I've got Pringles in my shirt. My hair is sticky with Fanta. Luckily, he drank most of his soda before dumping it on me. We're both thoroughly disgusting.

We lay down on his bed, still laughing. He doesn't seem to care that we're making a huge mess of his room. We're both tired. I can tell from his occasional yawning and the way his blinks last longer than usual.

He halfheartedly tosses a piece of popcorn at me as we lie down facing each other, and I make no attempt to catch it in my mouth. He grabs it from the place it fell on the bed and presses it against my lips. I shut my mouth tight and smile, raising my eyebrows.

"Eat it," he says

"No."

"Why not?"

I give in and let him feed me the little piece of popcorn. His finger brushes my lips. "You owe me, Golden."

"No, I don't!" He says too loudly, sitting up and making me yelp and reach a hand up to cover his mouth. I can't reach without getting up, though, and I'm too tired to do that. Luckily, Jack throws himself back down onto the bed.

Technically, I've just experienced my first break-up, but I don't feel anything about that anymore. Part of me wants to thank Jack for the distraction, but another part of me thinks that it wasn't just a distraction. I had a really fun time. I wouldn't change tonight for the world, breakup or not.

We're both so, so tired. I can't help it.

I drift off right there, in the middle of Jack Golden's messy bed, covered in food, next to the bad boy himself. My arms are spread in front of my face and his are spread in front of his chest, resting a little further down on the covers so that we're not touching.

The lights are still on.