Page 51 of The ABCs of You & Me

“What can I say?” I shrug, walking up to her and pulling her into my arms. “I knew what I wanted from a young age.”

Sophie leans into me in response, and I swear my heart skips several beats. Nothing about this feels fake right now.

Easter breakfast is a chaotic affair at my parents’ place. It’s a “feed yourself and find a place to sit” kind of situation. My plate is sparse aside from the extra-large helping of my grandmother’s Swedish tea ring. My uncle eyes my plate with contempt; he’s allergic to pecans, and despite never admitting it, I’m convinced my grandmother refuses to change her recipe to spite him. As if I need another reason to love the woman.

Sophie smiles and does a little happy wiggle as she takes her first bite of the pastry. When she looks up and sees me watching her, she shrugs.

“It’s really good,” she mouths before going in for another bite.

Before I know it it’s time to head to the Hores’ for brunch, and for the first time in as long as I can remember I’m a little sad about leaving a family gathering. Sophie made the whole experience tolerable, enjoyable almost. The only thing that wasn’t was the way my uncle’s eyes would stay on Sophie for a little too long.

“Check your coat pocket,” my grandmother says as she squeezes me harder than anyone her size should be able to.

“Why?”

Her answer is a simple pat on my arm as she turns to give Sophie an equally tight hug. “It was so nice to see you again before I die,” she says with unnerving joy.

“Oh.” Sophie laughs nervously. “I’m glad too.” She looks up at me over my grandmother’s head, and I shake my head. I’m pretty sure this is a dig at me for avoiding family stuff.

“I’m sure you’ll see her many more times before that day, many years in the future.”

“Especially if whatever that thing you made is involved.” She smiles brightly down at my grandmother who pulls her back in for another hug.

“Your uncle is a real hodenkobold, eh?” Sophie says as she’s pulling out of my parents’ driveway.

“He does have certain hodenkobold qualities, yes,” I grumble.

“Hey.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand, her touch instantly making everything better. “You don’t believe anything that man says, right?”

I shrug because sometimes I do. “Sometimes I think I should have gone to teachers’ college or pushed myself to study something more like, I don’t know, engineering or medicine.”

Sophie looks like she smelled something bad. Her face is set in a grimace—a beautiful grimace sure, but a grimace nonetheless.

“Well, I can’t see you in something like engineering, and you hate blood so medicine is out.”

“Why not engineering?”

“Don’t you hate math?”

“You remember I hate math?” I ask, surprised.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Walsh. Throw a dart, and you’ll hit at least three people who hate math.” She smirks out at the road.

“True. Do you hate math?”

“Math to me has always been a bit like spinach or broccoli. I see the benefits and I use it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

“You don’t like broccoli?” I ask.

“I have a complicated relationship with broccoli,” she says as she concentrates on turning onto the road to her parents’ place.

“Go on,” I encourage.

She sighs. “Well, I don’t like when it’s in a stir-fry because it’s always overcooked and mushy. But I do like it in a soup where it is arguably mushy. I like it lightly steamed so it’s bright green, but I hate it raw.”

“So the cook on it has to be extremely precise?”

“Exactly. There is a fine art to cooking broccoli to my very exacting standards.” I file the information away in the mental folder I have for things about Sophie Hore.

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