Yes, I Am

Chapter Five.

"Shut up!" I chided Austin, whipping a cloth in front on his face threateningly. We were washing the dishes and he made even that little task unbearable.

"Give me one good reason and I will," he replied, only a slightly raised eyebrow as a reaction to my dangerous cloth whip.

"Here's one- I don't want to," I said.

"Why not?"

We kept having the same conversation over and over again. You would think he would have given up by now, but no, we kept circling around like two equally competent gorillas in a fighting tank, and it wasn't a fight I needed to have early in the morning. Or ever.

"You promised you won't pester me to go to any other party after the one at our place," I reminded him, picking up a plate from the huge stack with a huff. The guy's skills in washing dishes with a high speed were exemplary.

"I promised I won't if you don't enjoy yourself and last I remember, you found the love of your life in that very party," he said smugly, flicking a soap bubble on my nose. "I reserve the right to pester."

"He's not the love of my-" I was saved from the conversation by a doorbell. I practically ran to open the door, partly to escape Austin and partly because I knew it was Caleb. I almost hugged him in relief but then I remembered Austin could see us and just like that, my defense mechanisms were up again. I guess Caleb saw it in the way I started forward and then jerked to a stop but he didn't say anything.

"No hanky panky under my roof, young man! Now get over here and wash the dishes," shouted Austin from the kitchen.

"Yeah, I'm killing him in his sleep tonight. Go say goodbye to him," I said.

Caleb laughed at that, shattering the awkward moment. Damn, the things his laugh could do.

"Hey, Caleb, are you going to the New Year's beach party tonight?" asked Austin when we entered the kitchen. He was wiping his hands on a towel, already done with the washing. Now only my part was left. Insert sigh.

"Of course. Who isn't?" chuckled Caleb.

Austin pouted like a child and nodded towards me like he was complaining to father like an annoying tattletale. "I'm one of the promoters and I can't get my best friend to go."

"He's going," Caleb replied simply. He said it so casually, searching for something in his pocket while he threw out that statement like it was the eleventh commandment, not even bothering to look my way.

"Say what?" I said dubiously.

He raised an impassive eyebrow at me, his expression telling me I wasn't done making up for ignoring him for two weeks and it would be better if I didn't screw up this chance. I slumped my shoulders in defeat. "Whatever," I muttered.

"You have actual magic." Austin's eyes widened comically. His head whipped from Caleb to me and back to him a couple of times for a dramatic effect. "You've accomplished in seconds what I haven't been able to in years. How?"

Caleb grinned cheekily. "Alohomora, bitches."

"You do know that's the spell for opening locks, right?" I pulled out a chair near the kitchen landing for him to sit on, mostly out of habit. For a few seconds, I was kind of confused at why Austin was giving me a smug/amused/surprised look.

"Nobody cares, dork," said Austin.

"If you can spell 'nobody', I'll give ten points to Slytherin," I snapped. It was our running joke. He treated me like a know-it-all and I treated him like an arrogant illiterate.

"By the way," said Caleb, "why did the match on Monday get canceled?"

"One of our defenders got injured," said Austin apologetically and with that, they launched into a detailed dialogue about soccer that I neither understood nor cared about. Both of them were into the soccer team of their own colleges and often had matches together, the details of which I was forced to sit through.