Seeing in Color

Twenty-One

Magnus

BEEP!

BEEP!

BEEEEEEP!!!!

"Someone please shut the microwave up!" I heard my cousin yell from the living room. I put down my glass of apple juice and reached up to the microwave and pressed the open button. The smell of beef filled the air.

"Since when do you eat out?" I pulled the re-heated leftover hamburger from the microwave and nearly dropped the hot plate.

"Percy and I grabbed some lunch today," She yelled back. "Can you bring the plate here?"

I grabbed a clean plate from the drying rack by the sink and walked into the living room. Annabeth was on the couch, surrounded by textbooks, her MacBook Pro, an assortment of notebooks and pencils, and a basket of kittens. Her wild blonde hair was pulled back into a messy bun, and her eyes glazed over as she focused on her laptop screen.

"Thanks," She reached out without removing her eyes from the screen, and I placed the empty, wet plate in her hands. She simply placed it in her lap and grabbed for the non-existent hamburger on its surface. "HEY!" She smiled and tossed the plate at me. I caught it and laughed.

"I'll go get the real plate of food," I entered the kitchen again and grabbed her plate. It was still warm. "So, why were you and Percy out at lunch? A date?"

I saw her cheeks flush red as I handed her the hamburger.

"No, of course not. That would be....no you misunderstood... we were just..." She struggled to find the words, for once, and blushed deeper.

"Come one, Annie. Spill the tea." I pushed some of the textbooks aside and sat down beside her, propping my feet on the coffee table. "You're the only one of us that has a chance at a decent relationship with the person they like, and I'm bored."

"Ok fine, it might have been a date!" Annabeth threw her hands up, the hamburger still in them, and a piece of lettuce flew in the air. "But neither of us called it that. And it wasn't a fancy restaurant or anything, it was just Phil's."

"You don't have to go to a fancy restaurant to have a date. It can be anywhere, like let's say, Phil's."

She scoffed. "Percy and I just wanted to talk and both of us were hungry, so we went out to eat." Annabeth pulled a strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. Her cheeks were still red. "Then he told me he really missed me and that he hoped to hang out with me this weekend. And that he really liked me. More than a friend. And I told him I felt the same. We shared a milkshake, and he pecked me on the cheek when he dropped me back off at home."

"So, it was a date." I smiled and picked up a squirmy kitten from the basket.

"It was a date." She smiled. "I went on a date."

"And you said you have another this weekend?" The kitten mewed and licked my finger, blindly searching for its mother.

"I said we were going to hang out this weekend. I never said it was a date."

"So, it'll be your second date?"

She sighed again. "I've been looking everywhere online for any missing cats in the area and the only ones I have found don't match up with Riptide." She glanced up at the watchful eyes of the mama cat snoozing on the bookcase in the corner of the room.

Ah, changing the subject, are we?

Before I could speak those thoughts, there was a knock at the front door.