Excerpt: The Road

It was almost eight by the time he got back to his apartment. He was disgusted that it had taken him three hours, but he kept telling himself it was necessary and would hopefully be worth it. In his apartment, he had no choice but to make the peace offering under the scrutiny of his sarcastic roommate. He picked out a piece of pink construction paper and a piece of black. Those were her favorite colors, he thought. He wrapped the black piece around the candy, squishing the corners to make them not sharp. Then he realized he had no tape. “Do we have any tape?” he yelled, because he wasn’t sure where the roommate was.
“Yeah, duct tape,” came the reply.
Christy’s heart sank. Duct tape was ugly. But it would have to do. He went and found the roll, which was hiding in a shoe box in the kitchen cupboard for some reason, and ripped off a little piece. He taped one side of the bar, and tried to rip off another piece for the other side. It came out terribly long and skinny, somehow. He bit off a piece with his teeth and gummed the other side shut. It did not look very good. He sighed. Hopefully she would see through his incompetence and forgive him.
Then he got a pair of scissors and folded the pink piece of paper in half. If you wanted to make a heart, you cut an ice cream cone in a folded piece of paper. He could do that, he thought.
It was actually harder than it looked, and his heart came out looking more like an anatomically correct heart, but it was truly the best he could do. He ripped off a piece of duct tape, more successful this time, and folded it to make it double sided. Of course it looked better, because he was going to hide it under the heart. He stuck the heart to the black package, and surveyed his work. It looked terrible. Not like an apology at all. He hoped it didn’t send her into some sort of horrified epilepsy.