Chagrin (noun): embarrassment; a complete loss of courage

“I-I’m so, so sorry!”

His panicked hands skittered uselessly over the disaster, but the drop in his stomach told him it was over and done. The man in front of him was gasping in pain, writhing like a wounded animal as he struggled out of his seat.

He’d spilled burning tea.

Onto the lap of an extinguished professor.

Who happened to be the father of his fiancée.

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Equal looks of horror, coupled with barely-contained humor, froze the profiles of his love and her mother. Although they felt as if their lungs were bursting from holding back laughter, they didn’t dare peep. They were far too familiar with the professor’s notorious temper.

He desperately wiped at the table with a cloth, the scalding liquid burning red imprints into his hand but not agonizing enough for him to accept as atonement. In his nervousness, his hand knocked over a cup of ice water.

Which spilled all over the table.

Again onto the lap of the extinguished professor.

~~~~~

This was the story told by the current professor of organic chemistry whenever a student asked him of his family life. The memory had long been a thing of the past, and he had lived happily ever after with his lovely wife after that, despite a long cold war with his father-in-law.

“We didn’t have great chemistry at first,” he would say.