16

Hypothesis; To earn some space, you must know your place.

My car died again. This time around, I had a feeling that it was for good. I also had a feeling that Daniel would be very happy about this improvement. To think I'd just repaired it.

Today was the first day in a long while that I'd begun without my chocolate latte and all of it was no thanks to Chanelle. She'd shown up, banging on our door at six thirty this morning and as soon as Carol had opened it, she'd stormed in and ripped off my blanket from around me.

All my efforts to ignore the ruckus had been killed in that one instant and I'd sat up, swearing death on sight. But as soon as I saw who it was, I just settled for curses.

"You have one week left, Noah," she'd said. Her lips were coated with a nude matte lipstick and my brain was coated with exhaustion. I'd spent the night before adding the finishing touches to the portrait of my dad I was painting so now, all I had to do was turn it in.

"One week to do what?"

Stupid question, but at that time, my brain was too tired to care.

I could literally see the smoke leaving Chanelle's ears when she replied, "one week to get Daniel back into my arms, you nitwit!"

That had kicked my brain right into gear. The first words that left my lips were, "Oh shit." Followed by a more relaxed, "Actually, it's a week and four days."

Chanelle hadn't found my words funny, and now, tugging a bag of decorations into Daniel's apartment, I was beginning to see why. I had exactly one week—and less than four days—to get Daniel to fall for me or else, I could begin kissing twenty five grand goodbye.

"Come on, Freshman. I'm sure those muscles aren't for nothing," Daniel teased me, wearing a stupid smirk. I didn't like the effect he was having on me so I huffed and heaved the plastic sack of decorations over my shoulder.

"Fuck you, Daniel," I sneered at him, earning myself a chuckle. The grocery bag swung forward and back as he led me to his apartment door. "How come I get the heavier bag and you get to carry chocolate and butter around?"

He bit his lip, suppressing another laugh while I tried to extinguish him with my glare. "No reason. I didn't even think you'd make it this far without your arms popping off." While I was still recovering from the after effects of his audaciousness, he stopped to smile at a man who was heading towards us. "Hi, Mr Albert."

The man, who looked in his seventies, greeted him back with a smile. "Great job with the fan, Daniel. It's as good as new."

I watched with wide eyes as the two hugged and Daniel smiled fondly. "It's no problem."

Mr Albert turned his gaze to me and simply smiled then turned back to Daniel. "You shouldn't let your girlfriend carry the heavy stuff. It's not very gentlemanly."

Daniel just shrugged. "She's not my girlfriend." To this, Mr Albert's lips formed an 'o'. "Noah here is way too hard-headed for my poor self to handle."

As Mr Albert turned to me with a chuckle, I observed three critical facts. One; Daniel was a fat liar. Two; He helped old people. How absolutely un-bad-boy-ish. And three; He had corrected the man about me being his girlfriend.

For some absurd mind-boggling reason, that last fact had my heart dropping to my toes.

"Well, I'll leave you two to it then. It was nice running into you, Noah."

I simply smiled at Me Albert while Daniel waved him goodbye and we continued on our way. Neither of us said anything to each other till we got to his apartment door and he twisted the knob.

It was a madhouse inside. Jase was trying to scoop a spoonful of Cheerios into his mouth and Tae was positively trying to stop him from doing so. While hanging off his back. Hyun, in one corner, was shovelling red velvet cake into his mouth—and was that Gatorade on the couch?

In all my days of knowing Daniel Brighton, I had never seen him this shocked, pissed, and irritated at the same time. He exhaled and spoke in a chilling tone.

"What the fuck is going on here?"

All heads snapped to the front door where Daniel an I stood. Tae immediately got off Jase, the latter dropping the bowl of Cheerios to the floor in panic. It landed on the floor and skirted off to the side, leaving a trail of milk and cereal in its wake. It was pure luck that the bowl was plastic.

Hyun by now, had disappeared away from the sitting area, probably trying to exclude himself from the hell that was about to break loose.

They were all shirtless.

"I thought you guys were meant to be distracting Asher." Daniel addressed the guys, stepping into the wrecked apartment. I shut the door and placed the bag of decorations beside the couch.

