There’s a moment where I see her wanting to ask—her tells are too easy to identify by now. But she holds back and then nods and picks up a piece of paper from the counter. “Anything you want me to add to this shopping list before I go?”
“Dr. Pepper?”
She rolls her eyes and swats at me as I come around the island to get started cooking. It’s a bit of a running joke between us, becauseshortly after I was diagnosed with an allergy to cinnamon when I was maybe two years old or so, I started obsessing over every can of Dr. Pepper I saw. She says she thinks I just liked the color of the cans or something, since I was much too young to drink it, but because of my newly diagnosed allergy and the uncertainty around exactly what foods and beverages contain cinnamon, she banned Dr. Pepper and all other types of pop from the house.
“Seriously, is there anything you need?” She slips her arm around my waist and hugs me, and I look down at her and shake my head.
“No, I don’t think so. I’ll text you if I think of anything.”
“Okay,” she says, and she gives me another squeeze. “I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
She seems to hesitate for a second, but then releases me from her hug, pats me on the arm, and grabs her keys and purse off the table. She’s out the door and gone before I even have the griddle out for the pancakes. Then, it’s quiet.
Which is bad for my mind.
It wanders.
It wanders way back to the summer before that jackass Patrick showed up in Nico’s life. We were ten, and there was one weekday when I got to sleep over at his house. That didn’t happen often because his mom worked a lot; usually we had sleepovers at my house. But this particular time I remember because we built a fort out of couch cushions in his living room, and that was where we slept. And in the morning, we woke up to the smell of pancakes and eggs. I remember Nico jumping up and grinning and shaking my shoulder. Telling me to get up because his mom just made the best breakfastever.
That was the first time I saw him smother his whole plate—eggs andall—in syrup.
And the first time my heart raced to see his smile.
What I wouldn’t give to see that smile again this morning...
Just as I finish cooking, I hear the door to the downstairs bedroom open with a quiet creak, and my eyes dart up. He doesn’t see me right away. He just steps out into the hallway, tucking his gray polo shirt into his slacks, and he starts shuffling in my direction. When he reaches the end of the hallway, he finally looks up, and then he freezes when he sees me.
There’s no smile on his face, which just means I’m going to have to work to put it there, and yet my heart races all the same as he blinks and holds my gaze.
Did he read my texts? I wish I knew.
I clear my throat and try for a smile myself. “Hey.”
He hesitates but then continues on his way toward me, running a hand through his hair. “Hey. You’re up early.” There’s a note of something to his voice and clear tension in his shoulders, and I wish I could take it all away. I wish he had no reason for that tension to even be there in the first place.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” I admit.
He stops at the kitchen table, and his eyes finally shift from me to the stovetop. He stares at the food for several seconds, then looks back up at me. “Yeah, I couldn’t either.”
Guilt rams into me, and I frown as I drop my eyes. I know he doesn’t really like it when I apologize, but I need to own this, so I make myself look back up at him. “I’m sorry. I feel like I wasn’t a great friend yesterday, and I hate that—” I pause as he shakes his head, the pain in his eyes now clear and deep.
“It’s not you,” he mumbles, gripping the chair in front of him. “It’s me. I’m fucked up, Alex. Mylifeis fucked up. That’s not your fault.”
“Maybe not, but I feel like I made things worse instead of better yesterday, and I didn’t mean to. So I’m sorry,” I repeat.
He frowns and holds my gaze for another few seconds. And god, my heart can’t stand it. His eyes are so beautiful that I let myself get lost for the briefest of moments.
I want to just come right out and tell him. I want to tell him how beautiful he is, how much he means to me, how much I hate to see him hurting. I want to tell him all of that and more. And maybe,maybeI would if we weren’t short on time this morning.
But he has to leave in maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, and he still has an entire plate of syrup-drenched breakfast foods to eat.
So instead, I say the words silently—theI love youthat I know is true—and then I smile.
“I made breakfast.”
He’s still looking at me, his beautiful eyes studying me as he bites his lower lip, and it’s only after another few seconds that he finally blinks and shifts his gaze to the food on the stovetop. “I... could eat.”
