Stocking
"What do you think?" Carly asked, holding her freshly painted fingernails out in front of Sam, who was lounging on Carly's bed, flipping through a magazine.
"What do I think about what?" Sam asked, looking up.
"Which shade of nail polish do you like best?" Carly said.
"Um, Carls, have your eyes gone wonko?" Sam frowned. "All your nails look the same."
"No they don't!" Carly said. "The left hand is painted with sky blue nail polish and the right hand is painted with baby blue nail polish."
"So…they're both blue," Sam said.
"Ugh, you have no appreciation for the art of fingernail painting," Carly said, rolling her eyes at her best friend.
"Hey," Freddie said brightly, walking into Carly's room.
"Hey, Freddie? Which nail polish color do you like best?" Carly asked, showing him her hands.
"Uh…the blue one?" Freddie frowned.
"Unbelievable," Carly said, shaking her head.
"Anyway," Freddie said, sitting down next to his girlfriend on the bed. "I finished making the updates to our website. I made new drop down menus, fixed some glitches on the photos page, and even managed to get some of our games to stop dragging!"
He pulled his laptop out of his bag and pulled up . "You see?"
"It doesn't look any different," Sam said.
"Well…appearance wise, no, I guess not," Freddie admitted. "But trust me; it's better now."
"Whatever," Sam shrugged.
"It looks nice, Freddie," Carly told him. "Thanks for doing it."
"No problem," Freddie replied. "I spent all last night doing it."
"You spent your night doing that?" Sam laughed. "Man, what's the point of you having a girlfriend if you're gonna go and still spend your nights with your computer."
"I asked you if you wanted to go to the movies!" Freddie reminded her. "And you said you didn't feel like getting out of your pajamas."
"Oh, yeah," Sam said.
"But," Freddie said. "I thought we could do something fun tonight...I got tickets to this really cool classical film festival at the park. We could go to that together."
"Um, a classical film festival?" Sam scoffed. "Have you not met me?"
"You don't want to go?" Freddie asked, his face falling.
"Not really."
"Oh, well…okay," Freddie said. "I guess I can drag Gibby to it."
"There you go," Sam said, opening her magazine again. "Win-win. You get to go to your lame festival and I can stay here and eat all those muffins Spencer's downstairs making with his bake club."
Freddie chuckled. "Well have fun then. I'm gonna go call Gibby and see if he's free tonight. Later!"
"Bye," Carly said as he gave Sam a quick kiss before leaving the room.
"Hey, do you care if I if I rent movie on your Getflix account?" Sam asked, tossing her magazine aside.
"You don't want to finish this magazine before I take it down to recycling?" Carly asked, picking up the magazine and sitting down next to Sam.
"Nah, I read the whole thing except for those lame quizzes in the back," Sam said.
"You don't like those?" Carly frowned.
"No," Sam said, shaking her head. "They're so lame."
"Hey, this one seems kind of fun," Carly said, going through the magazine. "It tells you if your relationship is Rock Solid or an Unstable Mess."
"Why would I want to take that?" Sam chuckled. "My relationship's fine; I don't need some magazine to tell me that."
"Um…okay, sure," Carly said slowly.
Sam sat up. "What?"
"Nothing," Carly said quickly. "So you said you wanted to watch a movie?"
"No, no, no, what did you mean by 'okay, sure'," Sam asked.
"I didn't mean anything," Carly said, avoiding Sam's eyes.
"Carly…"
"Alright, look," Carly sighed. "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but lately it seems like…I dunno, that you've been a little…un-girlfriendy to Freddie."
Sam frowned. "Ungirlfriendy?"
"I mean, I know that you've never been the 'traditional' girlfriend," Carly said. "And that's fine; there's nothing wrong with that. Freddie obviously likes that you're not some overly-girly chick who hangs all over him. But still…don't you think lately you've been sort of…mean to him?"
"Mean?" Sam repeated.
"Again, don't take this the wrong way," Carly said. "But like today, Freddie was really proud of the changes he made to the website, and you totally put it down. And then he wanted you guys to go to a nice film festival and you refused. It just sort of looks like you don't really…care about Freddie anymore."
Sam was silent.
"Oh, now you're mad at me," Carly moaned. "Sam, I'm sorry. Look, you're relationship with Freddie's none of my business, and-"
"Does it really look like that?" Sam asked softly.
"Huh?"
"It really looks like I don't care about him?" Sam said again.
"Well…it's just…Freddie does everything for you, and I know he doesn't mind, but sometimes it just looks like you're kind of unresponsive to everything he does," Carly explained.
Sam looked down at her lap.
"I mean," Carly said quietly. "You-You do care about Freddie, right?"
Sam took a deep breath. "Yeah…I do. I-I love him. He's like, the perfect boyfriend, and whenever we're alone together he always makes me feel special. He's like…the best thing that ever happened to me, and-and I really don't know what I would do without him."
"Aw, Sam," Carly smiled. "That's so sweet."
Sam shrugged. "Yeah, well, it doesn't matter…if Freddie thinks I don't care about him-"
"Well then why don't you go and tell him exactly what you just told me?" Carly said.
Sam gave her a strange look. "Do you think I'm the romantic one in this relationship?"
"Okay, then maybe you could try showing him how much you care about him," Carly suggested.
"Maybe…" Sam said thoughtfully. "I guess I could do that…"
…..
"So see, then my mom pulled out this really cool box from my stocking," Gibby said to Freddie as the two boys sat in Freddie's apartment, about to get ready to go to the classical film festival. "And inside was my first ever container of liquid soap…it was a good Christmas."
"Um, why are you telling me this?" Freddie asked.
"Oh, sorry, didn't know I wasn't allowed to make civilized conversation," Gibby snapped.
Just then Sam walked into the apartment.
"Sam?" Freddie said. "What are you doing here? I thought you were gonna stuff yourself with all of Spencer's muffins."
"I ate twelve, and then Spencer mentioned he lost his Band-Aid when he was baking," Sam cringed. "Anyway, Gibby, get out."
"What? Why?" Gibby exclaimed. "Freddie's about to take me to the film festival!"
"No he's not, I'm gonna go with him," Sam said.
"Really?" Freddie said, smiling.
"Yeah, you know…nothing else to do," Sam shrugged. "So let's go."
"You're going to take your girlfriend out instead of me?" Gibby said indignantly to Freddie.
"Um, yes?" Freddie said.
"Fine," Gibby said. "I'll just go spend the night with my mom giving my grandpa a sponge bath."
"Gross," Sam said.
"Hey, let me just go grab my jacket," Freddie said as Gibby left.
"Okay," Sam nodded. "Oh, and um...before you do…" she walked over to him and gave him a long, passionate kiss.
"Wow," Freddie said, breathless, once they pulled away. "What was that for?"
"Just…because," Sam mumbled. She looked up at her boyfriend. "Um, listen…you-you know I love you, right?"
"Of course," Freddie nodded. "I love you too."
"And even though I don't always, you know, show it, that I really do care about you…a lot?" Sam said.
"I know," Freddie assured her. "Where's this coming from?"
Sam gave him a smile. "Nowhere. Now hurry up, will you? I heard there's gonna be hot chocolate at this thing and mama loves her hot chocolate."