"He already had plans with Natalia so we left them and came here," Tae said with a shrug. He shifted his gaze to me and smiled. "Hey, Noah."

"Hi," I greeted back.

"When was this?" asked Daniel.

Hyun materialized from God knows where, joining the conversation with his chocolate-covered mouth. He grinned and waved at me. I waved back. "Thirty minutes ago."

Daniel's eyebrows met his hairline as he let out an unbelieving huff. "It took you guys thirty minutes to turn my apartment into this?"

The smart television on the wall had game options displayed on it so I concluded that they'd probably intended to play a game at first. There were shirts thrown everywhere; on the couch, on the glass trophy case by one corner and across the TV. Daniel's apartment was painted grey and had a modern theme to it, save for the havoc and madness, it looked pretty decent.

"I just wanted some Cheerios," Jase groaned. "I haven't had anything to eat in the past eight hours and this moron." He paused to smack Tae upside the head. The latter rubbed the back of his head on effect. "Wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. My stomach is killing me."

Daniel shook his head. "You know what? You and you." He pointed to Tae and Jase with a frown. "Clean up this mess. And you." He turned to Hyun. "Better hope you left no dishes in the sink."

Hyun shrieked and dashed to the kitchen, probably to clear the dishes he'd left in the sink. Who knew Daniel was so organized?

"And as soon as we're done here, you three are leaving to fetch Asher so we can get this done with and you can go ruin your own dwelling places. Got it?" The two boys in the living room nodded and got to work while Hyun shouted in affirmation from the kitchen.

I could see why Daniel was captain. He was organized, decisive, and pretty good at bossing people around.

My hairs stood on end when he took my hand. "We'll start with baking the cake and leave decorations to these guys."

With a curt nod, I scurried behind Daniel into the kitchen where Hyun was rounding up the dishes and arranging them in their rack. My eyes wandered around in awe.

Of all the qualities in this world I did not expect Daniel to know one thing about cooking. But much to my chagrin, there were different sizes of pans hanging off their pins, a neat stove, sink, working area, and an island the size of my bed back in the hostel.

Colourful vegetables were arranged in a basket at the center of the island right next to the knife holder. And next to the microwave on the counter, there was a cake mixer.

All in all, Daniel had more kitchen equipment than my mother.

I felt someone nudge me and when I finally picked my jaw up off the floor, I was greeted with the proud smile on Daniel's face. "Impressed, huh?"

Struggling with words at first, I managed to string something understandable. "You cook?"

Hyun snorted. I'd totally forgotten he was even there. "You should taste his red velvet cake." His grin could blind an angel. A hand patted his stomach as he flashed it carelessly. "It's all gone, but you should try it sometime. Gold I tell you."

Daniel rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, facing Hyun. "What are you still doing here? The apartment won't decorate itself."

The blonde-haired guy reduced his grin to a smile as he stepped back with his hand up in surrender. "Fine, fine. I'll leave you to create your masterpiece."

As soon as Hyun was gone, Daniel snapped to me with a grin. "Grab two aprons from there." He pointed to the drawer next to me and I followed his instructions. Passing him one of the plain black aprons, I put the other on. It was way too big for me so I triple tied the apron around my waist making him laugh and put his on.

Ironically, I knew nothing about cooking. The only food preparation I could stomach was brewing coffee and the coffee machine did most of the work. All I had to do was push buttons. I'd realized that cooking wasn't my forte the day I'd almost burnt the house when I was thirteen.

And I was microwaving popcorn.

"Here," I heard Daniel say. He wiped his hands against a towel after washing them and tossed it to me like an expert basketball player. While I wasn't a sports person like him, I did a pretty decent job of plucking the towel out of the air and dropping it to the counter.

With my hip, I nudged Daniel to the side, washed and dried my hands and turned to face him, saluting like I was in the navy.

"All ready, sir. Would you like me to put on the stove?"

"We're baking a cake. And even if you were to preheat the oven, it won't be now. When we haven't even gotten all the ingredients ready." Daniel chuckled under his breath and pointed to the grocery bag on the island. "You're on egg duty, Freshman, since you're obviously terrible at cooking."