Like Sweet Lemonade

Chapter 7

While he originally thought it'd be hard to get to sleep with his mind running a million miles a minute, Freddie woke up what felt like seconds later to see Sam gone and sunlight streaming in through the window. He groaned loudly and rolled out of bed, feeling exhausted. He'd slept a full nine hours but they certainly hadn't been restful.

He quickly cleaned himself up and got dressed, mind already going down the list of things he needed to do that day. Eat, rewrite the production schedule, make sure everyone completed their daily project quota, avoid looking at Sam because she'd probably be upset about him going on a date with a girl he'd never even seen before...

He smiled slightly and shook his head. Even if he felt stressed about this whole situation, he was ecstatic. Sam still loved him–or at least still wanted to kiss the air out of him. He was fine with either.

It was already after nine o'clock so he had to run downstairs to make it in time for breakfast. The lunch–or would she be breakfast?–lady was just beginning to pack up the food. "A little late today, huh, Freddie?" she said, smiling the matronly smile he looked forward to almost everyday. She reminded him of his mother only without the ridiculous over-protectiveness and much better cooking skills.

Freddie shrugged and returned the grin. "No one decided to wake me."

She nodded and opened the oven, pulling out a tray full of breakfast food. "I figured you'd get down here at some point, so I saved you some of everything."

"You're the best!" he exclaimed, grabbing it from her hands. When the woman laughed heartily, he furrowed his eyebrows. "What's so funny?"

"Sam said the exact same thing when I gave her extra bacon earlier this morning. I've never seen someone so excited to eat my cooking–not even my own kids."

Freddie laughed along with her. "That definitely sounds like Sam. Do you know where she is now?"

The woman paused to think, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling of the building. "I think I saw her leave with your team."

He raised his eyebrows at this. What was she doing with his team? "Thanks, Phyllis."

She waved him off with a smile, turning back to cleaning up the breakfast food and getting ready to start lunch.

He carried his tray to an empty table–well, they were all empty since everyone was already working–and quickly began to eat. He shoveled the food into his mouth as fast as he could, choking a few times on a mouthful of egg. At least until a familiar curtain of curly, golden blonde hair obscured his face and a hand reached around and stole three pieces of his bacon.

"Didn't you get enough at breakfast?" Freddie grumbled, leaning his head back to look at her. He tried to look disgruntled even though he felt happier than he should have about her being there, but it was a battle that he was quickly losing.

Sam smiled cheekily, blue eyes twinkling as she looked down at him. "What does 'enough' mean?" She was still sloppily chewing his recently stolen bacon, and he found it surprisingly cute. In a disgusting, meaty, crumbs-in-his-face-as-she-spoke kind of way.

"Shouldn't you be upstairs helping out?" he returned, stuffing the last piece of sausage into his mouth so that she couldn't take it.

"Hey, I didn't sign up for geek camp. You're the only slacker here."

He was too slow to stop her from stealing one of his hash browns and frowned. "You sure don't mind eating the geek camp's food."

"How are you gonna stop me?"

He stared at her face as she spoke, finding the way her pink lips moved irresistible. Her face was just close enough, and if he straightened up just a little...

He gently pressed his lips against hers, which was actually a little awkward since he was doing it upside down. He suddenly had a huge amount of respect for Tobey Maguire for pulling this off in the first Spider-Man movie, and then he wondered why the hell he was thinking about Spider-man while he should have been thinking about how crazy he was for kissing his ex-girlfriend that he was supposed to be getting over.

Despite the fact that she'd been blindsided by the kiss she returned it with twice the vigor, wrapping her hands around his cheeks to hold his head steady. Unfortunately he couldn't continue it for so long, so he broke it just long enough to turn them both around and lean her back against the table, his arms propped up on both sides of her body. She tasted like bacon and strawberries, a disturbingly tasty combination of his recently liberated breakfast and her lip gloss.

She slipped her arms around his neck, pulling him in closer until he was flush against her. She was trying to play it cool, but he could see the blush beginning to creep up her cheeks. It was adorable and only made him want to kiss her more.

He smiled and leaned forward to deepen it, but at that moment, a buzzing in his pocket grabbed his attention. When he went to reach for his phone a strong hand grabbed his wrist.

"Don't answer it," she whispered, bright blue eyes glaring into his.

Freddie gave her an apologetic smile and used his other hand to answer the call. "Hey, Carly. Yes, I can talk."

As soon as the words left his mouth Sam was on her feet and walking away. He could tell by her stiff shoulders and angry stomping that he would pay for this later.

"Is Sam there? She's still not picking up her cell," the brunette practically whined on the other end of the phone.

"You just missed her. I'll tell her to call you tonight, don't worry."

The phone was silent for a few seconds, and he knew what she was going to ask before she did.

"Seriously, are you and Sam together?"

