out refused to drink, saying she’d learned her lesson the hard way, and wouldn’t elaborate. But mimosas? Silly, a little wild, and so funny.
I shut the book, considering.
It’s still fairly early, yet. Not even ten. I bet the supermarket is still open a bit longer, I could snag a bottle or two of champagne and some orange juice.
I grab my wallet and keys and head out—I catch the supermarket five minutes before close, much to the annoyance of the sullen teenager behind the register. Two bottles of medium-expense champagne, two cartons of orange juice.
Rash, probably, bringing mimosas to breakfast. Shit, she may not even wake up tomorrow. And if I bring mimosas and she DOES love them like Adrian’s book is hinting, what do I say? Another coincidence?
She needs to cut loose, though. She’s wound up tighter than a spring coil.
I want more time with her.
I like talking to her.
I like telling her things about me. I like knowing things about her.
It may not mean anything. It may not become anything but friendship. I’m too scared of what that would look like, feel like. And I’m terrified of what that would be like with her specifically. I just…don’t know how to do that.
But I can do this. One little thing at a time, and just take it as it comes.
Lie Just A Little Longer
I wake up at five forty-five, on my own, without an alarm.
I have no idea what’s possessing me, but I go with it. Give in to impulse.
Heading out to the kitchen, I rifle through the cabinets until I find the box of pancake mix. Preheat the cast iron griddle I find in another cabinet, mix the ingredients and whisk until it’s smooth. I hear his door open as I’m ladling the first four palm-sized circles of batter onto the griddle, and the cabin is filled with the sizzling of the batter in the oil and the scent of pancakes. While they wait to be flipped, I open my door, right as he’s tromping up the steps; he has a brown paper bag under one arm and has his glass pour-over thing, full of coffee, in the other hand.
His nose lifts, and he sniffs, and his face lights up. “Hell yeah. I love pancakes.”
I grin. “Me too. I didn’t learn how to make them until college, though. My college roommate and still best friend, Tess, taught me. All throughout college, every Saturday, we’d wake up early and make a shitload of pancakes. Half the dorm showed up, usually.”
He hesitates on the threshold, and for some reason, I don’t invite him in. “I, uh, figured I’d up the ante, a little, if you’re making pancakes.”
He sets the pour-over on the stump-table by my rocking chair, and reaches into the paper bag, pulls out a bottle of champagne. My heart does a flip, and then hammers when he produces, next, a carton of orange juice.
Mimosas.
It feels too direct. Like he knows things about me he shouldn’t. I mean, it’s just mimosas. It’s a pretty common morning thing for a lot of people. He can’t know the joyful memories I have of mimosas.
Paris, with Adrian, sleeping in late and waking up to sip mimosas on the balcony with the Eiffel in the distance.
Weekend brunches in college with Adrian, Tess and Clint, Elmore and Tanya, and Kyle and Tanner, and we’d all crowd around a too-small table in our favorite brunch haunt and eat piles of fruit and pancakes and waffles and omelets from a chef station, and we’d get absolutely clobbered on mimosas and laugh ourselves stupid.
That trip to Germany with Adrian when we were promoting Pocketful of Posies. The hotel’s room service had been middling at best, but their mimosas came in giant goblets with fresh-squeezed orange juice and were stupid cheap, and we’d spend half the morning still buzzed from mimosas with breakfast.
“Uh. Pancakes need flipping,” Nathan says, shaking me from my reverie.
Crap. I smell them, and they’re about to burn. I fly over to the stove and flip them as fast as I can, and most of them are fine, but one of them is charred to inedibility.
“Sorry,” I say.
“No worries. I don’t mind them a little crispy.”
I snicker and tilt the burnt pancake so he can see it. “I think this may be a little bit beyond merely crispy, Nathan.”
His eyes widen. “Oh. Well, yeah. That one, maybe.”
I laugh, and plate the three that are edible, toss the ruined one in the trash, and ladle four more