Once Upon a Cliché

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 ~

          That girl had to be some kind of crazy to have me standing here at six in the morning.

          I tilted my head back, blinking up blearily at the two-story home that was none other than the Burns family residence. For some reason, I was expecting more. Or maybe less. Or maybe just different. It was such a typical suburban house, what with the quaint little front porch, cliché white picket fences, and perfectly trimmed grass on a green, green, green lawn. The exterior was a light blue, with white trim, white shutters, white two-car garage—to make this short, a lot of white, set off by a bunch of colorful assorted flowers planted around the sides. It looked bright. Happy. Too happy for six in the gosh. Dang. Morning.

          Maybe it was time to admit I wasn’t much of a morning person.

          My shoes crunched noisily against the stone walkway, and I trumped up the front steps, staring down at the doppelganger brown “welcome” mat I’d seen at least a dozen times. Now, the question: to ring, or not to ring? Or perhaps to knock? I poised myself, ready to make that final move—

          And nearly fell over when the door swung open. So much for keeping my calm. My sleep-riddled eyes suddenly tore themselves open as I found myself face-to-face with one of the most perfect male specimen to roam the earth.

          Okay. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. But not by far, considering the slight distraction of his shirtlessness. By now, I’d found that it only took one glance at tanned, toned abs to boggle my sleep- deprived mind.

          Why have I been running into so many relatively unclothed men lately?

          He looked just as tired as I was (correction: no longer was), since he rubbed his eyes with an exhausted sigh before squinting at me and asking, “Uh…who are you?”

          Just the sound of his voice made my insides turn to mush. The more the seconds that ticked by, the more his dark, mesmerizing eyes stared back into mine. And when I found myself incapable of coherent speech, he looked at me confusedly and asked, “Are you mute?”

          Teenage hooormones! I mentally ordered the voice in my head to shut up before I opened my mouth to say, “I—”

          “Emica!” I silently rejoiced when I saw Audrey behind him, hopping down the stairs two at a time. For some insane reason, she was already dressed and ready as if school started in five minutes, rather than one and a half hours. “There you are. Took you long enough.”

          I narrowed my eyes. “Audrey, you do know you called me at the crack of dawn, right? It was five! In the morning! I barely had ten minutes to get ready. And I walked here.”

          Her expression was so impassive and nonchalant I sort of wondered what I was getting myself into. “Yeah. And?”

          “That’s practically inhuman. Don’t you sleep? Five in the morning!”

          “Actually, it was five thirty,” she pointed out.

          I threw my hands up in surrender. “Whatever!” Miraculously forgetting all about Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome standing a meager three feet away, I stormed past him with a huff. The moment I stepped in, the house enveloped me in a warm, homey smell that, under normal conditions, would’ve swayed me into relaxation. But of course, I was not a happy camper at that particular time of day.

          Audrey sighed, leaning against the stair railing. “Would you forgive me if I told you it was for good reason?”

          My eyes were bordering on slits now. “It depends…”