If this were two years ago, he would've caved. He'd have spilled everything and begged for her forgiveness and possibly even her hand in marriage. Luckily, this wasn't two years ago. "Are you kidding? That ship has been christened, sailed, and sunk." He felt slightly guilty for lying but reasoned that he'd much rather lie to Carly than meet the business end of Sam's fist. "She's fine, I promise. We just ate breakfast and now we're going to work on my PearPad app."

"I don't know, this all seems awfully familiar," Carly said, suspicion heavy in her voice.

"Sam and I are friends, Carly. That's it." He glanced at his watch and his eyes widened slightly. "Look, I've gotta go, I'm running late for a team meeting. Talk to you tonight." He didn't give her a chance to say bye before he hung up and rushed towards the garbage bin with his tray. There wasn't much to dump since Sam had pretty much decimated his leftovers, and in seconds, he was rushing out of the double doors and towards his team's assigned classroom.

He entered to see Sam nonchalantly sitting on a desk–his desk to be precise–and scribbling something down in his notebook. He arched his eyebrows and moved to stand next to her. "What're you writing?"

"Some ideas for your app. After watching your team of super nerds yesterday I realized that you're going about this thing all wrong."

Cookie snickered from his spot in front of his computer, earning himself a glare from Freddie. The boy quickly looked away and whistled innocently but he still couldn't hide the smirk on his face.

Freddie turned back to Sam with a frown. "Yeah? How do you figure, Puckett?"

Sam sighed loudly. "Your outline says this is for the 'average consumer' but you're building it for nerds. It's way too complicated and gives you too many instructions. Look, people are stupid–don't make them think and just give them something easy to use and pretty to look at."

The entire team stared at her, faces in various states of shock. Freddie was the first to speak, holding a hand against his head. "She's...she's right. It's the most basic principle of design and I completely forgot about it. We got so wrapped up in the techincal aspects of the app and didn't think about the end user at all." He walked to the front of the room, erased the whiteboard, and began to write out a new set of goals. "We're starting over."

"But the deadline's Friday!" Gina shrieked.

"Freddie's right, though. There's no sense in completing a mediocre app," Jenn mumbled, looking less than pleased despite her support of Freddie. "Looks like we're pulling all nighters for the next five days."

Tired of all the standing around and moping, Sam crossed her arms. "Then what are you nerds waiting for? Get to it!"

They worked tirelessly, completely retooling the app and throwing out hundreds of lines of code to fit their new direction. While they'd been initially miffed about having to throw out so much work, as the app developed, they quickly realized that Sam was right. It was already much better than what they'd had before.

With her input, they were able to identify the areas of the app that didn't make sense or needed to be simplified. They'd ordered in chinese food from a small shop a couple of blocks away for lunch instead of going down to the lunchroom with the other teams, and by the time five o'clock rolled around, everyone in the room was exhausted but happy. They filed out one by one to head towards the cafeteria for dinner. Freddie was personally shocked that Sam hadn't been the first one out, instead hanging back so that they could walk together.

Phyllis unfortunately didn't work the dinner shift, but somehow, Sam had managed to charm Mary–a young blonde woman in her 20s–into giving her extra dessert. If he weren't so used to it, Freddie might have been impressed.

"When does this dork retreat end, anyway?" Sam asked, ignoring her dinner and starting in on her first slice of chocolate cake.

Freddie frowned, but answered. "This Sunday, but the deadline for the app is Friday. That's why we really need to get bug testing underway by Tuesday at the latest if we want to submit it to the Pear app store in time. Three days should be enough time to get all of the major problems out of the way."

Sam nodded, humming thoughtfully. "If you say so."

He didn't get time to reply as Cookie grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him away. "Hey, where are we going?!"

Cookie looked at him incredulously. "Dude, the date, remember?! It's in an hour!"

Freddie blinked. Thanks to Sam and having to start over on the app, he hadn't had time to think about the date at all. "I totally forgot!"

He rushed into the room behind his friend and made a beeline for his luggage. He then pulled on a fresh button up and a pair of dark jeans. It was his second date of the summer–third if you counted the beach trip with Sam as a date, which he didn't. Not really.

Sam waltzed into the room ten minutes later, patting her stomach appreciatelvely. She stopped cold when saw him, eyes slowly running up and down his body.

He'd never admit it in a million years, but her gaze did something to him. It wasn't hungry, per say, but it was definitely interested. He could tell by the way her eyebrows quirked and her lips twitched upwards that she liked what she saw. "You don't have to dress up on account of me," she joked though it sounded a little forced.

"Do I look alright?" he asked, wondering why her opinion even mattered.

Rather than answer, she closed the space between them in three large steps and roughly pressed her lips against his. Her hand reached up to grip the back of his neck, and she teasingly flicked his ear as she pulled away.

He stared down at her, breathless. She was constantly surprising him with things like this, and it was the main reason that he still wasn't sure if he wanted anything to do with her.

Remembering how miserable he'd felt after their breakup was the only thing keeping him from losing his head over the situation. He'd set up a hammock on his fire escape and even flown a thousand miles away to California to get away from her. He couldn't let her pull him back in and let all of his careful planning go to waste. Still, he did like kissing her, and she was fun to be around...

