Page 19 of Rules of Association

“You’re definitely a little shit,” he retorted.

“And you still want to eat with me?” I asked. But my own eyebrows pulled low at my question. What was wrong with me? Asking such an open question like that? I may as well have asked if he really thought I wasn’t stupid, like he said earlier. Both were terribly revealing questions.

Thankfully, he didn’t pick up on the vulnerability, or at the very least he didn’t comment on it. He was instead already turning toward the door and calling over his shoulder, “C’mon. I’m thinking pancakes.”

“Cee?”

I jolted out of my daze, jerking at the sound of my current Connor rather than the memory of that more reserved version of himself I’d gotten to know when we first went out to eat pancakes at a dinky beach diner. When I blinked my eyes back into focus, I noticed the laptop had been sat back on my lap and Connor had disappeared from beside me.

“Did you hear me?” a deep voice called from the kitchen.

“No.”

“Were you even listening?”

“No.”

“Are you hungry?” he asked patiently.

“No.”

“Cee…” he sighed.

I guess that was a red flag. I wasalwayshungry.

Sighing myself, I said, “Okay, maybe a little. What are you making?”

“Here,” his voice made me jump again as he appeared next to me and then in front of me, leaning over to set down a plate.

My face contorted in confusion as I studied it. “Pancakes?”

“Yup.”

Sitting up straighter, I looked at the little round flapjacks with a re-inspired appetite. “But I thought I smelled meat earlier.”

“I packed it up. This seems better tonight,” he said as he rounded the coffee table and plopped down onto the ground next to it. My heart pounded, painful and yet the best kind of pain. The emotional kind. I had to swallow it down to stop myself from overflowing with it.

Pancakes were our thing. He’d stopped making his probably protein rich, in-shape person meal so that he could serve me pancakes instead.

Scooting forward, I let my knees hit the coffee table as I prepared to dig in but paused at the strangeness of these pancakes. Curiously, I fluttered a gaze at him. “Do you want to explain why they’re blue?”

“You like blue,” is all he said. Like it was as simple as that.

I felt my stomach warm from the inside out, giving me this sense of belonging and rightness that only Connor could. A feeling he’d been causing to stir within me since that very first smile. I never allowed myself to look too much into it, and I wasn’t going to start today. Pushing the tingling, buzzing in my gut aside, I narrowed my eyes.

“Aren’t you forgetting the eggs and ham?” I asked.

He flicked an amused gaze up at me before continuing his organization of the table. Plates on place mats, forks on the left, knives on the right, water in front. To me he tsked. “Those would begreeneggs and ham, Ceci. You really should’ve paid more attention in school.”

“In what, kindergarten?” I laughed. He shrugged, but I could see the ghost of a smile on his face too.

Always feeling more stable in my emotions after joking around, I picked up my fork and tried to dig into the pancakes without using my knife. It was already hard enough eating with my non-dominant hand, cutting with it was not looking that much better

Seeing this, Connor set his own fork and knife down and reached over to swipe mine away from me so he could cut up my stack. I watched as he cut the blue cakes into small, even squares, rotating the plate every so often to adjust his cutting angle. The action sent an unexpected wave of gratitude through my chest, making me stare at him silently as he worked.

When he leaned back over to set my plate in front of me, he caught my expression and sighed heavily. Leaning his thick forearms against the table he said, “Okay. What do I have to do to wipe that look off your face?”

Stop being perfect.I thought immediately but stopped myself.

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