Temperature
"Spence, I'll be there in a minute," Freddie said into his phone as he stepped into his and Sam's shared apartment. "I just have to grab my DVDs and then we can start our Galaxy Wars marathon!"
"Well hurry up!" Spencer said on the other line. "I just got the popcorn ready. You know I hate eating cold popcorn!"
"Alright, alright, I'll get there as fast as I can," Freddie said. He hung up the phone and stepped over to the T.V. stand and grabbed his collector's edition DVDs.
"Got them," Freddie said. "Now to go enjoy nine hours of proton cruisers and-holy chiz! It's freezing in here!"
He looked at the thermostat on the wall and saw that the temperature was set to sixty-four degrees. Freddie let out a groan. "Dang it, Sam!"
The past month of living with Sam had been absolute bliss, as far as Freddie was concerned. He loved having her around all of the time and he loved getting to fall asleep next to her just to wake up with her in his arms the next morning. However, despite all of this, there was one complaint that Freddie had: Sam preferred to keep the apartment cold. Very cold. Ever since she moved in she made it a point to dial down the thermostat religiously. Even when Freddie would try to turn it up, it was only a matter of minutes before Sam would come out and turn it right back down.
"It's like the Arctic in here," Freddie shivered. "This is ridiculous! Why does Sam insist on keeping it so cold in here! You know what? I am so sick and tired of having to wear three jackets just to watch T.V. I'm turning this thing up to a toasty seventy-three degrees!"
He reached into the drawer of the nearby end table and pulled out a roll of scotch tape. "And just for added security…" he wrapped the tape around the dial, securing it into place.
"There!" he said proudly. "Hopefully with that I can finally start going to sleep without a winter coat on."
And with that, he picked his DVD back on and headed out the front door.
…..
"Bucket of fried chicken, six-pack of peppy cola…" Sam said later that day as she walked into the apartment. "And Freddie's over at Spencer's for the day having a nerd marathon…Perfect night for watching MMA fights and Monster Truck Rallies."
She plopped herself down on the couch and grabbed the remote. "Let the fun begin!"
But no sooner had she turned on the T.V. did she realize that something was off.
"Ugh, why's it so hot in here?" Sam frowned, getting up and stepping over to the thermostat. "Seventy-three? Are you kidding me? Dang it, Nub! Why's he got to keep it like a desert in here?"
Since she had moved in a month ago, living with Freddie had been the best decision Sam had made in her life. She absolutely loved it. However, there was one issue that she had been having, and that was the fact that Freddie seemed to like to keep the apartment warm. Very warm. She hated always feeling like she was covered in sweat and having to kick off her blankets in the middle of the night. She'd try and adjust the thermostat and bring it down to a cooler temperature, but the second she would do that, Freddie would always go and undo it just as quickly.
"This is insane!" Sam said. "It's like a sauna in here!"
She made to turn back the dial, but found that she could not.
"What the-?" Sam frowned. She leaned in for a closer look at the thermostat. It seemed taped into place.
"How'd that happen?" Sam frowned. "Oh! I bet Fredwad did this to try and keep it a million degrees in here. Typical doof. Well two can play at this game…"
…
"Nothing makes me feel like a new man like a marathon of the best movies in existence," Freddie said happily late that night as he came back to his and Sam's home. The second he stepped inside, though, he felt a cool gush of cold air hit him square in the face.
"Seriously? She turned it back?" Freddie sighed. "Fine. I can be just as stubborn. I'll just-Are you kidding me!"
Screwed in over the thermostat was a plastic guard box with a giant lock on it.
"Did she really-How did she-When did she-Okay, this is too far!" Freddie sputtered. "Sam! Sam!"
"What?" Sam called from the bedroom.
"What did you do?" Freddie exclaimed as he ran into the couple's bedroom.
"Baby, can whatever you're spazzing out about wait until tomorrow," Sam yawned. "I was just about to go to bed."
"You put a lock box over the thermostat!" Freddie cried.
"Yes…" Sam said. "And?"
"And? Sam, you can't do that!"
"You had it on a gazillion degrees; I was melting!" Sam said.
"Well now I'm freezing!" Freddie snapped.
"So grab some blankets," Sam shrugged.
"First of all, even if I were to grab some blankets, that wouldn't solve a thing because you always take all my covers in the middle of the night!" Freddie pointed out. "And second…no!"
"Well I can't deal with it being so warm in this place!" Sam said.
"I can't deal with it being so cold!"
"You told me when I moved in here I could do whatever I needed to do to feel at home," Sam pointed out.