Freddie shook his head and ran his hand through his hair, forcing himself to calm down. There was no point in letting himself get too worked up. Not now. He ignored her frustrated gaze and crossed his arms over his chest, bringing up the first thing he could think of to distract her. "You need to call Carly. She's worried sick about you."

"I will. My phone's still charging."

"Sam, you put it on the charger this morning. I'm pretty sure it's done." To prove his point, he walked over, unhooked it from the Pearphone cord, and held it out to her. "See? Full battery. Now call her."

"Fine," she grumbled, snatching the device from his hand. She unlocked it and pressed the number 2 to speed dial Carly and lifted the phone up to her ear as it rang. It picked up immediately, almost as if the girl had been waiting for her call the entire time.

"Sam?! There you are! I've been trying to call you for like two days now!"

"Yeah, sorry, my phone died."

"I've told you about letting your battery get so low. What if there's an emergency? Did you ever think of that?"

Sam sighed loudly and rolled her eyes. "Relax, Carls, it's not a big deal. I'm safe and sound in Los Angeles with the nub and his clan of nubbites." She shot Freddie a smirk that he pointedly ignored.

"Well, I guess as long as you're with a friend it's okay." The brunette paused. "Are you and Freddie dating again?"

"What? Me and Freddie? Chiz no. I have some standards," she said, rolling her eyes at Freddie's exasperated frown.

Carly hummed on the other end of the phone. "I don't know, it just seems a little strange for you to drive 19 hours to see Freddie of all people."

"18, and I wanted a change of scenery. I saw a chance and I took it. Don't make such a big deal out of it." She turned her back so that she wouldn't have to see Freddie's curious gaze anymore.

"If you say so," Carly said, sounding decidedly unconvinced. "When are you coming back?"

"Sometime next week. I'm driving Freddie back." She heard Freddie choke behind her, which didn't surprise her at all since she hadn't yet told her about her plans.

"You're going to spend 19 hours alone with Freddie in a car? Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"18, and if he gets annoying I'll just knock him out."

Carly groaned at that but conceded. It wasn't like there was anything she could do about it. "Okay, well, be safe. I'll call you tomorrow. Night."

"Yeah, night." She quickly pressed 'end call' and tossed her phone on Freddie's bed, ignoring his incredulous stare.

"What's this about you driving me home? I don't want to die."

Sam shrugged. "I'm doing you a favor."

"Yeah? How?" he asked, half laughing. He couldn't see how it benefitted him in the least.

"Are you really in such a rush to get back to crazy?"

Freddie's next argument died in his throat. Well, she had a point there. These two weeks away had been sweet and utter bliss. No tick baths, no sugar-free diets, no being forced to be in bed by ten...he couldn't wait until college.

"I don't know," he murmured, averting his gaze.

Smelling blood in the water, she stepped closer and grabbed his arm in an uncharacteristically affectionate manner. "Trust me. It'll be fun."

"But my ticket's round trip. What am I supposed to do since I only used half of it?"

"Everyone knows round trip tickets are cheaper than one way, and if you don't show up, it's no big deal. They've already got your money, so what do they care?"

Freddie sighed. She had another good point. He and his mother had checked the prices online before buying them, and it was a good twenty dollars less than it would have been one way. "Okay." He wasn't surprised when Sam slammed her fist into his shoulder to show her happiness, but he was put off by the excited hug that followed.

"It's gonna be awesome!"

"If we live."

She frowned and punched him again, harder this time. He was about to complain when Cookie emerged from the bathroom, dressed up in his finest khaki pants and plaid button up. His usual computer glasses were replaced by thinner frames, but Freddie noticed with some amusement that there were still two glowing boxes in them. Apparently, he'd even installed a rudimentary operating system into his 'normal' glasses.

"Lisa's ten miles away, so we should get going. I can't wait for you to meet her!"

Sam glanced at the phone the tall teen was holding and blanched. "You track your girlfriend's movements? That's not creepy jealous stalker at all."

Rather than get upset by the comment, the boy simply laughed. "We built the GPS app together. She can turn it off whenever she wants to, and she can track me with her phone, too. It's really convenient for when we're in large public places."

Sam nudged Freddie with her elbow. "Maybe we should use that."

"Why, so you can find and attack me easier? No thanks." He ignored the sneaky smirk on her face and grabbed his jacket, slipping it on over his shoulders. "We'll be back. You can use my laptop, if you want. Your account's still on there." He noticed her pout slightly, but just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

"Sure. Have fun." To anyone else it sounded like she didn't care, but he knew better. He saw the way her jaw tensed and eyes narrowed before she turned away from him, and it was only because he was doing this for Cookie that her fist wasn't slamming into his face.

Despite the slight awkwardness, he felt himself smile. She still cared about him. The kissing should've given it away, but the jealousy was what truly sealed it. He was so ecstatic that he might actually have fun on this date.