The car falls quiet, and he doesn’t say another word, even when we get back to the house. There is still so much tension between us, and this time it isn’t me who’s running away from it.
He tries to bail on me almost as soon as we get back inside and I’m secured.
“Stay,” I tell him when he gets to the door.
His back straightens, and his hand is on the knob, but he lingers there. Warring with himself.
“I’ll make pancakes.”
I don’t know why I say it, only that it seems like the thing to do. Because who can resist pancakes?
“It’s not breakfast time,” he says.
“They’re an anytime food, really.”
My voice is weird. And his is too, when he says, “okay.”
He sits down at the kitchen table, and I get to work. Rory’s kitchen is well stocked. He might be a perpetual bachelor, but he’s one who can cook.
Which comes in handy, it turns out, because I have no idea what I’m doing.
After splattering batter onto my face and burning the first two pancakes, he gets up to help me. And he makes it look so easy. His are golden brown and perfect.
Just like him.
“How’d you learn how to do that?” I ask.
“I moonlight as a pancake chef,” he teases.
But when we sit down at the table, he tells me the real reason.
“My mammy is a good cook. I liked to help her.”
There is reverence in his voice, and I wish I could say the same. My mother never cooked a day in her life.
We keep talking about pancakes, because it’s easy, and it keeps either of us from bringing up the elephant in the room. He tells me about some of the other things his mammy used to cook. Stews and traditional Irish breakfasts.
And then we’re both finished, and the awkward silence is back.
He’s getting ready to bolt again, but I can’t let him.
One of us just needs to suck it up and talk about this.
“I’m still under construction,” I blurt.
He gives me a look, and I try my best to explain.
“I think I know why you’ve been avoiding me.”
He tries to argue, but I don’t let him.
“You have every right not to trust me,” I say. “All I’ve ever done is lie to you. And I won’t deny that I set out to hurt you. That I wanted to make you pay for fucking up my plans.”
He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, listening to me quietly as I ramble on.
“I’d like to say that I’m not that girl anymore. But we both know that would be another lie. I’m still a work in progress. But things are different now. I’m different. And I can’t think of anyone else on this earth that I’d want to be different with than you.”
He sighs and plows a hand through his hair, looking anywhere but at me.
