Freefall ✓

12 | afterglow

Meet me where the sky meets the sea

—jennifer donelly

▬▬▬ ♫ : ▬▬▬

 Oceans - Hillsong United

▬▬▬ ✦ ▬▬▬

AUDREY

She took her classic dark beige trench coat off and stepped aside to hang it on the coat rack. 

"Hi Mom! I uh. . .this is Cameron," I began fossicking for words awkwardly. "We were just uh. . ."

"We're doing a school project—" Cameron stepped in shortly before I interrupted him, as unconfidently as myself, his hands cemented in his pockets.

"Yes, we had to do this school project together, and yeah," my phrases were coming out rather abruptly edged than coherent, for some reason. Oh Audrey, whatever it is that's wrong with you.

"Mm-hmm," my mom responded calmly and almost nonchalantly, "And is that project about investigating the effect of baking powder in dough?"

I blinked. "Uh, no—it's a French project. . ." When she turned around and I fathomed the hint of a smile tugging at her lips was when I realized that she wasn't being serious. Or was she? I often struggled to identify my mother's kind of witty remarks.

"Very well, you two get on with what you were doing then, I'm heading upstairs," her voice flowed tranquilly as she indeed turned to head upstairs. "Nice to meet you, Cameron," she added in an even milder tone.

"You too, Mrs. . .Olsen," he uttered timidly. I jerked my head at him sharply. How did he know my surname?!

"You can call me Nichole, Cameron," her soft-spoken words emptied onto the floor like powder and she was gone.

Both I and Cameron remained frozen for a couple of instants. Then I darted and squinted my eyes at Cameron harshly, "how is it that you know my surname? Stalker!"

He blinked a few times, as if recovering from the slightly startling experience and then simply shrugged, "lucky guess?"

"Oh no, I'm not having that."

He let out a harsh gust of air through his nose—something close to a chuckle. "Fine. I don't even remember, to be honest. Prolly saw it on some school test or whatever." Approaching the counter, he placed the pan back on its place. "Your mom is nice. She seemed very chill."

I snorted, with a half-shrug, as I went back to frying the pancakes. "Yeah, she mostly is. But dunno, aren't all moms?"

I asked it in a throwaway manner, thoughtlessly, but noticed Cameron turn rigid and tense beside me. He cleared his throat, "yeah, I guess," he muttered, his voice thin and sodden with some unfathomable emotion.

I was puzzled, to say the least. Did I do something wrong again? Was it something I said? 

Maybe that's why I was socially awkward—engaging in conversation with people I didn't know very well never tended to end successfully. I seemed to infect them with my own uncomfortability. Should I have just shut my problematic ass up?

Or should I have just stopped overthinking and brought my mind back to earth to focus on these pancakes, and the strange smell I was beginning to recognize—

"Shoot!" I burst out, reaching for the spatula and rescuing the almost burnt pancake. Phew. How could I have behaved so inattentively at the stove?