4| Where There Is Hope

"Her favourite color are many, to be honest. Red, black, orange, yellow, white, purple, pink, sunny yellow, lemony yellow, sunflowery yellow, cauliflowery-yellow, candy-yellow-"

"Where the blue fits in there then?" He asked, with the hint of annoyance and worry, in his deep voice. 

I pretended to think like some good old scholar but ended up looking like some jarred granny instead. 

"She always has some shades of blue in her usual clothes, that's where I decided from that she must've this indescribably unknowingly obsession with the blue color and honestly, if you ask me, it's actually very sexy, in my opinion." I chirped at him when he stopped doing his hair and looked at me incredulously. 

"Seriously, Scarlett? That's your reason for making me wear blue on my first date-"

"I told you it's looking good. Sexy as hell! Kiara will never dream of another man again-"

"And you don't think it's your favorite color?"

I pretended to fake gasp, but seeing his serious expression, I sighed in defeat and crossed my arms across my breasts. 

"You worry too much, Heath. My sister is a fickle creature. And strangely gullible as well." I adjusted his handkerchief in his front pocket and pushed it slightly down before looking at him."Once I told her she was born out of bird shit as spores, she believed it almost readily as I fed her the lie. Sometimes I worry about my sister's sanity."

"She's cute in her own way."

"She takes after me."

"Yeah? Just as you take after your madness?"

"That was a nice attempt at making a complete fool out of yourself."

"Admit your defeat already, Scarlett." He chuckled. 

"Hah. You think I'm not like Kiara?"

He scoffed at my words. "You two are polar opposites, I'm telling you. You're the Mercury and she's the Neptune of the solar system. You two are light years apart."

"Hey! You don't think I'm cute then?" I asked him, pushing my cheeks up with both of my hands, tilting my head to the side and pouting at him. 

"Stop it. I'm getting nausea here."

Regaining my usual self, I rolled my eyes. "Of course, you're getting nauseous. Some galleons of beer you swallowed is gonna come out sooner or later. It'll only be a miracle if you don't end up spraying that half-digested coal of beer over your napkin."

"I already threw up twice when you were kicking your sister out of my apartment."

"That's for better. Now what else is left for you to be ready to depart, I wonder?" I put my forefinger on my lips, my eyes narrowing and searching for any thing I must have managed to miss. 

"Yes! Your cologne-"

"Check."

"Your wallet?"

"In my car. Check."

"Your other wallet?"

"Inside my back pocket. Check."

"Do you happen to have a third one for emergencies?"

"I'm not eloping with my lover, Scarlett."

"Yeah! Your wristwatch?"

He showed me his hand, and I nodded. "Check."

Looking at the clock, my eyes widened in alarm. 

Only half an hour left till his reserved date at some fancy restaurant I didn't have the brains to remember name of. 

"I think you're ready to go now. Hurry! It'll take you more than fifteen minutes to reach my home and pick Kiara. I wish she'd be ready by now, I swear sometimes she behaves like such a woman, in readying herself up for these dates."

Gently wrapping my arms around his own, I took him with me to the outside door where he once again checked at his reflection in the nearby kitchen rack mirror, in nervousness. 

"You look fine, Heath." I encouraged him. 

Nevertheless, he adjusted his tie again and I smiled at his immaturity. "Here." I shoved a bouquet of freshly plucked red roses on his hands, wrapped beautifuly in a thin cellophane, with its end tied neatly in another red ribbon knot. 

"Scarlett-" He looked at me, touched with my efforts. 

"Yeah, roses are Scarlett but these I didn't buy for myself." I raised his arms to his pectoral level, making him take the bouquet like a gentleman and dusted the stray imaginary leaves away from the roses. 

"Keep your chin high." I put my fingers under his jawline and raised his head a little to face forward. 

"Imagine you're in your conference room, meeting your new dealers and employees and all you have to do is smile and wave it all off. Okay?"

I gauged his reaction and he seemed to be following what I was trying to say. 

"Smile and wave it all off." I repeated. 

"Smile and wave it all off." He repeated with me and tried to smile his best way. 

