Bittersweet Expectations (Hate at First Flight #0.5)

16. Dying a Virgin

As soon as my eyes took in the sight of a drenched Ethan Clarke, I saw my life flash before my eyes.

The numbers of things that I've yet to accomplish seemingly came to mind like how I had yet to get my drivers license, how I hadn't gone to the Grand Canyon yet or how I had a lot of things that I still wanted to say to Finn about how much of a dirtbag he was.

Ethan Clarke had his eyes closed tightly as the water covered most of his body, his hair soaked through and his suit hugged his body more than it did before.

Seconds trickled by as we stood there on the footpath to Building X, dwelling in silence that felt stifling. Slowly, Ethan Clarke reached up and wiped the water from his face, and then after a long drawn-out sigh, he opened his eyes.

As soon as our eyes met, one thought rang clear in my mind.

I'm going to die a virgin.

At the most inopportune time possible, I felt my face burn and redden up at the thought that had crossed my mind.

That quickly faded as Ethan's eyes darkened into a glare.

I held out my hands in surrender, forgetting momentarily that the waterblaster gun was still in my hands. His eyes turned to the gun and narrowed.

"Sorry," I managed out as I turned it away from him and accidentally pressed the trigger, shooting myself in the arm.

I bit my lip as the pain burned in my arm from the jet of high pressure water. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply to calm myself after I dropped the gun.

After a couple of seconds of pushing through the pain, I opened my eyes, anticipating the consequences of what I did.

Even though it was unintentional, I knew Ethan Clarke would most likely snap at me for ruining his expensive, custom-made suit. I already had a thousands of scenarios on my mind as to how this would play out.

Only none of them happened.

Ethan Clarke was gone by the time I opened my eyes.

I looked around hastily for him but came up empty.

When did he leave? How was he so fast and so quiet?

I rubbed my sore arm as I released a sigh in relief. At the very least he had disappeared without grilling into me how awful and unskilled I was at my job. I didn't have the patience nor the energy to have a war of words with him.

After taking a deep breath, I bent down and picked up the waterblaster gun. Even though I was finished with the footpath, I turned it on again and started again with the last section.

Half of it was because I didn't want Ethan Clarke to pick out on how I didn't do a good job and half of it was because I didn't want to finish up and have to walk into Building X, knowing he was in there, most probably waiting for him.

I looked at my watch and cast a quick look towards the house.

Why was he back early? He wasn't due back for another hour.

Another reason why I didn't want to head into the house just yet would be because he would surely point out that I had still not finished with the lost he had left behind.

I looked over at the lawn that I still had to mow. It looked like it wasn't due for another mowing session for a couple more weeks, but I knew that Ethan Clarke would've picked up on it.

After a couple more minutes of making sure that I had gotten every single part of the footpath, I packed up and headed to the storage room.

Thankfully, Ethan Clarke was nowhere in sight when I got there and left with the lawnmower in tow.