Burning Bridges

Burning Bridges-- Chapter 14

Her

Don't old people always tell you to not crack your knuckles, or your fingers will fall off? 

Well, I do that a lot. Especially when I get laptop fingers. (when you spend all day with a laptop, aka my life)

I also do it when I have to go on blind dates with guys that my best friend set me up with, and we both just sit at a table, silence consuming us. 

I had been writing almost every day for this past month. My life revolved around getting up, going to work, writing scripts about speaking caterpillars, writing not about speaking caterpillars in my lunch break, going home, ordering take out, and writing till I fell asleep, usually at 3 am. You could say that I had become a writing zombie. 

But that was what I was writing about. Zombies. It was amazing. It was fun. It was an adventure. I think that was the most fun I ever had in writing something. 

How did I end up here? 

Well, you know how food inspectors randomly turn up at restaurants to see how things are going? Well, the same thing happened with me, except a 5 feet 10 inch model walked in my apartment. 

"Hey, I thought you were in London." I said, trying to play it cool. I knew she didn't like it when I went on writing sprees and forgot about things like body hygeine. 

"My gosh, Mandy. What has been going on?" She said, walking in, almost stepping on a box of unfinished pizza on the floor. 

"Nothing much. Just work."  

"You need a break, girl. And you've come to the right person." 

"Technically, I didn't come to you..." I mumbled.

She gave me the eyes. 

I was in trouble. 

And that was how I ended up taking my first shower in 5 days, and applying make up properly after almost 2 months. She made me clean my whole apartment, and do my laundry. 

I would have written 4 more chapters in this time. But oh well, I got where she was coming from. I needed to get a grip on myself, or people would start running away from me. 

After my house was cleaned and done, she stated, "Also, your date arrives at 8 pm tonight."

"What?" I asked.

"Your date. I set you up with a guy I think you'd really hit it off with." She said, a glimpse of sneakiness creeping in.

"You know I don't do blind dates. Or dates in general, in fact." I said, raising my voice.

"Yeah, but I thought you'd really have fun. It's not fun to be alone all the time, you know." 

Ah, I beg to differ. 

I sighed. "Okay. I know you're just trying to help me out." I said, hugging her. "You owe me big time," I sneered into her ear. 

And that was the story of how I ended up sitting with this extremely bland guy whose name I had forgotten. The only upside of this place was the food. Damn, I loved myself some good Pad Thai. 

"So, what do you do for a living?" I asked him. 

"I'm a hedge fund manager, actually. You know there was this day when..." 

And that was when I zoned out.

I needed to get out of there. I didn't even care about how good the food was. I felt like I was being choked, like my time was being consumed by something so stupid.