🥊 Hate or Fate 💕 {Enemies to Lovers}

.54.

"Wait, what am I supposed to tell, Gray?" Rebecca scrutinized my face.

I was huddled under a pile of blankets on her couch, and pretending to be sick. I even called out of work to make it more convincing (and because I wasn't going to get anything done in the office if I went in).

Instead, I spent the day wallowing over Gray and eating my emergency stash of Sour Patch Kids until it felt like the roof of my mouth had been replaced with sandpaper. Not exactly productive, or satisfying, but at least I could let the misery wash over me while I was alone.

As soon as Rebecca got home from work, the silence was shattered. 

"You should tell him that I think I have a fever, but your thermometer is broken," I informed her. Which technically, was true. I omitted the fact that I'd been the one to break it. "And I don't want to get other people sick, so, I'm not going to go to his dinner party."

"You don't look sick," she countered.

"Was that supposed to be a compliment?" I lifted the cold rag draped over part of my face to let her see me frown.

"I just thought you'd be disappointed that you're missing Gray's big party," she fussed with the blankets at my feet and made sure that they were covering my fuzzy socks. "Like, you could look at least a teensy bit upset."

"It's hard to look upset when you're on cold meds," I pushed the corners of my mouth into a goofy grin. "Listen, I'm very sad that I'm missing Gray's party, but tonight, I'm sleeping with my new boyfriend, Nyquil."

Rebecca looked bothered, but she didn't push it any further. Not even when Bart showed up to walk us to Gray's house. 

I put on a pretty darn good performance for him too, because he offered to pick up soup for me.

Once they were gone, I made myself an ooey-gooey grilled cheese sandwich and heated up a can of tomato soup to stuff myself silly and watch a movie when my phone started to ring. 

I checked the screen to see Gray's handsome face smiling back at me and threw the phone like it tried to bite me.

Seconds later, it buzzed with his voicemail, but I didn't bother to listen to it.

I tried to ignore his subsequent calls by stuffing my phone between the couch cushions where I could barely hear it. The stupid thing went off at least four more times. 

Almost twenty minutes later, a loud electronic bell rang out in Rebecca's apartment, scaring the living daylights out of me!

I sprung up off the couch only to tumble over into a tangled pile of fuzzy blankets and sweatpants that I couldn't free myself from. Sadly, no amount of kicking or thrashing (or swearing) seemed to help. 

I wriggled and fought until I managed to poke my head over the back of the couch like a shell-shocked prairie dog.

Disoriented and really freaked out, I looked around to find where that terrible sound had come from as I was more than a little concerned that it was going to happen again.

Seconds later, the awful metallic buzz sliced through the apartment once more to blister my brainstem. 

I ducked low and flailed my arms to defend myself. It was like the abrasive, high-pitched grind of a high school bell in a classic eighties movie.

"Isla!" A muffled voice floated from the direction of the street. "Isla!"

Ducking low, I crawled to the windows and poked my head up long enough to spot Gray's lissome frame on the sidewalk outside. I dropped below the frame to keep hidden from view.