I stood outside the diner after my shift ended, waiting for Ethan to pick me up. I kept checking my phone to see if he had called or texted, but it was blank. He was already ten minutes late and I had no desire to wait for him any longer, so I started to walk home.
I was a little surprised he hadn't showed up. He had been blowing up my phone for the past few days trying to figure out when a good time for both of us was. Thursday night after my dinner shift was all we could work out, but apparently it was all talk as he couldn't even be bothered to show up. I tried to ignore the disappointment I felt.
I had walked a few stores past the diner when a black BMW screeched to a halt next to me. I was a little sketched until I saw Ethan get out of the car and run up to me. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry! Gray and I were filming, and then the camera battery died but we didn't know how much footage we got before it died-"
I cut him off, "Dude, chill." He was breathing kind of heavily and was running his hand through his hair constantly, causing his light waves to stand up messily. "Seriously, it's okay," I reassured him.
A huge smile broke out across his face as he visibly relaxed. "Oh cool, so I was thinking we could-"
I cut him off again, "I mean it's cool, no hard feelings or anything, but I'm gonna go home."
His face instantly dropped. "What? You can't go home." I raised a questioning eyebrow at him. "That's not what I mean, of course you can go home... it's your home. I just mean we're supposed to hang out... and I'm really sorry I was late," he nervously said.
"You should have at least texted me," I said, "I could have picked up an extra table or something if I knew you were gonna be late. Listen, I just don't think this is a good idea, Ethan. You seem to have to apologize to me a lot, and that's just not really what I'm looking for."
"My phones dead, I'm sorry I don't usually worry about charging it on filming days because were so busy... I promise I'll never apologize to you again" I stared at him in confusion, my face clearly saying 'what the fuck?'. "No! I mean I promise I won't do anything I have to apologize for. Of course I'll apologize if I need to, but like, I won't need to. Does that make sense?" His was talking so quickly and his words were kind of jumbled that I was starting to feel a little bad. Why was this so important to him? I was just some random sever at a diner he should have never even thought twice about.
"Yeah... So, maybe I'll see you around?" I started to walk away from him in the direction of my house. I didn't have a lot of free time between school and work, and I certainly wasn't going to waste it on a guy who couldn't be bothered to tell me he was going to be late. I could be using this valuable time to catch up on Stranger Things.
"Please?" He begged, "Come on, you've got to be hungry, at least let me buy you food?" I stopped walking and sighed. It was like he knew food was the way to my heart. I turned and looked at him with his pleading eyes, and his hair messed up from nervously running his hands through it, and the light scruff that was on his face, and I found I was running out of reasons to say no.
"Fine," I relented. When he smiled I had to actively work to keep a smile from forming on my face. He still had a lot of work to do to convince me he wasn't a douche.
He opened the passenger side door and waited until I was inside before closing the door and running around to his side. He started his car and began driving. I looked around at the fancy dark interior and the touch screen that was on the dashboard, of course he drove some boujee car like this. I had to refrain from rolling my eyes.
We made light small talk as he drove. He asked me about how my shift had gone and told me about how his filming day had gone, which was apparently a disaster from the very beginning. He made sure to over emphasize just how bad it was, and how all the events added up to him being late. It was kind of fun seeing him all twitchy and flustered as he talked to me. It was cute.