"I meant buy some throw pillows or fill the shelves in the fridge with your snacks!" Freddie said. "I didn't mean for you to turn this place into Antarctica!"
"Come on, baby, I can think of plenty of ways for you to warm up," Sam smiled seductively, pulling back the blankets on his half of the bed.
"That won't work, Sam! I'm putting my foot down on this one!" Freddie said. "I want the temperature up!"
"Well I want it down!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"No!"
"Ugh, you're being so unreasonable!" Sam yelled, jumping out of bed and pulling on a pair of jeans and sliding her old sneakers on.
"Where are you going?" Freddie asked.
"Out! I'm not sleeping here if you're gonna make it unbearably hot!" Sam snapped.
"I can't make it unbearably hot; I don't have the key to the thermostat!" Freddie argued. "So if anyone gets to storm out of here, it's me!"
"I'm storming out!" Sam said as she raced to the front door.
"Well so am I!" Freddie yelled, stomping out after her.
…
"Come on, Carly…" Sam fumed as she pounded on her best friend's apartment door. "Open up!"
"Sam?" Carly frowned as she opened up. "It's one in the morning; what are you doing here?"
"I need to sleep here tonight," Sam said as she stepped inside. "Is that cool?"
"Uh, yeah, sure," Carly nodded. "But why? Did you and Freddie have a fight?"
"Yes," Sam mumbled, settling down on the couch.
"Well what happened, are you alright?" Carly asked. "How bad was it?"
"I swear, he's such a jerk sometimes!" Sam said, shaking her head.
"Okay, okay, get it all out," Carly said. "Do you need ice cream? Wine? Chocolate?"
"Better make it all three," Sam mumbled.
"Wow, this really is bad," Carly said. "Come on, talk to me. What happened?"
"He-He-I'm too mad to even say!"
"He didn't cheat did he?" Carly gasped. "Holy chiz; I never would've even thought-"
"No, he didn't cheat."
"Did he make a comment about your family?" Carly asked.
"No."
"Did he make some big decision without talking with you first?"
"No," Sam sighed.
"Well…then I can't think of anything else," Carly said. "But if you want to wait to talk about it, we can. In the meantime, since this is apparently going to be a 'bash on guys' sort of night, I need someone to vent to about my own date."
"Oh yeah, that was tonight," Sam said. "With that guy from your gym. Well how'd that go?"
"Terrible! They guy was a total skeez bag!" Carly said. "He started trying to feel me up the second we sat down for dinner!"
"Really?" Sam said angrily. "You should've called me! I would've come down there with the butter sock!"
"Next time I will," Carly chuckled. "But honestly, that was just the start of a lot of terrible things. When we ordered our food he wouldn't even let me get what I wanted. I had to get a salad because apparently it's not 'lady-like' to order chicken parmesan. And afterwards at the movie he told me my opinion about the new Jennifer Aniston flick was stupid!"
"What a jerk!" Sam exclaimed. "Tell me there's not gonna be a second date with the loser!"
"Don't worry, there won't be," Carly assured her, spooning ice cream into her mouth. "Guess we both had to deal with jerks tonight, huh."
Sam looked guiltily down at her lap. Compared to all of that, Freddie didn't seem like a jerky boyfriend at all. He would never make her feel uncomfortable or make her feel like her opinion was stupid. And he would never dare to tell her what she could and couldn't eat.
All he wanted was to keep the apartment a tiny bit warmer, Sam thought to herself. If my biggest problem with my boyfriend is that he touched the thermostat…I'm really lucky. He's the best boyfriend I could ask for.
"I've got to go," Sam said suddenly, getting to her feet. "Sorry Carly, tomorrow we'll have a guy-bashing session to make up for your crummy date, but right now I-I gotta go back home."
"So you're gonna sleep over at your place then?"
Sam smiled. "Yeah. I am."
….
"Stupid Sam…" Freddie mumbled angrily as he knocked on Spencer's door. "Keeping the apartment like an ice box. The nerve of her!"
"Dude, what are you doing here?" Spencer asked as he answered the door. "Do you want to watch more Galaxy Wars?"
"No, I need to sleep here," Freddie sighed. "Sam and I had a fight."
"Whoa, seriously?" Spencer frowned. "You were only back at your place for like, five minutes."
"Well with Sam it doesn't take her too long to get my blood pressure boiling," Freddie said, shaking his head. "So can I sleep here?"
"Uh yeah, sure," Spencer said. "But what happened between you guys? Was it bad?"
"Oh yeah," Freddie nodded. "I was fuming my whole way over here!"
"Do you want to talk about it?" Spencer asked.
