He nodded, held out the plate. "Yeah."
"Why?"
He grabbed a plate for himself. "Because you've already brought me into the croutons and candied ginger crazy. Why stop there?"
"All right," I muttered. "But I don't want your opinions."
"We'll see how I do with that," he replied, shuffling toward the first table. "I'm assuming you're a pain in the ass about eggs."
"And you'd be right." I grimaced at the trays in front of us. "Eggs Benedict is a fast nope. The sauce is too rich for my stomach and I don't do ham. Hard-boiled eggs are obnoxious."
"Obnoxious? That's bold."
"They're just not an option. Soft-boiled can be okay, but hard are a nightmare. Scrambled eggs, sometimes, but I have to see them. I can't order them off a menu. I have to confirm they're not too runny, too cheesy, too herby. Any of that would be a bad idea." I reached for the serving spoon. "I can give these a try."
When I was finished, Sebastian took the spoon from me and heaped scrambled eggs on his plate. It was an actual heap. At least three eggs could be accounted for in that heap. "You could be more of a pain in the ass. I expected a lot more from you."
"Just you wait." I laughed as we moved to the next table. "Breakfast potatoes break my damn heart. Every time. I want them to work for me, but they are almost always sautéed with onions and garlic, which is the quickest way to put theirritablein irritable bowel."
"Ew." The server stationed behind the table cringed with her entire body.
"Sorry," I said to her. "We have no filter when it comes to these things."
"With some things, we do," Sebastian said, staring at my legs. "Not with inflammatory gastric diseases."
"This is why we can't go places," I said to him.
"We can't go places because you're picky. Don't change the game while we're playing it." He hooked his hand in the crook of my elbow. "So, no potatoes for you," he said, depositing some on his plate. "Bet we're skipping the sausage and bacon too."
"I can't even think about sausage," I said, moving ahead to the breads and pastries. "That kind of grease is terrible for me, but the idea of sausage—no." My shoulders pitched up as my stomach twisted. I had to press a hand to my mouth. "I can't even think about it."
"Do not cause your own problems, Shap," he called. "We are not doing that today."
"All of this is a problem I've caused," I said. "It's not lost on me that the reward for twenty years of disordered eating is a lifetime of disordered eating, but now it's mandatory, and instead of counting carbs I count dried cranberries so I don't overdo it on acid, all because of what I did to myself in those twenty years."
"I'm all for wallowing in misery, but you gotta knock that shit off," he said. "We all fuck ourselves up in a million different ways. That we live to tell about it is the reward."
"Are you always this moral in the morning?"
He dragged his gaze from my sandals to my shorts and up to my loose top. "Not always," he said.
Since I didn't know what to do with that heavy stare, I gave the pastries a thorough study, using a pair of tongs to peer at items I didn't immediately recognize. "None of this," I said, wagging the tongs. "If I'm not reasonably certain of the ingredients, there's no way I'm touching it. That's how I get fucked over by sneaky citrus."
Sebastian stared at the small helping of scrambled egg on my plate. "One more question. No, no, it's not going to give you anxiety," he said when I glared at him. "Calm down. I just want to know what you usually eat in the morning if this is the only thing you've chosen so far."
"Two, please." I gestured to the basket of white bread and the server dropped the slices into the toaster. "You know when you're young and you get stupid drunk on something like Jäger or some silly kind of schnapps? And you puke up your skeleton the next day? And forever after that, you can't go near that alcohol because if you even smell it, you'll remember the trauma of vomiting up your entire rib cage? That's how it is for me with, well, shit, everything. The list of foods that do not have traumatic memories attached—self-inflicted or otherwise—is short. That leaves me with oatmeal, porridge, yogurt, poached eggs. Maybe some stewed apples. Raw apples require a ton of energy to digest. There's a lot of toast."
He reached for an almond croissant, bit into it while I went on inspecting the baked goods.
I pointed at a basket of grainy bread. "Too much going on here. I love it, actually, but all those seeds would make my belly gurgle for at least two days. Do you have any idea what it's like having a gurgly belly for the entirety of a ten-hour surgery? It's an experiment in seeing how many times I can say, 'It's fine. Don't worry. Really, it's fine. No, I don't need anything. Just ignore it.'"
"You're not picky. You're specific. There's a difference."
"Picky is a simpler word for it," I said as we moved toward the French toast and Belgian waffles. He chose one of each.
"Okay, what about fruit? Ruin my day and tell me what you hate about all of these."
"I love raspberries, but the seeds are a disaster. I can't even look at blueberries without getting reflux. Melon and pineapple are good in small quantities. Same with mango and papaya. Guava and I don't get along. Bananas are supposed to be safe but are not, and grapes fuck me up." I added a few strawberries to my plate along with some cantaloupe. "Plain yogurt with honey is my better-day breakfast. It always does me right after a bad day."
