As soon as the door closes, Rocket appears from his little corner near the window, shooting the door a disgruntled look on the way to his water bowl. “Yeah, that’s helpful,” I mutter dryly. Then I call out to Skyler, “You can come out now.”
“I told you he was trying to kill me,” Skyler says as he enters the living room, a dramatically grim expression on his face.
I roll my eyes. “You owe me eggs.”
“I’mnot the one who wasted them,” he protests.
“You’re the reason they were wasted.”
He gives a huff of resignation. “Fine.What was he going to make me anyway?”
I peer into the kitchen and take note of the other ingredients Jersey had taken it upon himself to remove from the fridge. I shrug. “Omelet, I guess. There’s cheese and tomatoes and mushrooms up there.”
Skyler’s face screws up. “Vegetables?It’s bad enough he was making me breakfast, but he was making me breakfast withvegetables?”
I can’t help a little snort of amusement. Skyler’s a generally pretty healthy eater, but when it comes to cooked breakfasts, he’s all about the bacon.
“I think the real deal-breaker here is that it was a breakfast that could have killed you,” I point out.
He waves that concern away as though potential anaphylaxis is a mere nuisance. “Well, yeah, but seriously—who makes breakfast withvegetables?”
“Well, technically tomatoes are a fruit and mushrooms are a fungus, so…”
“Try telling the grocery stores that, Jackson,” he says with a pout.
Skyler’s one of those super intelligent people who has a habit of dumbing himself down. It started as a protective instinct when he was a kid, and he’s never quite grown out of it despite his incredible academic achievements. He hates it when I correct him, though, so I’m not surprised to see him getting sulky now.
“Are there any eggs left at all?” I ask. “Or did Jersey Shore waste all of them?”
“JerseyCoyote,” Skyler amends. “Although maybe Jersey Shore is better. I never watched that so it can’t be ruined.”
“Well, if history’s anything to go by I can’t imagine you’ll spare too many thoughts for this guy in the future so giving him a new nickname seems a bit like overkill.”
Skyler shrugs before rounding the breakfast bar and stepping into the kitchen. “True.” He studies the items on the counter, his expression one of obvious distaste. “There’s still two left,” he tells me. “I can make your pancakes and get more later.”
I nod. “Sounds good. I think we’re running low on a lot of shit, actually. We should probably make a list.”
After the insanity of studying for the Bar, Skyler decided to take a couple weeks to regroup before starting his new job, so we’ve been going through groceries way quicker than we would if he were spending his days at school or work. And it’s not just the extra meals he’s eating here; he seems to have developed a hobby of making shit with food. And I don’t mean cooking, or baking. I mean, like…art. If you can call it that. I came home the other day to find him muttering and cursing because the corn syrup he was using for glue wasn’t holding the Dorito and breadstick sculpture in the place he wanted.
On the plus side, he seems to have let go of his apparently hopeless dream of getting Rocket walking on a lead.
“Oh, yeah…now that I think about it, I’m not sure we have any whipped cream left,” Skyler says. “I used it the other day on a project.”
I cringe at the thought of him using a perishable item like whipped cream on one of his “art” pieces. It isdefinitelytime for him to start work.
“I’m sure they’ll be just as delicious without the decoration,” I say with an eye roll. Skyler’s decoration = whipped cream dicks. “Syrup will be fine. Unless you’ve used all of that too?”
“Nah, maple’s too runny. It’d never work as a sticking agent,” he explains, sounding like he’s competing onBaking Impossible. “But are you sure you can handle Mrs. Butterworth’s?” He flashes a teasing smirk. “I can get the potholders.”
I groan and toss my head back. “Fuck, that was one time.”
Skyler’s face spreads into a broad grin, his eyes dancing with levity as he holds his hands up. “Hey, I’m not judging. You know I don’t care…about that, or the David Attenborough special with the baboons, or the Olympic table tennis…”
“Can we please stop listing all the weird things I’ve jerked off to?” I ask with an eye roll.
“It’s not weird,” Skyler protests. “It’s…quaint.”
I offer a skeptical look. “That’s a synonym for weird.”