Unfortunately, it didn't come as satisfactorily as it did when he was doing it naturally. "You've to smile, Heath. Not frown. It's looking as if someone stole your panties on your first day to school-"

"I don't wear panties-"

"Either way, you're doing it all wrong. Smile." I looked at him with determination and perseverance."Again."

And he did. But failed yet again. 

"Honestly, Heath. You really need to sweat it all out-"

"You know I've never been to a date before, Scarlett."

"_"

"I thought I should remind you this is my first time..." He trailed off, seeing the blank reaction on my face. 

"_"

"Okay, okay I'm smiling goddammit! See? I am smiling. Happy?"

"You're looking as if you just ate the lizard's fat ass in your dinner." I glanced at his too-much-of-haunting-pressure-in-my-panties smiling face again. "And her eggs too, maybe, perhaps."

He sighed in defeat. "I think it's gonna end in disaster-"

"Heath! My sister is just an ordinary girl. She might have been born out of bird 's shit but she's far from being some angel, you know. She's as normal as a day and a night and you can just talk to her, casually, rudely, ok now maybe rudely, but nicely, cooly. Like a person. A male." I quirked my head to make my point clear. 

"I will try to make the best out of it."

"You've to. If you didn't, forget about ever having a better girl in future, as your wife, or as your life partner. She's the best you can have, think of it like this okay? All you have to do is sit comfortably by her side and be the partner of her chirpy talks, maybe participate in one or two, if you feel comfortable with her, that is."

"Feel comfortable? But she's not you, Scarlett. How can I-"

I tried to ignore the sudden delicious skip of my heart at his words. "Would you rather have me as your date and dare I say, as your wife, then, Mr Evercrest?"

Immediately, I wanted to cover my mouth with my hands and take those words back in my mouth, but it was too late, I realised. 

Heath looked at me in daze, something suddenly twinkling in his eye, and I found I didn't want to know what it was. 

"I have this wonderful idea, Scarlett. Why don't you join me in my date? It'd be comfortable to have you around my side and you can direct me from there..." And he babbled the rest like a parrot while I mentally face-palmed myself thinking this guy was the same male who howls like a wolf in his company, ordering his employees like some Greek God, walking with such authority on the floor that it starts burning behind his next steps. 

There he would never speak a useless word unless someone died in front of him, or was on the verge of dying and here, he had fully transformed into a huge evolution of parrot desecedents. 

"I think you should go for now, Heath. Unless you want to end up picking up your first date late, that is."

Surprisingly, he stopped babbling and looked at me. He scrutinized my body posture for some time and I fidgeted under his gaze, uncomfortably, swallowing the bile in my throat. 

"You don't look much happy with my date, I see."

I mocked laugh at him. "I have perfectly fine relations with my sister, Heath. She can be salty as times but she is my sister-"

"I didn't mean with your sister, Scarlett." He took long strides and suddenly, he was standing in front of me. "I meant, with me going on a date."

I froze in my place. "Who says-"

"Hazel."

I looked at anywhere but him. "Are you not happy with me going on a date with your sister?"

"Who cares if I am happy or not?" As long as you are happy, I am happy, I thought to myself. 

"I do." He cupped my chin with his both hands. "If you're worried I'm not good enough for your sister, then you can always view your thoughts out aloud, Scarlett. I won't mind."

When I didn't say anything and looked down, he smiled and ruffled my hairs. "Before being my employee, you're a sister to someone. Just as before being your trusted employer, I'm the stranger going on a date with your sister."

"You're not a stranger." I mumbled under my breath. 

"Just as you're not just any employee."

I heard him whisper before he left my side and before I could properly have a last look at him, he was gone from my view, the faint sound of door clicking shut as the sound of his departure. 

I rushed to the windows, fumbling with the shutter to open them hurriedly and peeked my head outside to see him starting the car and driving in between the streets. I stood beside the window, looking at him, tears pooling at the corner of my eyes. 

Unconsciously, my fingers brushed against the spot on my neck, where he had kissed earlier, feeling the wetness of his lips still on my skin and I closed my eyes in overwhelming emotions. 

Turning my gaze back on the road, I sighed loudly, seeing the faint blur of his car visible from the crowd, eventually disappearing later on among them.