Willa & the Extraordinary Internship

CH. 39

"Maryam!"

"Hmm?" With blurry eyes and slowly-fading, pleasant dreams of the men of The Vampire Diaries, Maryam yawned and tucked her cell phone under her ear. "Hello?" The end of the word was lost as she yawned again, still blinking the sleep away from her eyes. Curled up in bed, warm and snuggly, was the perfect way to spend a morning, especially when she didn't have anything pressing on her schedule for the day.

"Are you awake?" Without waiting for an answer, Cyn declared, "I'm coming over!"

That sent Maryam straight upright in bed. "What?" she said, all sleepiness gone in a tizzy. "What?" she repeated again, this time with more irritation. She'd been looking forward to a day spent catching up on all the shows she'd missed and ordering take-out. 

She sent a glance around her bedroom. Clothes on the floor. An open bottle of wine on her nightstand. That half-dried foundation stain that she'd found on her carpet before going to bed that she still hadn't cleaned. "You can't!" Maryam blurted out. "I'm still asleep! I mean, erm, I'm still in bed."

"It's important."

Maryam gritted her teeth. She could hear the pout in Cyn's voice and where before she may have just given in, she felt the rising urge to fight. It was a strange feeling. It rolled around in her stomach like food that didn't settle well and it made her heart pound. "I'm not free right now."

"You're not fr—" Cyn's voice rose. "But I'm already in my car!"

"So just turn off the engine," said Maryam, "and go back inside."

There was a silence at the other end that made Maryam sigh. "You're almost here, aren't you?"

Still, silence.

"Whatever. Bring me food and I might open the door," groused Maryam, still feeling cranky. The only thing that would alleviate her bad temper was the scent of fresh coffee beans and a sweet, sticky donut dripping in calories.

"Done!" Cyn chirped and a second later, hung up without saying goodbye.

If it was a movie, Maryam would have screamed into her pillow. But since she had under ten minutes to get up, get dressed, and get herself and her house presentable for visitors, she didn't even have the one minute it would take to screech her anger. With Olympic-fast movements, she scrambled to find stain remover, using one hand to scrub the carpet and the other to brush her teeth. By the time the stain had smeared around in an orange blob and began to crust around the edges, it was time to spit. She jogged for the bathroom, spent five minutes inside, and when she emerged, she was fresh faced, hair in a high ponytail, and dressed in terry shorts and a faded tank top.

When the doorbell rang, she'd just swept all the accumulated crap on her living room couch and coffee table into an Amazon delivery box that had been lying around in her dining room for weeks and shoved it into her hall closet. 

"Morning!" Cyn said in a bright tone the moment Maryam swung the door open. Without preamble, she slipped through the doorway, wafting the scent of donuts and coffee behind her as she went.

"That smells amazing," Maryam said with a moan, eying the donut. She closed the door behind her and joined Cyn at her dining table, where Cyn removed two cups of coffee from the recycled paper-mache coffee cup holder and presented one to Maryam with a flourish.

"Mhm," Cyn began to agree, then she paused, sniffing. "What's that smell?"

"What smell?" Maryam asked, already sinking her teeth into one of the Krispee Kreme donuts Cyn had brought.

"Chemically smell," said Cyn, wrinkling her nose. "Were you cleaning?"

"Oh, um," Maryam floundered, smiling guiltily around her donut, "yeah, I just wanted to spruce up the bathroom a little bit."