"I'm too mad to talk about it!" Freddie exclaimed.
"Okay, okay," Spencer said. "Wow, that must've been some fight. But hey, I'm sort of in the same boat as you."
"What are you talking about?" Freddie frowned.
"I didn't want to bring it up during our Galaxy Wars marathon because, you know, it was Galaxy Wars," Spencer said. "But you know that girl I've been dating? Madison?"
"Yeah," Freddie nodded.
"Well her and I had a pretty big fight yesterday," Spencer said. "I think I'm going to have to break up with her."
"Really? Why? What happened?" Freddie asked.
"Well I brought her over here for the first time," Spencer explained. "And the first thing she did when we got up was laugh at my Bottle Bot sculpture!"
"Seriously?" Freddie said.
"Seriously!" Spencer nodded. "She said it looked 'childish'!"
"Did you tell her you made it on your own?"
"Uh-huh! And she still said it was lame!" Spencer said. "And then she saw my limited edition NugNug poster hanging up and she said that no grown man should have something like that. She said that she wanted it to be gone by the next time she came over."
"But you got that poster at an actual Galaxy Wars convention," Freddie said. "It's a collector's item!"
"And then when we were watching our movie, this spider crawled out on the floor," Spencer said. "And naturally, I freaked out."
"Naturally," Freddie nodded.
"Well Madison laughed at me!" Spencer said. "And not like a nice 'ha-ha' laugh; it was a mean laugh!"
"It was a spider!"
"I know!" Spencer said. "Anyway…like I said; I guess we're in the same boat with our relationships right now, right?"
Freddie sighed. Hearing about Spencer's troubles suddenly seemed to put his whole spat with Sam over the thermostat into perspective. As much as Sam loved to give him a hard time, she was never mean to him. She may roll her eyes at it, but she would always kill any spiders or bugs in the apartment without making him feel like a wuss. And even though she made her feelings on Galaxy Wars and Freddie's other nerdy obsessions perfectly clear, she never went so far as to force him to get rid of his stuff, because she knew how much it meant to him. And she would never criticize anything that he had worked hard on; no matter how 'childish' it was.
Why am I making a huge deal about something as stupid as the temperature in our apartment? Freddie thought to himself. If that's the only complaint I have about Sam…I should be rushing to hug her every time she walks through the door, not storming out in the middle of the night. Who cares if she likes to keep it a little cold? She's the best girlfriend I could ever ask for.
"Um, Spence, I think I'm gonna be spending the night at home, actually," Freddie said, getting to his feet.
"You are?" Spencer said.
"Yeah," Freddie nodded. "I'll see you around, Spence."
…
When Sam burst into her apartment, she looked around and saw that it was still empty.
"Dang it, that's right, he stormed out too," Sam sighed. "Where could he have gone? Oh, I know! Spencer's! Hopefully I can get over there before he-"
Just then the front door opened and Freddie himself walked in.
"Oh good, you are here," Freddie sighed, relieved. "I drove by Carly's building but I didn't see your car so I thought you might've come back home…Baby, I'm sorry about the thermostat."
"No, I'm sorry," Sam said, hurrying over to her boyfriend and letting him wrap his arms around her. "I shouldn't keep turning it down."
"Well I shouldn't keep turning it up," Freddie said. "And I shouldn't have made a big deal of the whole thing like I did."
"Well I'm the one who put a lock box over the dial…" Sam mumbled.
"Still," Freddie said. "The thermostat is such a minor thing in our relationship. If that's really the only problem the two of us have-"
"-We're really, really lucky," Sam finished with a smile. She leaned up and kissed him.
"I love you. Even if you like it too warm."
"And I love you," Freddie said. "Even if you like it too cold."
"Maybe…Maybe the two of us should try to find a way to figure out this whole thermostat thing," Sam said. "You know, in a way that doesn't involve us both storming out over the stupid thing."
"Yeah," Freddie agreed. "Well…since you like it at sixty-four degrees and I like it at seventy-three degrees, we can take the mathematical average of those two temperatures, which is about…sixty-eight-and-a-half degrees. We can set the temperature to that as a compromise?"
"I guess that doesn't seem too unbearable," Sam nodded. "I can live with that. Will-Will it be warm enough for you?"
"I'll be fine," Freddie assured her. "But you don't think you'll get too hot?"
"Nah, I'll be fine," Sam smiled. She leaned up and kissed him again. "Come on; let's go to bed. All this storming out over something ridiculous made me exhausted."
"Hey, ridiculous fights are what we do best," Freddie reminded her.
"Very true, Nub," Sam chuckled. "Very true."
