“Morning,” I said. “I wasn’t sure exactly how you took your coffee so I just dumped the whole sugar bowl in. Hope it’s okay.”
She narrowed her eyes at me but released her grip on the first mug so she could pull the new one closer to her. I watched her carefully as she took a long gulp, half-expecting her to spit it out and accuse me of trying to poison her, but her lips curled up in what could almost be considered a smile. In fact, I was pretty sure it would have been a full smile if it had been anyone else to offer her the drink.
“Why are you awake?” she asked, her voice more tired than accusing despite the words.
“It’s 9:50 a.m..”
“Exactly. Normal people are still asleep.”
“I’m not normal.”
She gave me a look over the rim of her mug. “You’re telling me.”
I grinned and nudged the plate toward her, choosing not to point out that she was also up at this ridiculous hour. “I brought you waffles.”
She eyed them suspiciously. “Are they poisoned?”
“I hope not,” I said. I half-stood and looked over at the waffle bar curiously. “I don’t see any arsenic on the counter but I suppose you can never be too careful.”
When I sat back down, she was pouring syrup on the waffles in the same way I imagined she put sugar in her coffee—by tipping the bottle over and drowning the food.
“Are you trying to make up for stealing my popcorn last night?” Lilah asked as she picked up her fork.
“Well, I gave it a lot of thought,” I told her as I grabbed my own fork too. “And I decided feeding you is probably the responsibility of a boyfriend.”
She snorted but took a bite, then sighed like it was the first good thing that’d happened all morning. “You’re lucky these are decent, otherwise I’d be calling the whole thing off.”
“Harsh.”
“Honest.”
I took a bite of the waffles as well and managed not to gag over the obscene amount of syrup, although I must not have been very subtle about it because Lilah was watching me with a smile on her face. I still went for more, aiming for the waffles on the bottom that had the least amount of syrup on them, half-surprised that Lilah didn’t dump more on them just to annoy me.
She kept her head down as she ate, which conveniently gave me time to stare at her without her noticing. The late morning light caught on her hair, making the blonde shine like gold and she kept nudging her glasses absentmindedly up her nose, something I found fascinating since I’d never seen her wear them before. She glanced up with a soft smile on her face, seemingly forgetting that I was there.
“Why are you staring?” she asked suddenly, eyes narrowing.
I coughed. “I’m not staring.”
A blatant lie that was easily disproven by the fact that she was sitting right across from me and would easily be able to tell.
“You are.”
“I’m… observing.”
“Me?”
“Well, there’s not much else to observe. Except maybe that groundhog in the hedge over there—I guess I could stare at him.”
“You mean Troy?” Lilah asked. She glanced over her shoulder out the window and smiled as she saw the groundhog.
“You named him?”
“Mh-hmm.” She turned back to her waffles and continued eating like naming the groundhog that lived outside the cafeteria was a completely normal thing that everyone did.
“You named the groundhog Troy.”
Her eyes flicked up to mine. “AfterHigh School Musical.”
