Page 66 of The Cabin
“Easier than the hard stuff?”
“That’s what I was thinking, too.” She pauses with her goblet partway to her mouth, making her words echo. “The hard stuff is just so fucking…hard.”
“Maybe the past is another way for us to keep trying to avoid the hard stuff, though.”
“Yeah, I’m worried you’re right there, too.” She finishes her wine, stands up. “I’m going to go. I did really enjoy today, so thank you.”
“See you ’round.”
She pauses on the top step, next to me, gazing sideways at me. As if considering saying something. I meet her gaze, and wait. In this light, her eyes are more emerald than jade. She’s filling out, her cheekbones less sharp, the hollows in her cheek less pronounced. Her clothes don’t hang off her quite as noticeably.
“Maybe…” she starts. Stops. Clears her throat. “Maybe knock on the door, tomorrow. With coffee.”
I smile. “Will do.” I raise an eyebrow. “I’m an early bird, I gotta warn you. Probably be around six thirty.”
“It’s okay.” A grin. “Maybe I’ll get up in time to make pancakes or something.”
“I’d like that,” I say.
My heart squeezes. Pancakes are my favorite thing in the world to eat. I don’t know how to say that, though. There’s just so much layered over the topic of something so simple as breakfast food.
She seems to notice, or maybe I’m inventing that. She just nods. Heads down the steps, one last sidelong, hesitant, shy smile at me. “Good night.”
“Night.”I discovered, somewhat by accident, that she was crazy about mimosas. We’d gone ice-skating, and afterward stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall cafe. It was early, between breakfast and lunch, and the place wasn’t serving liquor yet. But they DID have mimosas, and when I suggested we get mimosas, god, the way her eyes lit up. She got wasted on mimosas, and I had to all but carry her home, and I think that’s when I really, truly fell in love with her. They made her goofy. Wine made her sleepy and serious. Whiskey made her cranky. Beer upset her stomach and she claimed it all tasted like ox piss. Why specifically ox piss, I could never get her to say. Tequila she flat out refused to drink, saying she’d learned her lesson the hard way, and wouldn’t elaborate. But mimosas? Silly, a little wild, and so funny.
I shut the book, considering.
It’s still fairly early, yet. Not even ten. I bet the supermarket is still open a bit longer, I could snag a bottle or two of champagne and some orange juice.
I grab my wallet and keys and head out—I catch the supermarket five minutes before close, much to the annoyance of the sullen teenager behind the register. Two bottles of medium-expense champagne, two cartons of orange juice.
Rash, probably, bringing mimosas to breakfast. Shit, she may not even wake up tomorrow. And if I bring mimosas and she DOES love them like Adrian’s book is hinting, what do I say? Another coincidence?
She needs to cut loose, though. She’s wound up tighter than a spring coil.
I want more time with her.
I like talking to her.
I like telling her things about me. I like knowing things about her.
It may not mean anything. It may not become anything but friendship. I’m too scared of what that would look like, feel like. And I’m terrified of what that would be like with her specifically. I just…don’t know how to do that.
But I can do this. One little thing at a time, and just take it as it comes.Lie Just A Little LongerI wake up at five forty-five, on my own, without an alarm.
I have no idea what’s possessing me, but I go with it. Give in to impulse.
Heading out to the kitchen, I rifle through the cabinets until I find the box of pancake mix. Preheat the cast iron griddle I find in another cabinet, mix the ingredients and whisk until it’s smooth. I hear his door open as I’m ladling the first four palm-sized circles of batter onto the griddle, and the cabin is filled with the sizzling of the batter in the oil and the scent of pancakes. While they wait to be flipped, I open my door, right as he’s tromping up the steps; he has a brown paper bag under one arm and has his glass pour-over thing, full of coffee, in the other hand.
His nose lifts, and he sniffs, and his face lights up. “Hell yeah. I love pancakes.”
I grin. “Me too. I didn’t learn how to make them until college, though. My college roommate and still best friend, Tess, taught me. All throughout college, every Saturday, we’d wake up early and make a shitload of pancakes. Half the dorm showed up, usually.”
He hesitates on the threshold, and for some reason, I don’t invite him in. “I, uh, figured I’d up the ante, a little, if you’re making pancakes.”
