Pulling Her HEARTSTRINGS Episode 30

A story written by HAPPY

IF YOU MISS ANY EPISODE CLICK HERE

♠Oscar♥
.
I know I have moodswings most time especially when I’m faced with the idea of ‘being Prince’ or thoughts about my mom. Moments like those could have me locked up in my room for a whole day without speaking to anyone, or going around with a scowl on my face causing people to step back and not speak to me.
But this Umbria, one moment she’s her normal self; playful and sarcastic and toughgurl. The next moment she’s all moody and sad like she’ll cry with just the slightest push. And other times she’d squeeze up her face and refuse to talk to me.
Like now.
Girls!
Most times I end relationships I have because of this stuff, I don’t like the emotional baggage. But this one just have me wanting to tease the hell out of her until she smiles again.
I leaned close to Diana and whispered conspiratorially, “What’s up with Miss Lee?” The whisper was loud enough for her to hear. Diana, getting the game, replied, “Maybe she’s mourning someone or you’ve got an egg cracked on your face,” she loud-whispered back.
“Egg on my face! I don’t think so, I think it’s because I’m too handsome. She fears that looking at me would have her drooling so she turned away. You know. . .effective charm.”
“Yeah!” Diana concurred and giggled.
I knew that would get to her.
And it did.
She turned back to face us with light speed that I’m surprised she didn’t suffer a whiplash.
“In your dreams man! You keep pumping up your ego, Telling yourself how handsome y’are, I’m outta here!” she made to get up. I stopped her by holding her wrist and almost released immediately by the shock I felt.
“Hey, hey why the rush?”
Diana, still giggling, said, “She’s got something burning at home.”
“Exactly, thank you princess,” she smiled and tried to move. My grip was strong.
“Oscar let me go right now, I don’t want to see your face.”
“You’re kidding, we just established how handsome I am, who wouldn’t want to see this face,” I grinned. She almost laughed, but stopped.
OK, she really is angry with me.
Funny enough, I have no idea why.
“I wouldn’t that’s for sure. Let go of me.”
“Not until you tell me why you’re angry with me.” My tone changed serious, and she noticed because looked at me.
“Uh oh…bad call,” Diana muttered and rolled herself away.
Umbria looked down.
When she looked up, her eyes were shimmering. And oh god! were those tears pooling at the brims, threatening to spill?
Jesus, what the hell could make her want to cry!?
“Brya are you okay? Who hurt you?” I asked using the nickname I thought up for her.
.
♠Umbrya♥
.
Who hurt me, he asked.
He asked it in a caring way, using a part of my name I’ve never been called by before making the hurt more painful.
It’s you, don’t you see?
It’s you who got so charming and caring, noticing every little thing about me. That I’m hungry, and you’d feed me. That I’m tired, and you’d drive me to and from school, and relieve me of most of my work. That I haven’t slept and you’d ask why. That I wanted to skip classes, and took me to the music studio to play for me. Without so much of an effort you got me falling for you. I’m hurt when you flirt with other girls mostly in my presence. And then I think it’s all a game for you.
I rolled my eyes upwards to prevent stupid tears from spilling, then returned my gaze to his worried? face.
“I’m just… feeling emotional ya know? It’s uhm, a phase in my life. I’ll get over it,” I said with a grin, and then silently added, “I’ll get over you.”
He looked relieved, then chuckled. “You know for a second there I was scared. Thought you were gonna cry, and I don’t know what to do with crying girls,” he shuddered in mock fear. He was still gripping my wrist.
Oh…..so he’s got ‘crying-girl-phobia’?
Heh heh heh😈
I sniffle, then batted my lashes quickly and began whimpering.
“Ho no, you’re not crying are you!”
I continued whimpering until my act became a full blown cry with the hiccups to accompany it.
“Damn Brya damn, st—stop crying… uhm, you look ridiculous when you cry…”
I stared at him, then wailed louder.
“Aw come on! I can’t do this, you gotta stop! Or wait, want me to sing you a lullaby?”
