Martha lay in bed looking up at the ceiling. She sighed and looked towards her alarm clock just in time to see it click over to 7am. Usually by now the loud alarm would be going off, tempting her to get out off bed. But she had already flicked the alarm off 2 hours before. Who needed an alarm when you had already been awake for hours? In fact she had hardly slept at all during the night. Her mind had been elsewhere thinking about how much her life sucked at the moment. She knew why it sucked, and the only person to blame was herself.
She had screwed up, and she had screwed up big time. Jack hated her and now he didn't want anything to do with her. She couldn't blame him though, she knew she deserved it.
Because of her stupidity she had managed to drive him away. Her eyes started to well up with tears again. She was surprised she actually had any tears left; she had spent all of yesterday afternoon and most of the night crying. Every time she thought of Jack, she would hear the harsh words he said to her over and over in her head and this would start the waterworks all over again. She hated to admit it but this was the most she had ever cried over a guy.
"Why did you have to be so stupid," she growled out loud.
She'd had someone totally amazing standing right in front of her, and she had pushed him away. And now that she was ready to admit that she wanted to be with Jack, he no longer wanted her.
She heard a soft knock on her bedroom door.
"Martha Love, are you awake?" Alf called out.
"Yeah, come in grandad," Martha called back.
Martha sat up and used the pads of her thumbs to wipe away the few stray tears on her cheeks. She put on a fake smile but her grandfather could see right threw it.
"What's wrong love?" he asked, sitting down on the end of her bed.
"Everything is wrong grandad," she cried.
"This is to do with Jack isn't it? How did your chat go with him yesterday arvo?" he asked.
"It sucked, as predicted. He doesn't want anything more to do with me," she replied.
"Well maybe he just needs some more time to………….," Alf started but Martha cut him off.
"No Grandad. You didn't hear the way he spoke to me yesterday. He made it perfectly clear how he felt. He hates me," she said.
"He doesn't hate you, I'm sure of that. I've seen the way that boy looks at you and it's definitely not a look of hate," Alf reassured her. Martha gave her grandfather a small smile, she hoped he was right.
"Listen, the reason why I came in was to see if you were doing anything today. Tony just stopped by and he's hired out a speed boat for the day and he's taking out Lucas and Ric. I've decided to go aswell and I just wanted to see if you wanted to come too," he offered.
"Thanks for the offer Grandad, but I think I'll stay ashore. I doubt I'd be much fun anyways," she smiled at her grandad.
"Ok love. Well I'm going to head off down to the bait shop. I want to pick up some fresh bait for today. We're going to do a spot of fishing while out on the water," Alf said standing up.
"Have a good day. I'll see you when you get back," Martha said.
Alf leaned down and gave her a peck on the head.
"Don't mope around the house all day. Get out and get some fresh air okay," Alf told her.
Martha laughed.
"Alright Old man," she said cheekily. Alf chuckled and walked out of her room.
"Hey grandad, don't forget to catch me a fish," she yelled out after him. Martha smiled to herself. I'm so lucky to have grandad, without him I'd be nothing…!
Jack sat at the kitchen table drinking his morning coffee. Actually it was his fourth cup that morning and it was only 7:30 am. He'd woken up at the crack of dawn and couldn't get back to sleep, so he had decided to get up and watch a bit of telly. And with that came the four cups of coffee.
He knew why he couldn't sleep. It was because of Martha. He pushed her face out of his mind and tried to concentrate on something else. Luckily for him it was at this moment his father walked in the front door. He was carrying a couple bags of food.
"What took you so long; I thought you only had to pick up a few things from the store?" Jack asked his father.
"I stopped in at Alf's on the way and asked if he and Martha wanted to join the boys and myself out on the boat today. Alf's up for it, not sure about Martha though. She was still in bed," Tony replied, placing the bags on top of the counter.
"Speaking of Martha, you shouldn't have been so hard on her yesterday. The girl made a mistake, she knows that. There's no need to punish her any further," Tony said while getting some bread out of one of the bags so he could make up some lunch for their day out.
Jack groaned.
"Look dad, I've made up my mind and I've decided that it would be best if Martha and I just stayed out of each others way. Like I said yesterday, she feels guilty and she only wants my forgiveness so she can feel better about herself. Now can we just drop it, I don't want to talk about it anymore," he told his father.
Tony looked at Jack and nodded.
"Fine, I'll drop it but first I just want to say that I think you're wrong. I don't think Martha came around yesterday because she felt guilty. I think she came around because she cares for you and she wanted you to know it. I think she likes you," Tony told his son.
"Who knows with Martha? One minute she's hot and the next minute she's cold. Doesn't matter anyway, I've made my decision and I'm sticking to it," Jack stated and walked off towards his room.
Jack sat down on his bed. He noticed the small round package that Martha had left for him yesterday sitting on top of his drawer. He wasn't going to open it, not yet anyway.
He was so confused. Sure, he told his dad he was going to stay away from Martha from now on. But that didn't mean his feelings towards her had stopped.
"When did my life get so complicated," he said out loud.
Oh yeah, the day I met Martha Mackenzie and fell in love her.