"Oh Joey dearest!" I cried, reaching for the remote control in vain. I knew I would never be able to reach it, but it had the intended effect on Joe. He entered the room and immediately retrieved it for me.
Looking exasperated he collapsed unceremoniously onto a cushion next to my good foot on the floor of my living room. We had decided to watch our favorite movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, today and Joe had made us a huge bowl of popcorn.
"When does that stupid thing come off again?" he asked for the millionth time reaching to grab a gigantic handful of popcorn. "Only one more week!" I smiled happily. He grinned cheekily and stuffed all of the popcorn into his mouth. "Then can I stop rushing around and doing everything for you?" he asked spitting bits of popcorn everywhere.
"Why Joey, I'm hurt that you don't care enough to help poor little old me when you were the one who got me into this situation in the first place" I pouted, deciding to ignore the popcorn-spitting. "And how exactly did I get you into this situation?" he asked confused reaching for another handful.
"Well I do believe that you were the one that INSISTED we go sledding" I accused trying to get a handful only to have him yank the bowl away. "Yeah, but you were the one who decided to go down without Nick" he argued.
"Oh yeah, like it was my fault that your sissy brother wouldn't ride the sled with me!" I nearly shouted, getting mad quickly. "Okay Rachel, let's calm down now, we don't want to make your leg any worse" he stated, clearly worried. "Oh right," I yelled defensively, "because how would you ever live then, having to take care of me while I was injured!"
"Rachel calm down I didn't mean anything by it" he cried, obviously worried that I was getting too upset. "You don't even care about me, do you Joe! Do you!" I shouted spitting venom with each word. "Of course I do," he stated quietly," more than you know."
That floored me.
I immediately forgot what I was even angry about in the first place.
"What?" I asked softly. "I said 'more than you know'" he repeated looking me in the eyes for the first time. There was an emotion in them that I had never seen there before and it looked a heck of a lot like love.
But Joe could never love me I reasoned. I broke our eye connection before I did something stupid like jumping into his lap and kissing him until we were both seeing stars. But come to think of it, that wasn't such a bad idea either.
"I really need to get home," he said quietly, sounding disappointed, "I promised Nick that I'd help him with his homework. "Oh yeah, okay well bye," I stated lamely," see you tomorrow I guess." "Yeah, I guess," he whispered softly," see you tomorrow Rachel."
And as I watched him walk out of my front door I couldn't help but feel that I had just made a majorly huge mistake. But, hard as I tried, I couldn't figure out what it was. I silently went over our conversation in my head. Joe could never like me, never. So that couldn't have been what had bothered him.
Could it?