I Will Make You Fall In Love

chapter-20

Penelope is getting ready to go on her morning jog, when she hears her phone chime. She sets down her toothbrush and grabs her phone off the table.

One new message from: Josie

Penelope takes her phone into the bathroom, and reads the text while she continues brushing her teeth.

J: Are you still going jogging today?

P: Yes.

J: Same route as usual?

P: Yes...why?

J: No reason. Have a nice time :)

Penelope looks at her phone suspiciously for a few moments before putting in into her pocket. After she's finished getting ready, she sets out for jogging.

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Lizzie stumbled down the stairs, rebounded gently off the wall and turned left into the kitchen. Hope, watching with amusement from her perch at the kitchen island, didn't think Lizzie opened her eyes once the whole time.

"Coffee," Lizzie mumbled, making a bee line for the coffee pot that had performed heroic, near-permanent duty on their kitchen counter for the last three years. "Coffee, coffee, coffee."

"Good morning to you, too, Liz," Hope said, and flicked to the next page in the Sun Times, waiting for the moment of realisation.

"Coffee, coffee." Lizzie opend the pot into the jumbo-sized mug that she kept for lazzy mornings like this one. It took her at least ten whole seconds to realise that no matter what angle she held the pot at, no Kona would come forth. "Coffee?" She asked, sounding so bewildered that Hope bit back a laugh out of pity.

"We're all out," Hope explained. "No coffee," she elaborated, when it seemed like that was too complicated a message for Lizzie to understand with a brain that had been hijacked with the last night interrogation and some other activities.

"Coffee," Lizzie said in miserable acknowledgment, shoulders slumping and mug dangling from suddenly limp fingers. She was a picture of dejection, standing there in the middle of the kitchen in her bare feet, striped pyjama bottoms hanging from her hips and her hair tangled.

“Liz, I'm sure you can live one day without coffee”Josie says tieing her shoe laces.

“NO. No, I can't you better than anyone else know that how I become without coffee”

"Fine." Josie said, standing and picking up her wallet.

"I'm going to run down to Starbucks and get you the biggest cup of the darkest roast they have, and I'll be right back, okay?"

"Coffee," Lizzie said, perking up, and the smile on her face was the broad, brilliant one that always made Hope's toes curl, just a little.

“Wait a second. Where do you think you are going? This early in the morning?” Lizzie asks coming to her senses.

“Umm. Nowhere. Just as I said Starbucks. Yeah Starbucks. Okay. Bye.” Josie says running out.

“ what's up with her? ” Hope asks

Lizzie crossed the room in two big strides, picked Hope up and kissed her, firm and hot and loving, and Hope reached out blindly and tossed newspaper in the vague direction of the counter—the coffee could wait for a while.