contretemps
[kon-truh-tahn; French kawntruh-tahn]
1. an inopportune occurrence; an embarrassing mischance:
He caused a minor contretemps by knocking over his drink.
****************************************
The room was dark.
All the lights were off. And yet,
Jarred could tell there was someone there.
He could hear the person breathing.
Whoever it was wasn’t replying to him when he called out though. His heart beat quickly as he fumbled around
the wall for the switch. When the light
came on, he breathed a sigh of relief.
The person in the room was his girlfriend, Whitney.
She sat
on one of the chairs with her legs crossed, and her fingers linked and resting
on her lap. And she looked absolutely furious. Jarred was glad that it wasn’t some crook in
his room, but seeing his girlfriend mad was almost as bad. In fact, it may have been worse. At least with someone breaking in he could
figure something to do.
“Uh,
hey, Whit, what’s up?” He asked. She didn’t answer. “Is-is there something you
need? I mean, why were you sitting in
the dark? Something wrong?” Still no answer. He was starting to panic. He had no idea why she was so mad at
him. He furiously thought back to
anything that could have triggered her anger, and came up with a big nothing. “Come on, talk to me. Please?”
He
continued trying to talk to her for a good five minutes. He practically begged her to open up. He asked her why she was mad. He tried appealing to her better nature. He even tried apologizing even without
knowing what was wrong. Not only did she
not answer him, she didn’t even seem to acknowledge his presence. He clasped his hands in hers and looked into
her eyes pleadingly.
“Oh,
Jarred, you’re here.” She said bitterly
after far too long. “I thought we were
ignoring each other.”
“Wh-what? Why?
Why would you think that?”
She
shook his hands off hers and reached between the arms of the chair and her
body. She came up with her cell
phone. It only took her a few seconds
for her to find what she wanted to show him.
It was the last text he had sent her.
It read simply: “Ok. I’ll ignore you okay Whit?”
“Uh,
hold on, wait. That’s not what I meant.” Jarred said, horrified by what he saw.
He had meant to say “Ok. I’ll ignore.
You okay with that?” He had
missed a single period and forgotten he had changed wt from “with that” to “Whit”. And those two tiny mistakes had made him seem
like he wanted nothing to do with her.
“Oh really? It certainly seemed like it to me.”
“Come on, you’re taking it the
wrong way. I just forgot a period
there. I was agreeing with you that I
would ignore all those spam emails and asking if you were okay with everything.”
“Uh huh. And you expect me to believe that?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, given every other text before it, it
should be obvious, right?”
She didn’t say anything. She looked at her phone and scrolled through
the previous conversation. Her lips wriggled
and curled around. She was clearly
trying to keep justifying her anger.
When she could no longer find one, she simply opted for roughly shoving
the phone down onto the chair cushion and crossing her arms.
“I’m still mad at you.” She said, purposely looking away from
him. Jarred sighed. She would calm down eventually. He knew she would. After all, this time it was only a small
little mistake.
*************************
Remember people, punctuation saves lives.
There's a reason for grammar!
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