Caution: Water may be hot

Recap

The last time we talked about Jordan he was engaged and it seemed as though he wasn't allowed to see me or talk to me.  Which, by the way, I never understood considering we never fooled around, expressed feelings for each other, or anything.  We were just friends.  Then I didn't hear from him for a long, long time.  I don't remember the exact amount of time, but it was definitely months.  Honestly, I kind of forgot about him.  To clarify, it's been three years since we've actually seen each other.  This all happened a few years ago.

The Call

I returned home from Italy and was back at work.  I was driving home one night and had a call coming in from, you guessed it, Jordan!  I answered and was a little snotty to him because it had been so long since he called or even sent a text (yes, I put in effort and tried contacting him at the beginning of the drought in our friendship, but gave up after so many unanswered calls/texts).  He asked if I wanted to meet him at a local diner in 30 minutes and I said, "Oh, you can actually see me now?  How do I know you're not going to stand me up?"  He explained that he was no longer engaged and is now single.  I accepted the offer of hanging out.  After all, I'm not the kind of girl that wants you sneaking around on someone.

30 minutes wasn't enough time to go home and change, so I went straight to the diner.  I touched up my makeup in the car (I actually applied lip gloss, that's only for special people or if I'm feeling extra fancy).  I didn't feel like sitting in the car any longer, so I went inside and grabbed a booth in the smoking section.  I ordered a Diet Coke, and nervously smoked a few cigarettes.  He was late.  Go figure.  As I watched the paper burn down to the filter (what I do when I'm nervous), I realized he was going to know I was sitting here waiting for him for so long.  There were three cigarettes in the ash tray and I was stubbing out number four, and I'll admit, that's pretty disgusting.

So, since I live in Emmaville, population: 1, I quickly came up with a plan.  I'm going to put this out there right now: it wasn't a genius plan or anything.  In fact, I'm probably the only person in the world that thinks you look like a loser because the other person was late in meeting you, which "forced" you to chain smoke.  Right, on with the plan!

The Plan

The booth was right by the bathroom.  I could take the ash tray to the bathroom (it was a one-stall kind of thing, so no one would walk in on this scene) and dump out the evidence of me sitting there for so long.  Excellent.

Not.

I dumped out the ashes, decided to actually use the bathroom, and noticed there was smoke coming from the garbage can.  That's right, your favorite genius over here didn't fully put out that last cigarette in all the haste.  Well, sh*t, Jordan just so happens to be a firefighter, so this looks horrible.  I can't be the girl that started the fire in a diner bathroom, what would he think of me?  I'd lose all his respect, and I honestly could never bring myself to tell this story on the news when asked why I started the fire.  

I pulled up my pants and walked over to the faucet, didn't pay attention to anything other than the sign 

Caution: Water may be hot  

 

Yeah, how hot can it get?  I cranked on the water at near-full-speed, got some in my hands and walked over to the garbage.  I took a few seconds to inspect it, there was just one tiny flame and a few burning embers, but it smelled like something terrible.  Do people actually wash their hands?  Because I would think the paper towel in there would be damp and this whole episode wouldn't have happened (yes, I blame 10% of this situation on the dirty people that just throw paper towel in the garbage to make it appear as though they've washed their hands.  I've seen it happen).

Anyway, I go back to the faucet to get one more handful of water for good measure, and hey!  I turned the hot water on!  How hot can it get?  Scorching, actually.  Enough for me to yell a few obscenities and dump the burning water into the garbage (yeah, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but you don't know how it felt).  I turned the cold water on, washed my hands, and threw a damp paper towel into the garbage.  I retrieved the ash tray and my purse, opened the door, just to find a laughing Jordan in the booth I was previously sitting in.  "What the hell was going on in there?" he asked.  What can I say?  All I could come up with was, "Just some stuff.  What's up?"

To be continued...