Despicable

I was hot, though it was cool and breezy outside.

If I had been a cartoon, I would have been depicted red-faced with steam billowing out of my ears.

I had never met a more maddening, insufferable, impossible man in all of my days.

I'd had my fill…My last nerve had been worked.  And he was about to get one hell of an earful!!

So, there we stood, in the midst of God and everyone, glaring at each other in the middle of the parking lot.  My mother would have been so proud.  You weren't supposed to fight, but Lord knows, if you did...you had the grace to do it behind closed doors.

"You are a despicable human being, you know?" I said haughtily.

"A what?" He asked.

"You're. A. Despicable. Human. Being," I said.  Sounding out each word as if he were hard of hearing.

"A what?" He asked, seemingly confused.

I didn't even bothering answering that time, I just shook my hands in the air in frustration.

"I don't understand," he said.

"What? What don't you understand?"

"Aleta, if we're going to have this argument, you need to at least use words I know. I don't even know what despicable means."

I stared at him blankly, blinking my eyes.  

"You don't know what despicable means?" I asked incredulously, thinking full well he was pulling my leg.

"Nope," he replied straight-faced with a shrug.

"It means you're a horrible person...You're a horrible person!" I said loudly.

He smiled. And then I knew.  He'd known what I'd meant all along. He was trying to diffuse the ticking time bomb that was my temper.

I frowned back at him. But all of the frustration--all the anger--had washed away.

He continued to smile, his eyes bright. He was watching me cave.

I couldn't keep a straight face.  I cracked.  At first I giggled, then the giggle turned into a side-splitting belly laugh.

"You're such a dork," I said.

"Yeah, but you love me."

I just looked at him. There was no denying that statement.