Joey’s mom answered the phone. When I inquired about Joey, she said he had just left. I hung up the phone. He JUST left? What? At this rate, he might make it to my house by 7:00. Then it hit me. He must have thought I said 7:00. Ugh.
As I reheated our no longer quite as appetizing looking food, I tried to forgive Joey for getting the time messed up. Or maybe forgive myself for not clearly telling him the time, although I was sure I told him 6:00. I determined not to tell him that he was an hour late. I didn’t want to spoil the evening by making him feel guilty. So when he arrived at the door, I met him with a smile, promptly blindfolded him and led him to our private Italian bistro waiting in the backyard.
Dinner was nice. It turned out to be a super filling and heavy meal, so we ate slowly. About halfway through the meal, Joey said, “Kelly, I have a confession to make. I had a really big dinner just before I came over. I didn’t know we would be eating tonight. This is really good food, but I am stuffed. I can’t eat another bite.”
Sigh. This evening was nothing like I had planned. I might as well tell him, I thought.
“Well, I guess that would explain why you were an hour late.” I told him how I had been waiting at the front window for nearly an hour before I called his house and found out he just left. I told him how many times I had to re-heat the food and re-light the candles. I apologized for obviously not being clear about the time or the fact that we would be eating. He apologized for being late and too full to enjoy my yummy meal.
Then we decided the shed was really hot with no air conditioning and very little breeze coming from the windows so we sat outside the shed for a while. So much for that birthday idea. Flop.
All that said, though, it wasn’t entirely a flop. Once we were out of the stuffy hot shed and past the frustration over our miscommunication about the evening, we were able to laugh about it. We sat outside and talked for a while as the sun began to set.
It was crazy how warm and stagnant the air was that evening. Just one night prior, we were enjoying the freezing cold air of our local indoor ice skating rink with a bunch of our friends from school. The thought of that evening reminded me that I wanted to ask Joey something.
“Hey, why did we leave the skating rink early last night? Were you upset about something?”
Turns out, Joey was livid. Travis, one of the guys in our group of friends, said something to Joey that upset him. "I almost punched Travis because of it," he said.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“ He wanted to know if you were a good kisser.”
Oh. Oh dear.
