Let Me Find Your Omega - Ashe Moon Page 0,44

know, I’m really glad you and him get along. I hope you become really good friends. Do you think you’d ever want to date him?”

“Date him?” I said, taken by surprise by her random question.

“Dad seems to really like you. He’s never asked anyone over for dinner.”

“Well, you said he hasn’t made any friends in a while. Maybe he would if he had time.”

“That’s what I’m saying! You’re the first person he’s ever made time for. Here’s my room.”

She opened the door and brought me inside. It was quite a mess, with a pile of clothes on the floor, her backpack thrown next to a desk that was covered in binders and loose papers. On top of all of that were the two divination textbooks I’d given her, which seemed to be the only things that weren’t haphazardly tossed around.

“I’ve been making notes,” she said. “I’ve read the first few chapters already.”

“Already?” I asked, going over to the desk and picking up a scrap of paper with writing scrawled onto it. “I’m impressed.” I read aloud from the page. “Dear Lupin, you are the cutest boy I’ve ever met—”

“Not that one!” she shrieked, and she snatched the paper away. She jammed the letter into her backpack and grabbed another page from the table. “Here! Here are my notes.”

“I want to read that other one,” I teased.

“Well, you can’t,” she said. “I’m still figuring out what to write to him.”

I looked over all the other papers on the desk—homework assignments and handouts from her school.

“You ought to organize your work,” I said. “It’s very important if you’re going to be an agent.”

“I know,” she said. “I try, but it always gets messy again.”

“Having a clean living space and a tidy workspace is crucial to success, especially if you’re going to improve your work at school.”

“School is just so annoying,” she said, flopping onto her bed. “I’m trying to do better. I really am, but sometimes it feels like it isn’t enough. It’s just hard.”

Back in the kitchen, Markos was chopping vegetables at lightning speed, his knife clattering against the cutting board. There was a pot simmering on the stove and something cooking in the oven, and the whole living and dining room had filled up with the smell of roasting meat. He looked up from what he was doing to see Elise leading me over to the kitchen table with her new divination textbook in her hand—she had questions for me.

“Ivan and Jillian went back to their place,” Markos said. “They wanted to cook something up since you’re here. So, what did I say? A mess, right?”

“Daaa—aad,” Elise protested. “I’m going to clean it up.”

We sat down and she showed me some of the notes she’d taken—for only just having been given the book, she was getting the gist of what she’d read very quickly. Despite what I’d learned about her gifts, I was still surprised—and very proud. I’d never planned to take on a student, not so early in my career at least, and even with Elise, it’d never been my intent to do much more than indulge a little girl’s interest. I hadn’t expected her to be this invested—and I couldn’t have foreseen becoming so invested in her.

Or her father…

He hummed to himself as he cooked the vegetables in a frying pan, deftly flicking his wrist to toss them. He leaned over and swirled the sauce bubbling in the pot and sniffed at the air above it. Nodding, he turned back to the frying pan and gave it a couple more flicks. He was in his element, and it made me happy to watch him.

Elise leaned forward and stared at me. “Kole, are you okay? Your face is red.”

I cleared my throat, adjusted my glasses, and sat straight. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little hot.”

“Dad, Kole’s hot! We should open the window.”

“Sorry,” he said, and touched my back as he walked by me to open up a window. “It can get a little hot in here when I cook.”

“Come,” I said, trying to keep my attention off Markos. “Tell me again how to make a wrap of bridging incense?”

I helped Elise study for a while, and the topic of our conversation eventually moved from her notes to what my life had been like in school. I told her stories about my years at the Dawn Academy and what it was like to practically grow up there, never really experiencing life outside of the school until I’d graduated at