Bittersweet Moments

13 | Rainbow Macaroons

13 | Rainbow Macaroons

If life had a remote, weekends would be on fast forward and weekdays on slow motion.

School took up yet again another meaningless seven hours, and all that time could have been used for binge-eating and a Supernatural marathon. But I went through the torturous classes anyways, with Mitch the only thing restraining me from leaping out the window and bidding my schoolmates goodbye forever. I did have urges sometimes to ring the fire alarm or randomly pass out in the middle of the day.

Mitch now was off to her Grandma duties and once I had gotten home, I had searched the shop for my other friend. Seeing he wasn't around, I had crouched down low, waddled towards the counter, and grabbed two boxes of macaroons – one with coconut shavings and one in assorted color. Then, I had lugged both boxes with me out the shop before Mom could warn me they were for a customer and before the concerned people can report a missing penguin.

A missing obese penguin.

As soon as I got outside, I was not completely safe yet. I stood up and brisk walked to the nearest bus stop, in case Melanie or Mom decided to follow me out the shop to look after these macaroons. On the upside, nobody had been following me, but on the downside, I was sweating like crazy, even panting a little.

I sat myself down on the bus, and then texted Mitch that mini operation "Penguins and Macaroons" was a success. I even included a gross selfie of my exhausted face, with the two boxes of gorgeous macaroons. She texted back immediately, telling me that she understood the penguin face but asking what the macaroons were for.

One for a cute puppy and one to the dragon's lair, I replied to her inexplicably.

After a tiny moment, she sent me her situation: a sleeping grandma in the background and Mitch herself posing with a soda can's pop tab, yet to be added to her collection.

The whole bus ride involved Mitch and I texting each other back and forth, and the overall temptation not to reach into the box of macaroons. Once I reached my stop, I told Mitch that we should be raiding Mrs. Kingsley's desk for contorted stapler bullets tomorrow. That woman, our music teacher, should be fifty percent plastic, thirty percent potassium with all the bananas she ate and twenty percent squirrel because she was obsessed with them. Anyway, Mitch said yes and I skipped out of the bus, two boxes of macaroons in my hands.

And a phone jiggling in my bra.

The apartment building in front of me used to house Sweet Moments, before we had moved to another place to accommodate more people. Lawrence lived and still lived in the rooms upstairs, and that was the main reason why we had met. He frequented the shop, and gradually he became more than just a regular at the shop for me. Even when we changed location, he was still there to buy desserts from us.

A memorized pattern from my childhood, I climbed up the staircase beside the floral shop which replaced Sweet Moments. I had to be grateful that Lawrence only lived in the second floor, or else my sweat would be flooding the boxes because of the lack of elevators.

I mentally counted where his door was until I stumbled upon it. I rapped my knuckles on it, but soon after minutes and minutes of waiting, I decided to ram my shoulder on the hard surface repeatedly just in case he was taking an afternoon nap. After the fifth bang or so, an accented voice a floor above this one yelled at me to rob the apartment much quieter.

I huffed impatiently. I had two macaroon boxes in my hands and I became even more conflicted when my phone vibrated against my boob. There was no way I was putting down one box on the dirty floor just to answer it, so I pressed my chest up against the door, hoping my boob could press decline on it.