Helplessly; j.g.

Three

"So, I was walking down... that street over there and I was talking to my mom on the phone and she was blabbering on and on about our new dog that we got last week and how he's like peed on the couches and everything like that when suddenly this lady came out of the alleyway with a shopping cart in front of her and she full-on rammed into me with it, for no reason whatsoever. Like, people in this city are so rude sometimes," Rome rambled on, flailing her hands around as she talked.

Jack just looked down at her in amazement, wondering at how someone could talk that much about thirty seconds that had happened in their lives just earlier that day.

"Rome, why are you telling me this?" Jack asked, his voice still quietly.

"Just because I thought I would," Rome shrugged as they approached the cake place Rome had been dreaming about all day. "Here we are." She presented the small store to Jack, smiling up at him.

"This place looks fairly okay," Jack said, following Rome inside.

"Fairly okay, Jack? Really?" Rome asked, her eyebrows raised.

Jack didn't reply, just looked around at the small cafe and felt the warmness of the whole cafe surrounding him.

"You like this place, don't you?" Rome asked, a smile playing on her face as she looked over at him.

"I sort of do, sure. Where are the workers?" Jack asked, looking around the store.

"Right here," Rome gestured to herself.

"What do you mean?" Jack confusedly asked, his eyebrows drawn together.

"I work here. On the weekends though. It's sort of my hobby and what I like to do when I don't have anything else to do," Rome listed, going behind the counter and looking at all the cakes behind the glass counter. "It calms me down from my usual hyper-work self."

"How many cakes are you getting there?" Jack asked, pointing at her as she loaded different slices of cake onto a tray to bring around the counter and place on a table.

"As many as I want, you got a problem with that?" Rome sassed jokingly, adding a giggle at the end of her sentence as she placed the tray onto a table.

"Nope, no problem here," Jack said, sitting down in one of the chairs as Rome sat down as well.

"Okay, this is my favorite cake of all time... triple chocolate cake," Rome said, taking the plate with the slice of cake off of the tray and handing it to Jack.

"Your favorite cake flavor is triple chocolate cake? Why not normal chocolate cake, or... um... or..." Jack searched for the words to say to Rome.

"Jack, just eat the cake, please," Rome pleaded, giving Jack a fork as well. Jack looked at her for a few seconds before putting his fork into the cake and scooping a piece of it out and putting it in his mouth, looking down at the ground the whole time. "Do you like it?"

"Yeah, it's pretty great," Jack said, nodding his head.

"Pretty great?" Rome exclaimed, falling back against her chairs' back. "Jack, you're killing me here. First, you say that the cafe is 'fairly okay', then you say that the cake is 'pretty great'. It's driving me insane, not knowing what's wrong with you. You aren't enjoying this as much as I thought you would."

Rome let her head drop behind her, some of her hair going past the seat of the chair as she let her head hang there. Jack looked at her, setting the plate down on the table and putting his elbows on top of his knees, leaning forward as he did.

"Rome," Jack said, reaching forward and shaking her knee a little. Rome's head slowly lifted up, making eye contact with Jack. "It's pretty great, in my terms, is different than what's pretty great in your terms. In my terms, it means... it's pretty damn good."

Rome cracked a smile at him and sat all the way up in her chair.

"Well, that's good," Rome said, pointing at him as she took the fork and had a piece of the cake.

"Aren't you forgetting a word in there?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows.

"What?" Rome asked, looking at him. Jack motioned to her and she sighed, rolling her eyes. "That's pretty... damn good."

"You said your first curse word, congratulations," Jack said, clapping. Rome looked at him, her eyebrows together.

"Why aren't you smiling?" Rome asked suddenly.

"What do you mean?" Jack replied, taking another bite of the cake.

"Well, you were just clapping and I thought you were having a little fun but you weren't even smiling. Now that I think about it, you have barely smiled this whole night," Rome pointed out, looking at Jack.

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word count {800}

we're getting to some deep stuff next chapter :)

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