Operation Beautiful

Chapter 42: cmmffmsd

Chapter 42: cmmffmsd

“Good morning!” I call cheerily through the phone.

“Um...hi,” comes Emma’s groggy voice. “It’s...” I can hear her rub her face with a hand. “It’s early.”

“Correction!” I say. “It’s 10:30.”

“Like I said,” she yawns. “It’s early.”

“Yes, well, I thought I’d take you ice skating today.”

“Okay...why?”

“Because,” I say, feeling a bit of courage go through me. “Because I feel like it. I’ll pick you up at noon and we’ll have lunch over there, okay?”

It’s weird, but now that I’ve given myself permission to like Emmaleigh, I feel a lot more confident around her. I’m no longer stuck between the part of me that likes her and the part that reminds me of Haley and how liking a girl who likes someone else is a lost cause. I don’t care if I get hurt this time. I’m going to give it my best shot.

***

“Okay, where do you want to eat?” I ask Emma, opening the door as she gets into the cab.

“I don’t really care,” she says sullenly.

“Well, that sucks, because I don’t care either.” It’s an attempt to get her to talk to me.

“Oh.”

A failed attempt.

“Come on, Em. Talk to me.”

“It’s Emmaleigh,” she mutters under her breath, but I ignore it.

“Oh, you left your planner at our place. You want me to bring it over later?”

“No, it’s fine. Jess can bring it to me on Monday.”

“Okay. Tell me when you know what you want to eat, okay?” I sit back and try to relax. If she doesn’t want to break the ice, then it looks like I can’t do anything about it.

There’s a long silence. Finally, Emmaleigh scoots a little closer to me. “Um...can we get burgers, please?”

“Sure,” I say with a smile, telling the taxi driver where to go.

We reach the burger place and get inside.

“Can I have a salad instead of fries with the burger?” Emmaleigh asks the server.

“Ah. Me, too, please!” I say quickly. Emmaleigh looks at me.

"You don’t have to do that,” she whispers.

“I want to,” I say. “Why? I can’t like salad?” She just shrugs as the server walks away.

“Okay, so why ice skating?” she asks, once our burgers arrive.

“Well, I used to play hockey a lot in Belgium and so I thought it would be fun to go out on the ice again.”

Emmaleigh takes a bite out of her burger and looks at me. A sheepish blush sweeps over her cheeks. “I’ve, uh, I’ve never ice skated before.”

“That’s fine,” I say with a smile, my eyes not moving from her face. “I’ll teach you, it’s really easy.”

***

“I thought you said it would be easy!” Emmaleigh complains, her hand tightly grasping my arm. I can’t stop my laughter.

“Em, we’re not even on the ice yet!”