He looked visibly panicked, and his palms gripping me were sweaty.
Seriously, boys are so weird with comforting.
Pitying him, I burst out into laughter and wiped the fake tears away.
“Gosh, you should have seen your face!” I said in between laughs.
He frowned. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Oh yeah, you should’ve seen it from my end!” I continued laughing, holding my stomach.
When I had enough of the laugh which was quite good in making me forget about how heartbroken I felt earlier on, I looked up to see him staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You have a nice laugh. It’s actually good to hear you laugh. Recently you’ve been moody more often than not.”
He noticed huh?
Sneakily I removed my hand from his weak grip. Maybe he noticed but pretended not to.
“So how was the meeting yesterday,” I changed the topic.
Again, he noticed but pretended not to.
” Boring. More of those and I might just die. I don’t want to talk about it yet. Let’s do something fun.”
“Fun?” I repeated dumbly. The idea of doing something that involved closeness and body contact…. well.
“Yeah, fun. Like singalongs or…” he trailed off leaving room for me to suggest.
I shrugged. “We could bake. I want to teach you,” I replied ignoring my mind’s screams “Big fool!”
He laughed as we entered the kitchen with Diana.
🍰 🍰 🍰
“Okay, for our mixing bowl… voilà!” I held up a bowl. Oscar thumb upped while Diana clapped gleefully.
“Good, our ingredients are lined up here….flour, eggs, butter, cream and sugar. Basics guys, basics. Uhm, four cups of flour. Measure Os.”
He lifted the packet and tried to t
pour the whole lot into the bowl.
Diana screamed.
I snatched it from him and slapped his hand. The kitchen staff laughed and pretended to go back to their work.
“Hey!” he protested, nursing his hand.
“Four cups! This is the cup you use!” I scooped four cups into the bowl. I didn’t notice him dip both hands into the bowl. When I looked up, he used both hands to cover my face, and he laughed with Diana.
I stood stunned.
“How dare you!”
“Serves you right for — aagh!” I sprinkled a handful of flour all over his own face and laughed. Diana took a scoop and dusted him too.
“Two against one, fair enough!” He used the cup to target us. Before I could push Diana away both of us were dusted too.
Diana screamed again playfully while I snatched the bag, and he with the bowl. We flour-fought until the whole kitchen was dusted.
“We’re out of ammo!” I yelled to Diana as we hid behind the counter.
“We need more bullets— EGGS!”
We highfived.
I was crawling towards the work table to get the crate of eggs.
“Way ahead of you,” Oscar exclaimed and when I turned, an egg landed on my cheek.
“Oh you’re gonna regret that,” I carried the packet of lumped sugar and began throwing at him.
Soon we exhausted all the flour, eggs and sugar, and both Oscar and me were on the messy kitchen floor while Diana was laughing her ass out.
“Surrender,” Oscar said to me. He had one last egg in his hand.
“Ha, that’s the last thing I’ll do.”
“I’m gonna hit.”
“Give it your best shot.”
Smirking, he got up. “Are you daring me?”
I scrambled up too. “Yeah.”
We took menacing steps towards each other like in those cowboy movies. We were inches away from each other, him twirling the egg in his hand, me thinking of how to snatch it from him.
“I don’t think I want a hit anymore,” he said.
“You don’t,” I asked still targeting the last egg.
“I’m thinking of —”
I lunged for the egg, but him being taller than me raised it about his head, making me crush myself against him. Immediately he snaked an arm around my waist, tightly locking.
“—a kiss.”
My breath caught in my throat.
The dark blue of his eyes intensified, holding mine in a lock that made something inside my belly tilt and spin.
“You know what Brya, I think I. . .”
he trailed off and ran his tongue quickly over his lips.
He thinks he what? I wondered.
I lowered my gaze, then lifted it back back to his. Felt like there was nobody else in the kitchen. I knew I should move away. Step aside. Give as much distance as was possible between two people. But it’s like when it comes to Oscar, all reasoning flies out of the window. I wanted so bad for him to kiss me, and at the same time I feared.
