The Thing About Flip Flops

Chapter Six: You Sound Like A Weird Bug

Hey, Audrey.

As soon as I get the text, I leap up from where I'm lying on my bed, holding my phone with my arms outstretched above me. The message is from Chris so I smile at my phone, opening our conversation on WhatsApp.

Hi! I text back. What's up?

There's silence on the other end and so I go downstairs to get food.

The house is empty because it's a Sunday morning and my dad is getting groceries and my older sister Genevieve is at her college, studying hard and probably partying harder. I miss her to death and mentally remind myself to call her soon.

Well, I guess Henry is home but he's in his bedroom playing video games, I can hear the loud noises and the sound of gunshots from a screen.

I make a makeshift quesadilla in the microwave using tortillas, cheese, leftover grilled chicken and some avocado chunks that were randomly in the fridge. It's not the best thing I've ever eaten, but I need food and I'm too lazy to wait for my dad to come home with the groceries, so I have to make do with what's here.

When I come back up to my room, having finished my snack and taken a Dr. Pepper from the fridge, Chris has texted me back.

Nothing much. You?

Wow, I have never had such an interesting and thought-provoking conversation. I suppose things are just a tiny bit awkward since we did break up after all. I'm determined to fix that at some point, because now things are weird between us.

Nothing much. I made a quesadilla.

Oh. What's that?

Um. Excuse me? I take a note out of a certain annoying teacher's book and mimic the lady who scolded my friends and I for getting Taco Bell.

Who do you think you are and why do you think you're too good for a quesadilla?

It sounds like some kind of weird bug.

Okay. One, no, it's not, it's a food, and two, YOU sound like a weird bug.

I can visualize Chris laughing over the phone, running a hand through his brown hair with his blue eyes sparkling in amusement, and a rush of tenderness passes through my chest. I hadn't let myself think it over the past week, but I really missed him while we weren't seeing each other, even though it was only a week.

Chris is a really great guy, and I genuinely like him a lot. He's funny and not to mention cute, which are both huge pluses in my book if I'm being honest, and he always cheers me up when I'm feeling upset.

Going back to where we were right before I broke up with him is harder than I expected, because it's still this elephant in the room. But I'd be lying if I said I'm not glad to have him back.

So I call him up, hearing him chuckle when he says, "Hey Aud."

The conversation continues from there, and luckily we move past the awkward formality of the whole situation. Maybe in a few weeks we will have completely forgotten the breakup and it will be like it never even happened at all. I mean every couple fights sometimes, right?

We've also known each other casually for years, not necessarily friends but he was in a lot of my classes.

No friend could ever top what Henry, Jenna, and Natalia are to me, but Chris seems like someone they would all get along with quite well. They don't know him too well despite being in many classes with him for years, but that's just because he mostly hangs out with the guys on the basketball team.