“Yeah, the early days are rough.”
She dangles a second mug at me. “You want some?”
“No wine glasses?” I measure out the water and dump it into the mix, then go digging for something to stir it with.
“Even if there were, I’d rather drink my wine out of a mug that recognizes my awesomeness.”
Ah. She’s found theclassy as fuckmug.
“Red or white?” I ask.
“Red.”
“Like a bold red or a wussy red?”
She crosses the kitchen back to the table and the waiting wine bottle. “Like the only kind of red I have here.”
“Aren’t you supposed to have white with pancakes? Match the colors or something?”
“The sprinkles have red in them.”
“That’s like saying you have to have white wine with steak if it has a butter sauce on it.”
“One, I take my steak plain and as close to raw as possible while not being refrigerator temperature on the very rare—heh—occasion that I can afford steak, and two, no wine for you if you’re going to be picky about it.”
Mental note: get her a steak dinner when we’re out of this.
Other mental note:don’t be a fucking creeper. “I’m not being picky. I’m being informed.”
“Bottle’s right here, bud. You can read the label yourself. I’m simply going to enjoy it for what it is, which is a wine that my friend thought I’d like.”
Normal.
We have achieved normal.
Complete with me having fantasies about playing footsie beneath a black-clothed table at a fancy steak restaurant where her hair is swooped up and her eyes are sparkling and she’s laughing at all of my jokes and reaching across the table to touch my hand with a promise of more touching to come?—
Fuck me.
I turn my attention back to the task at hand and hit the pan with a sprinkling of water. It sizzles.
Pancake time. “Do you get tipsy on wine?” I ask her.
“Only when I want to.”
I’m grinning, but it’s short-lived.
I have pancake batter.
I remembered to put the sprinkles in.
I have a skillet.
I do not have butter.
And this skillet looks like it hasn’t been nonstick since the 1980s.
Aspen takes her first sip from the mug, and a smile blossoms on her face.
