Curtain
"No way! Someone managed to get a picture of the World's Hottest Lifeguard holding a puppy!" Carly exclaimed as her and Sam sat on the beanbag chairs in the iCarly studio, both looking down at Carly's Pearpad.
"Oh my God…look at his abs!" Sam grinned.
"I'm right here," Freddie said, rolling his eyes as he worked on new edits to the iCarly website.
"Your point?" Sam smirked at her boyfriend. "Oh! Look at that picture! He's running with the puppy on the beach!"
"Man…how can I get to be Mrs. World's Hottest Lifeguard?" Carly sighed.
"You guys," Freddie said. "Are you gonna help with the website or not? I can't edit our message board until you guys respond to the fans on it."
"Well you do it then," Sam said.
"There's over a thousand messages!" Freddie said. "And I still have to reroute some data. You guys promised you'd help me out with the site today."
"We-We will," Carly said quickly. "Just give us a minute and we'll get right to-Oh! Sam, look! He's frolicking in the waves!"
"And I'm gonna go work downstairs," Freddie said. "Let me know when you finish with the message board. I want to get it edited before my train club meeting tonight."
"Yeah, um, sure baby," Sam nodded, not taking her eyes off the Pearpad.
Freddie shook his head as he headed out of the studio. "Stupid lifeguard," he mumbled under his breath.
…
"You know," Freddie said later that afternoon as he walked back into the Shay's apartment with an armload of tech items he had just retrieved from his room across the hall. "I think running a website qualifies as a part-time job. Just this week alone we must've put in fifteen hours to iCarly."
"That's not so bad," Spencer commented, flipping through channels on the T.V.
"Says the guy who does all his work in his pajamas," Freddie scoffed as he set all his equipment down at the table where he had been working. "Hey, I'm gonna go run upstairs and see how far Carly and Sam have gotten with our message board."
"Oh, they just left a minute ago while you were across the hall," Spencer said. "They went to Glitter Gloss for some sale."
"What?" Freddie exclaimed. "They left?"
He hurried over to his laptop and pulled up the site. "Yup, I knew it! They still didn't do the message board! Great, now I'm gonna have to do that and the edits before my Train Club meeting." He turned to Spencer. "Hey…you wanna give me a hand answering iCarly fans on here?"
"I dunno," Spencer sighed. "Tuesday nights are usually reserved for watching the Home Improvement channel. There's this show about curtains that just destroy rooms and-"
"Just help me!" Freddie snapped.
"Fine!" Spencer surrendered, turning off the T.V. "Just let me put on my pajamas…I don't do any real work without them."
…..
That night Freddie's eyes ached as he finished the last of his edits on the iCarly site. He had to miss his Train Club meeting and he was going to have to stay up late to do his homework that was due tomorrow, but it was finally done.
Just as he finished, Carly and Sam walked back into the apartment with their shopping bags, laughing.
"Hey, what are you still doing here?" Carly said as her and Sam pulled off their jackets.
"Yeah, aren't you supposed to be playing with your trains?" Sam said.
"I had to miss my meeting!" Freddie said angrily. "Because you two never finished up with the message board!"
Carly and Sam's smiles instantly dropped.
"Oh my God!" Carly gasped. "We-We completely forgot!"
"No, really?" Freddie said, rolling his eyes.
"Baby, we're so sorry," Sam said, pulling on her girlfriend voice. She stepped over to him and put an arm around him. "It just slipped our minds. I mean Carly and I just really wanted to spend some time together today. We've both been busy the last few weeks. Carly's been going to Yakima every weekend to check on her granddad, you and I are always spending time together…Today was the only day we've had in forever to hang out."
"Oh, well…yeah, I-I guess that's true," Freddie said slowly.
"But still, we're sorry," Sam said, giving him a quick kiss. And the moment he felt her lips on his, all his anger melted away.
"It's okay," Freddie sighed. "I got it done in the end…"
"We'll help you with the site all day tomorrow after school," Carly promised. "We'll meet in the library and we'll get everything done."
"Well…okay," Freddie said as Sam kissed him again. "That sounds like a plan. I should go now, though. I need to finish up some homework."
"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow," Sam said as Freddie gave her one last kiss.
"Bye, Freddie," Carly said as Freddie left the apartment. Once the door closed behind him, she turned to Sam.
"Nice work, Puckett," Carly said. "Way to work your girlfriend charm. He was real mad at us."
"It's a gift," Sam said proudly. "But why'd you go and promise him we'd do all that work tomorrow?"
