Page 38 of Ghost of Ex-mas Past
I grab a handful of chocolate chips and sprinkle them on the pancake, followed by walnuts. He flips it, and I wait.
Across the kitchen, Charlie’s gaze catches mine. He’s facing me, drinking from a mug. He hasn’t showered, I don’t think, and when he lowers his coffee, my eyes snag on his mouth.
“Hey Bea,” Dad says over his shoulder. He’s sitting across from Charlie, facing away from me.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Know why they call them pancakes?”
I brace myself for a dad joke. “No. Why?”
“’Cause they’re cakes made in a pan, duh.”
Charlie chokes on his coffee and Jasper chuckles next to me.
I put my hands on my hips, plate against my thigh. “What, no dad joke? I’m totally disappointed in you.”
“That was a dad joke!” he insists.
“That was, like, the opposite of a dad joke.”
Dad half turns in his chair. “Fine, you want a dad joke? Why was the pancake arrested?”
Oh no, what have I done?
“Psst.” Jasper has my pancake on his spatula.
I hold out my plate and begrudgingly ask, “Why, Dad?”
“Unwaffle activities.”
I can’t help but grin, and while the rest of the table groans or chuckles, I walk over and take the empty chair next to Lance. “Morning, everyone,” I say, purposefully not looking at Charlie.
Unfortunately this means I’m looking directly across the table at my roomie who knows that I didn’t come to bed last night.
She smirks at me. “Good morning, Bea,” she calls in a singsong voice. “I sleptso welllast night. How did you sleep?”
Dad and Garyare the only two who want to ski today, so they go off to the resort together. Kayla finally wakes up and Jasper whips up more pancakes for her. Mom asks if anyone wants to go for a walk with her. We all say no, and she goes by herself. Susan pulls out an approximately nine-thousand-piece puzzle, and my sisters and I spend the morning fighting over edge pieces and puzzle strategy while Charlie has his laptop out on the kitchen counter.
I glance over at him a lot, unable to help myself. It shouldn’t bother me that he’s not taking part in the puzzle—everyone’s allowed to do their own thing. We don’t have to be together 24/7. After all, Jasper’s playing games on his phone on the couch, and Lance has disappeared to who-knows-where. Probably the bedroom to take some time to recharge his introverted batteries away from my loud, obnoxious family.
Charlie is probably working. But maybe he’s looking at customer data and advertising reports.
A thought occurs to me—what if he doesn’t know the data is being abused?
Finally, I give in. “What are you doing over there?”
He sighs and rubs his face. “Emails, mostly. Also, boring stuff.” He smiles.
“What kind of boring stuff?” Yvette asks from where she’s leaning over the puzzle, trying to figure out which blue ocean edge piece is the right blue ocean edge piece out of probably a hundred.
“Someone released a paper on argument mining last month and I’m just now getting around to reading it.”
Argument mining?What the hell does that mean?
“You know, the holidays are supposed to be time off,” Kayla teases.
“Tell that to the fifty-sevenimportantemails that have come into my inbox this morning.”
