"Oh, I am so stupid," laughed Sidney while in between calls at the job, "I was eating a Dum Dum, you know the sucker candy, and I read bubble gum on the label, so I got excited, and thought, 'Wow, they make these with gum in the middle now?' So I chomped through that little thing, and it was gone so quick. Before I could even realize that it was just bubble gum flavor."
"Gee, Sid, thanks for that anecdote," grinned Alton, a new hire.
"You know, you've got a smart mouth for someone who's only in training," she joked.
"Hey, call me weird, but I just find it hard to be intimidated by the girl who was out-smarted by candy," he countered, laughter dancing in his eyes.
"Bite me, Alton."
"Would you bite me, if I told you I had gum in my center?"
With a wink, Sid placed her head-phones over her ears once again, "And here is where we get back to work."
;O;O;O;O;O;O;O
When Sidney got back to her apartment that afternoon, she was surprised to find Mark there waiting for here in the living room. If one were to describe their relationship as on-again/off-again, their current state would definitely have been thought of as off-again. Sidney had simply had it with Mark running after the starlets he protected on the job. He swore up and down that any flirting or such behavior was only in her head, until she found him in bed with a Lindsay Lohan wannabe. They had stopped talking for a while after that one, but still, Sidney did not give up on the idea of them being together. She owed a lot to Mark, who, after all, helped save her life and also the lives of Dewey and Gale, who had moved back to Woodsboro after the murders. And Mark knew that Sidney held a soft spot in her heart for him, it was why he was brave enough to be sitting in her apartment in the first place. She did, however, put on a cold front, "What are you doing here?"
"I've missed you."
She was caught off guard by his straightforwardness, "Well, I..."
"It's okay if you don't know what to say," he smiled, reading her thoughts, "I thought that maybe we could just talk a while. I want you to know that all those girls, they're history. I'm over that, all I want is you Sid."
His profession, while meant to induce sympathy and eventually an apology from Sidney, held the exact opposite effect, it reminded her of why it had been over a month since Mark had stayed the night. She deserved so much better. If there was one lesson that she had learned and inexorably held true within her heart, it was that life was short, too short to be wasted on someone who was ultimately, not good enough. Mark had already proved himself unworthy once, why should she stick around to wait for him to do it again. "You know what? I'm not really in the mood to talk. Not tonight. Not anytime soon really."
"Sid, come on."
"No," she asserted, turning her back on him to open the door for his exit, "You should go."
