Poolside Romance [Watty Awards 2011] COMPLETE

Embarrassments of a Chocoholic

There are only four questions of value in life.

What is sacred?

What is the spirit made of?

What is worth living for?

What is worth dying for?

The answer to each is the same. Only love.

-- Don Juan Demarco

Chapter 2

‘Oh my god, I'm never sitting through another inauguration speech ever again.’ I complained to Liz on our way back to the room.

Elise, who we all call Liz- because it’s a shorter name, I guess- was elder to me by a year but shorter than me by more than two inches. She was a cute and fun thing with short bouncy red hair, but with a big mouth and an extraordinary talent for being sarcastic.

 No one I knew could ever beat her in an argument. She literally embarrassed you to bits if you do so. That’s why I never bother to quarrel with her; I just accept most of what she says. Maybe it’s her intimidating speech that attracted guys to her but she never felt the same for any of those who confessed their liking towards her.

‘Where are the lunch coupons? I’m starving already.’ Gisele says, catching up to us from behind and squeezing into the middle

It was usually the three of us, Liz, Geez and me. Geez was what we called her because Gisele was a lot harder to say… or whatever. The three of us couldn’t be more different from one another. Geez was the tallest, Liz was the shortest. Geez was a platinum blonde, I was a brunette and Liz was a red-head. Geez had blue eyes, I had light brown and Liz had green ones. There was nothing common, not even our taste in guys.

 ‘It with Ms. Javier right?’ Liz looked at Geez over her shoulder and answered.

‘Yea that’s what I heard.’ I joined in and then together we set off in search of Ms. Javier.

Ms. Javier was one of our swimming coaches. I think she was French or something, because she had an accent, the ‘breeteesh’ accent. But do the French have a British accent? We never bothered to ask her where she was from because she strictly only ever spoke about swimming. By saying ‘strictly’, I mean very strictly. I've never known her to have an actual conversation with her students or her colleagues unless she was talking about the length of a lifeguard’s chair or the width of a life jacket. Strange woman.

After walking around aimlessly for about fifteen minutes, we realized that our coaches were sitting back at the pool. We sprinted back to the benches where we were initially sitting and were handed over the lunch coupons after much criticism.

‘Eez on'y noon, for haevan’s zake! Ze next meel iz onlee by eight! Zey don’t geeve snacks here! ‘Ow are you going to zurvive til eight?’ Ms. Javier said through her thick accent, poking around her bag for coupons. We mumbled excuses as she finally handed out the coupons; one for each. We hurriedly thanked her and dashed off to find the dining hall.

We impatiently waited in the long queue imitating Ms. Javier.  If it was ‘on'y noon’ and there still was such a big queue then it would be even longer in no time, right?

We finally show our coupons to the man standing at the door. He tore one half of it and returned the other half to us. We grabbed a plate and squashed ourselves in the middle of the queue oblivious to the angry shouts that followed.

I studied my plate as I waited for my turn to come. It was light blue, had thick navy blue borders and small white flowers scattered over the middle of the plate. If I wasn’t absolutely starving I would have actually enjoyed the beauty of it.

I pushed the person in front of me edgily because I was getting a little too impatient and earned angry glares from him and everyone in front. Feeling guilty about my action I returned my gaze towards the plate and traced the flowers with my index finger.

When I was finally at the table, I ‘ooh’ed and ‘aah’ed at the spread. First there was a basket of fresh-looking croissants. Then there was one for sachets of butter and jam. I picked two croissants, one sachet butter, a fork and a knife. I surveyed the rest of the spread and thought I’d come back for a second helping rather than pile up my plate just now.

I strutted to the end of the room where Liz and Geez had already settled down cross-legged on the not-so-clean ground. Well, there was an obvious lack of chairs so I followed their lead and sat down on the floor.

We hungrily chewed on our food, luckily not forgetting our manners in a hurry to pile up more of the delicious food. I was right; the croissant was freshly baked and tasted perfectly delicious and buttery.

We went back to join the queue when two of the officials pulled us up and said ‘Sorry, only one helping.’

Down-hearted and sad, we eyed the rest of the food and pleaded ‘But- but we didn’t have taquitos’ I gestured, ‘or the banana bread, or the jelly!’

Banana bread was my favorite and I wasn’t going to walk away without having any. ‘I'm sorry, but one helping; that’s our rule. You cannot break it, neither can we. Off you go’ they shooed us.

We disappointedly shoved the plates loudly into the big bin allotted for used plates and stomped off angrily to wash our hands, trying to make as big a scene as possible. However no amount of stomping or stubbornness was going to get me any banana bread now.

‘I waaaaaannnttttt baaaannnaaaannaaa breeeeaaaadd!’ I whined as we exited the dining hall and sauntered back to the stands where our fellow teammates were killing time.

Before I could even begin to sit down, the other two had hogged the little space available.

‘Bitches’ I cursed and walked up to the first row of seats, the others giggling at my show of pretense anger. I step down and accidentally kick someone’s hand and quickly mumble an apology. The guy quickly withdrew his hand but didn’t bother to look up. I couldn’t see his face because it was covered by his cap.

 I grumpily plop down right in an empty space between two guys sitting far apart which obviously meant they don’t go to the same school and adjusted myself on the seat.

Even though it was terribly cold, the sun shone brightly. This meant I needed my jacket and my shades. I fumble in my pockets for my shades praying I had brought them along and finally draw them out of my sweater’s pocket. I also found the bar of snickers that I had bought early this morning and greedily stuff it in my mouth. I abandon the wrapper behind me while I chew on the bar hard.

‘Hey Mil’, Suzanne called, ‘did you really have to shove the entire thing down your bloody throat. Some of us are starving here.’

I snickered to myself (pardon the pun) and put on my serious face before turning and open my chocolate-filled mouth to speak ‘ Did you have to place your ass on practically  the entire-‘ and then I stop talking, my mouth still wide open because I was in the middle of talking.

The guy who I kicked before had raised his head to see who was talking and his eyes fell on me- talking while my mouth was full of chocolate and saliva.

That was not how I wanted anyone seeing me. I knew I wasn’t some gorgeous diva to look good even when my mouth was humiliatingly disgusting to look at. Hell, even Demi Moore wouldn’t be able to pull this look off.

My eyes drifted towards him in the middle of my sentence because I felt his gaze on me. And then my eyes were stuck there and my mouth was still completely open, with gooey chocolate in it. I was paralyzed because he had the most flawless face I had possibly seen.

And that’s the embarrassing story of how I first saw him.