“Ok. Love you too.” I glanced over at Karl to see if I was convincing enough, but it was hard to tell. I clutched my phone in my hand, wanting to call AJ back and explain myself, but I needed privacy. I waited until about ten minutes into the movie and excused myself to go sit by the fountain in the courtyard.
“The sound of the running water behind me helped calm my nerves a little. After taking a few deep breaths, I dialed. No answer. Was he really ignoring my calls? He never gets this upset with me…..over anything. If he wouldn’t hear me out, then I’d text.
“Would you please call me back so we can talk?”
He never responded. I sat there for at least fifteen minutes waiting for a message that never came. My frustration mounted because it wasn’t like he was just a few miles away and I’d get to see him face to face and tell him what I needed to say. There were hundreds of miles between us, and now I couldn’t even communicate with him by phone.
I could see how this situation would make him uncomfortable, but it wasn’t like him to be so quick to react. Something had to have already happened that put him on edge and my call just set him off. We’d had our share of misunderstandings and setbacks but I couldn’t help but to feel like he was overreacting. It wasn’t like I’d told him that Terrell and I were watching movies alone all cuddled up and stuff. There were six other people in the room; one of which was his own best friend who would have told him if Terrell was to even breathe on me wrong. Maybe he just needed a little time to cool down and he’d call me later.
When I went back up to my room and settled on my bed, they weren’t that far into the movie yet.
“What is she doing? Didn’t she see him walk past the door?” Nina yelled in what sounded like a cross between English and her native language.
While the rest of us tried to ignore the mangled dialect, Terrell looked at her, confused. “What the heck is that gibberish you just said?”
Everyone burst out laughing except for Nina, who folded her arms and glared at him. “What? I’m just sayin’. You should try to ‘speaka-da-English’ so everyone can understand you,” Terrell said holding back a laugh. He nudged Nina playfully and she started smiling once she realized that he only was joking.
“Whatever. I speak perfect English,” she replied with a well-timed eye roll.
“Yeah, ok.” Terrell continued to laugh.
Andrea was more into the film than the rest of us. She jumped ten seconds before anyone else at every scary part. She was hugging one of my pillows and wringing her hands together tightly, anticipating the next scene. Terrell, being the jokester that he is, used it to his advantage that he’d already seen the movie and timed his next stunt perfectly. As soon as the killer emerged from the shadows, he yelled at the top of his lungs causing all of us to gasp and Andrea knocked her pop over.
“You are so stupid! Why’d you do that?” She was laughing, so he apparently hadn’t upset her. She pushed her blanket out of the way before it got wet and Deanna grabbed a towel to clean up the mess.
“Terrell, I’m gonna make you go home. You’re getting on everybody’s nerve, I stated jokingly. He put his hands up in surrender and pretended to turn around to be on his best behavior, but it was sure to be a temporary fix.
Even with all the fun we had that night, I still couldn’t stop thinking about AJ. He hadn’t called back or even texted. When the movie ended, I helped everyone clean up and said goodnight. Before she left, Andrea suggested that we get together again, in their room next week. After everyone left, I continued to wait, assuming that AJ would call eventually once he cooled off. But that wasn’t the case.
Thursday morning I tried him again before leaving out for class, but got his voicemail. It didn’t seem fair that he wasn’t giving me a chance to plead my case. But there was nothing for me to do, but suck it up and deal with it.
Terrell was waiting in the hall for me. I didn’t return his smile, but it wasn’t because he was bothering me this time. To let him know that my bad mood wasn’t on account of him, I made sure to speak to him first.
“Hey.”