"Because it was unfair of us to just leave it all to him today," Carly said. "We need to stop taking advantage of him and help out with iCarly in more ways than just doing the skits for the actual show. I think he'd really appreciate the extra help."
"Yeah, I guess," Sam said, rolling her eyes.
….
And now they're officially an hour late, Freddie thought to himself as he sat alone at the library after school the next day. Man, I can't believe they did this to me two days in a row! They really expect me to keep up this entire website on my own, don't they?
Freddie sighed as he continued to work by himself.
This wasn't the first time the girls had done this to him. Just last month they had promised to help him upload several iCarly bits onto a hard drive to send in to a comedy contest, but both had left him to do the task on his own, just like now. And also like this time, Sam had managed to distract him from the whole thing by kissing him and telling him how sorry they were.
He loved Sam, but he really needed to learn to stop letting her walk all over him like this.
Carly too even.
But for now, though, it looked he had no choice but to finish the work up on his own.
…..
"So then me and Wendy spent the rest of class trying to throw spitballs into Mrs. Humphry's wig when she wasn't looking," Sam told Carly as the girls sat at the Groovy Smoothie. "I managed to get six in."
"You know, maybe this is why you have a D in economics," Carly said, rolling her eyes as she sipped her smoothie.
"Maybe," Sam shrugged.
"Hey, I wonder where Freddie is," Carly said. "Do you know?"
"I think he has an AV club meeting," Sam replied. "I'm pretty sure those are on Wednesdays…Yeah, I think they are. I mean where else would he be? He didn't meet us at our lockers after-No!"
"What?" Carly frowned. "Why'd you-No! Oh my God! We forgot to help him again! We were supposed to meet him at the library, we promised!"
"You think he's still there?" Sam asked anxiously.
"No…that was three hours ago," Carly sighed. "He would've gone home by now if we weren't there."
"Man," Sam sighed. "He's gonna be mad…I better bring in the grade A flirting."
"Sam, you need to stop doing that just to get out of him being mad at us," Carly sighed. "We took advantage of him. We messed up. Let's go find Freddie and apologize and try to help him out with whatever's left to do. Come on."
She stood up and started for the door, but Sam remained sitting staring down at the table, deep in thought.
"Sam?" Carly said. "Let's go."
"You really think I take advantage of him?" Sam asked softly.
"I-Well…It's not like it's intentional," Carly said quickly. "It's not like you're doing it to be mean to Freddie-"
"But I do take advantage of him, don't I?"
"I-Maybe a little," Carly said. "But Sam, I'm just as guilty as you are here. I made the promise to help him today in the first place."
"Yeah," Sam mumbled. "But you're not the one he's dating."
The girls headed back to Bushwell Plaza and knocked on Freddie's door, praying his mother wasn't home. Neither felt like being sprayed repeatedly with disinfectant.
Luckily, though, Freddie opened the door.
Sam gave him a small smile and handed him a smoothie. "I, um, thought you could use this," she said.
Freddie looked down at the beverage. "Great. A smoothie makes up for all the work I had to just do by myself."
"It's not supposed to make up for it," Sam sighed. "We-We're not here to try and get you to forgive us for blowing you off again today."
Freddie's expression softened. "You're not?"
"No," Carly said. "You have every right to be mad at us. We have been sort of taking advantage of you lately by making you do all the work for iCarly on your own and that wasn't fair of us. Sam and I need to do more than just the stuff in front of the camera."
"And we promise, really promise this time, that we're gonna stop taking all you do for granted and start helping you out more," Sam said. "Because, um, you do a lot for the web show and you deserve to have help."
Freddie smiled at Sam. "You guys really mean that?" he said, looking over at Carly as well.
"Yes," Carly said at once. "Absolutely."
"We really do, baby," Sam said. "In fact we were thinking we'd start right now. Want to come over to Carly's and finish up with the site? Together?"
"Um, yeah, there's still a good amount of work to do," Freddie nodded. "Some help would be great."
"I'll go set up my laptop then," Carly said, glancing over at Sam, knowing she wanted a moment alone with her boyfriend. "You two just come over when you're ready."
"Okay," Freddie nodded. "Thanks."
Sam waited until Carly had gone into her apartment across the hall before looking up at Freddie.
"I never meant to take advantage of you so much," she said earnestly. "Really."
"I know," Freddie told her. "It's okay."
"So are we-are we good?" Sam asked slowly.
Freddie grinned as he held his arms open and pulled her into his embrace.
"Yeah," he said, hugging her tightly. "We're good."
