Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me

“All right, ALL RIGHT!” I burst, needing to stop hearing Becka ushering me to tell Jordan about it. I’d tried, but I didn’t think either of us were ready to have this conversation yet. We’d both been making efforts to at least talk to each other, but we were still extremely distant.

“Well do it!” she huffed.

“Do you have any idea how difficult this is? Or how pissed off he is probably going to be? Why don’t you just walk up to Sid and tell him you’ve been drooling over him for the past six months and that you’re all but in love with him!” I shot back, and she paled for a moment before turning a dark shade of red.

“That’s different,” she mumbled, but didn’t push it any further. It was the exact same thing, and I just had to figure out how to tell him without him hating me. At least on the ice we seemed to be able to ignore the awkward tension; we were doing better at knowing where each other was and not dropping passes like we had been a week ago. The past three of five games we’d played we’d won, and in a few days we faced Philadelphia again. I really wasn’t looking forward to playing that game, and while Dan knew and acknowledged that, we both knew it was better for me to suck it up and get over my fear of playing them than to be a healthy scratch. I’d missed too much playing time from being injured already, and I wanted to play every game possible before Christmas. That didn’t leave many, so as much as I didn’t like it I figured I’d end up playing against the Flyers.

“I’m gonna go to CEC,” I sighed moments later, grabbing my gym bag and my keys.

“Fine. You gonna be home for dinner?” she asked, pulling out her textbooks and getting ready to do some more homework.

“Yeah; I’ll grab some stuff and make dinner when I get back. I’ll probably just go run on the treadmill for a bit,” I answered before heading out the door. I’d been working out more and more lately, except I was doing more cardio and less weight training, and I’d noticed over the past couple of weeks that I needed to amp up the weight training; my hips and waist were looking more feminine as I worked on more toning than muscle-building. It would have been nice as long as I wasn’t worried about hiding that little fact.

I went and put in forty minutes on the treadmill before doing about twenty minutes of weights. Then I took a quick shower and changed, before heading down to Safeway to grab some groceries. I wasn’t sure what I felt like having for dinner, or what Becka wanted. I felt bad that we’d got into an argument, but we were both so tensed and freaking out; her about her marks for finals and me about the whole Jordan thing, that we’d been ready to snap for the past few weeks. And because we lived together we always ended up snapping on each other.

‘What do you want for supper?’ I decided to text her as I walked across the parking lot, unsure of what to do.

‘Doesn’t matter – whatever you want.’ She replied immediately. I let out a sigh, wondering what to do now that I didn’t have anything to go off of. I decided I’d wander up and down the aisles until I thought of something that sounded tasty. I walked down one aisle and saw jumbo pasta shells, and decided that stuffed pasta and chicken sounded like a good meal plan. I put the box of shells in my basket, and then two cans of mushroom soup, a package of cream cheese, some spinach, mushrooms and some grated cheese. I decided on chicken breasts and then went back to try and find another can of soup to put a mushroom sauce over the chicken as well. On my way to the checkout I walked past the frozen aisle, and saw one of those little boxed cheesecakes, and couldn’t resist. Before I could talk myself out of it I had one f the red velvet cheesecakes in my basket and I was in line. There was ice cream in the freezer at home, but this was a treat I hadn’t had since trying out for Brown.

When I got back into the apartment I immediately started getting dinner ready, not wanting to interrupt Becka’s studying; she had her iPod on and was right into it. I cooked the pasta shells while I mixed up the filling, and put the chicken breasts in a pan, covering them in the mushroom sauce and putting them in the oven. While the pasta was cooling I finished up the stuffing, cutting up the mushrooms and the spinach with the cream cheese and mixing in some of the grated cheese. As soon as I had them all filled up I covered them in the rest of the mushroom sauce and put them in the oven next to the chicken, sprinkling some of the cheese over the chicken. I left the cheesecake on the cupboard so it would be room temperature by the time we’d want to eat it. By the time the smell had filled our apartment both of our stomachs were audibly grumbling, and Becka looked shocked at what I’d made for supper.

“Wow, Cam, we could’ve just like ordered pizza or something; this looks like a lot of work,”

“Nah, it’s not that bad, honest,” I shrugged. “Plus, I really wanted to say sorry for blowing up on you like that. You know I’m just stressed out,”

“I know, I wanted to say sorry too; I’ve been flipping out about finals and I’m sorry I keep nagging you, I know it can’t be easy,” she reciprocated and after a moment we flung ourselves at each other for a hug.

“So, I’ll set the table, and don’t you dare think you’re doing dishes tonight after all of this,” she said, getting plates out of the cupboard.

“Fine, fine. And I brought dessert,” I grinned, pointing to the cheesecake. Becka let out an excited squeal before hugging me again.

“This looks soo good! Oh, we should open that bottle of wine Sullivan’s gave us for a housewarming gift; that would go great with this!”

“Yeah; go for it,” I nodded. We’d just sat down to eat when there was a knock at the door. I got up and answered, surprised to see Jordan there.