Tim knew he'd screwed up. It had been wrong and he'd known that even as he did it. But Abby hadn't been there when he'd gone down to ask if she'd found anything on the laptop. His stomach had grumbled as he'd walked through the lab…and then he'd seen it. The chocolate cupcake had been sitting there as though it were in a display case, illuminated by the fluorescent lights of the cooler. It looked so heavenly and his empty stomach begged him to take just a nibble. That nibble became a bite and then a gulp and before he'd known it the cupcake was gone, leaving him with an empty box and telltale chocolate on his lips.
She still wasn't talking to him. One would think he had gotten Caf-Pows banned or had ripped Bert to shreds, rather than simply eating a cupcake. Not that he could blame her; he hadn't just taken her cupcake, but had also betrayed her trust. Now he needed to gain it once again.
"Abby!" he called as she stormed past him. She didn't slow her pace. "Abby!"
"I'm still not talking to you, McGee!"
Luckily for him, she'd just purchased a new pair of platform boots and they weren't broken in yet, so it wasn't hard for him to catch up to her and stop in her path. "Abby, I'm really sorry that I ate your cupcake."
"Sorry isn't good enough, McGee."
"I know, but please, let me apologize! What I did was wrong and my hunger was no excuse, but I admit that I messed up. I'm only human! You're not really going to hate me forever, are you?"
"Well, no," she admitted with a small pout. To be honest, she didn't hate him at all. She had been miffed, but it was hard to be mad at him.
"Look, I'll buy you another one. I'll buy you two or three if you want! Just anything that will make you stop being mad at me."
Her eyes alit. "Anything?"
Tim was beginning to regret his choice of words, but he wasn't about to backtrack when he'd finally made some headway. "Anything," he assured her.
"Make me another one."
He lifted his eyebrows, not sure he'd heard correctly. "Make you another one? Another cupcake?"
"Yep! The bakery lists all of the ingredients that go into the cupcake. So make me another one and bring it to me tomorrow."
The thought of baking a cupcake made Tim uneasy. The most baking he'd ever done was putting a Pop Tart in the toaster and sometimes he even managed to screw that up. Still, he heard himself say, "Yeah, sure…I'll have it here tomorrow."
"Good!" she chirped brightly, her mood visibly better. "Oh, and McGee?"
He looked up, pushing away thoughts of whether or not he could buy one and disguise it as having been baked. "Yeah?"
"It'd better be the best cupcake I've ever eaten!"
