Losing Your Cookies IV
“Well I hope she puts on ten pounds because of it,” Andi said.
“And anger the bear with a sore ass that much further?” Carl replied.
Andi winced sideways and shook her head in her usual I-suppose-not routine. Her head tilted back the other way and she stared at him with that look that had captured his soul. The cookies had a hold of him, true enough, but for her, Carl would forego them until the end of days.
“How do you convey that out loud though?” he said, out loud.
“What?” Andi asked, “Convey what?”
Carl began to flush, and he reverted to his insanity defense with a chuckle. “Heh, I was just talking to the cookies.”
Andi’s eyes scrutinized him, sensing the layer of deception wrapped around the white elephant in the room. Then the thousand yard stare returned, and the distance. She could feel it expanding between them and an ache chased through her.
“What are you hiding?” she asked.
A crossroads. A chance. And he turned down the chicken shit path once more. “Fatigue?” he said, “Hunger? I don’t know. I think I’m half out of my mind at present.”
“Then why haven’t you given it up?”
Carl shrugged, his dreams and the cookies dancing in his mind. “I guess I have something to prove.”