I’ll have to step back.
But it felt like I’m rooted to the spot.
“Okay…. what?”
That broke the spell as I hurriedly stepped back as if his touch burned me, which was likely in this case.
We turned around to see that Edward and queen Fiona and miss Pearl Gareth crowded at the doorway staring wide eyed at us.
“What kinda mess is this?” Pearl asked.
“I think we’re interrupting something,” queen Fiona said with a sly smile.
She marched Miss Pearl out leaving Edward who had a sad-angry look on his face which immediately turned to amusement as he stepped into the kitchen, looking around and then and at us.
During our little intimate moment I didn’t even notice that Diana left the kitchen.
“It’s not what you think,” I blurted out.
“It’s exactly what you think,” Oscar countered, and I glared at him.
“That depends on what I’m thinking,” he chuckled. “What’re you two up to?”
“Baking, actually. At least until it turned into a fight with Diana as our chaperone. Anyway, some cookies made it to the oven, so we’ll just clean up this mess and everyone can have a snack right at this table,” I pointed to the breakfast bar.
“Whoa, you’re cleaning up the mess. Call me when it’s all done,” Oscar said and walked out with his egg-sugar-flourcloth.
Edward and I laughed.
Kitchen staff began cleaning up the kitchen while I set the bar.
“How’s Maggie?” he asked.
“Devastated I think. She just curses the day someone invented the idea of news, paparazzi and internet,” I replied with a sigh.
So Edward and Maggie’s affair came as a surprise to everyone, me included. It didn’t mean newsers should have portrayed it in such a way that screamed “Scandal!”
All I see were two people in love.
“I really didn’t mean for that to happen I..”
“It’s okay. I decided to bake to cheer you up though, before it turned into this…. gross!”
He laughed again. “I’ll admit, you and my brother are quite amusing.”
A pause.
“Do you love him?”
I looked up. Denial was at the tip of my tongue, but I sighed instead. “I’m not sure I know what that is.”
“Oscar doesn’t too. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
“But it hurts, like really.”
“I know. Don’t kill yourself over it. My brother is stupid most times. He’s reckless, a ladies man. But that doesn’t mean he might not feel the same way.”
.
Later, after our snack of cookies and milk in the kitchen, I went to Oscar’s room to let him know I’m leaving.
I heard him on the phone. With a girl. Sounded like an interesting conversation they had going. I turned away and quietly slipped out, not even telling Diana good night.
I trekked the distance to my house and flung my tired self on my bed.
I brought out my music scrap book and began to pour out my feelings:
🎸Pulling Her💖
💟HEARTSTRINGS🎀
.
🎵 🎵.
Sometimes you think you’ve got it all figured out B-)
Sometimes you feel you’re the only thing it takes two make it happen💪
Dissapps comes knocking on your door when you least expects it😱
You just wanna throw in the towel😪
I know how it feels,😭
Hell, I’m there right now😫
Problems of my own that feels like they’re gon’ suffocate me.😷
I feel like I’m on the edge of a precipice….🗼
With blazing furnace blocking my path behind🔥
And a dark abyss b4 me.👾
So I’ve been hurt thrice.
But they’ve never felt like this💪
Cause I realize — they weren’t love.
This is love.❤
And it hurts, more than I’ve ever imagined.
Can I let you in?
Will you hurt me?
And I thought my heart was tied🎀
in complicated knots difficult to loose.🎁
You’ve pulled the strings away,🎸
And left me bare.
You’ve pulled my heartstrings💝
Can I let you in?💖
Will you hurt me?💔 💔 💔
No.
I’m in love with you.
But I can only do it from a distance,💟
And you won’t need to know🎵 🎵
.
I held the book to my chest and stifled a sob.
Didn’t I say I wasn’t going to cry anymore?
And now I’m wondering, what did he want to say to me?
Just then my phone rang.
Oscar.
——-
TBC