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I started waking up in the morning thinking how interesting it would be to see what happened next.
And somewhere along the way, I noticed I wasn’t asking, Can I talk to you? anymore. I was just talking.
Listening.
Getting surprised, and liking it.
The morning after Krishna’s party, Frankie’s picking at her pancakes, and I’m trying not to care.
She drenched them in syrup. I warned her it was too much, suggested she could put the syrup in a cup and dip the pieces so she’d have the right amount, but she just rolled her eyes like I was the stupidest person on the planet and kept squirting the syrup on.
She ate four bites. Now she’s poking at what’s left. Lifting the edges up with her fork. Dropping them with a heavy, wet splat.
Her hair’s a rat’s nest at the crown of her head, and she’s wearing a nightgown with Tinkerbell on it that pulls too tight across her chest. A kid’s nightgown on a teenager’s body.
I need to get her new pajamas.
I push my chair back and stand, thinking I’ll do the dishes. That way, I don’t have to get annoyed at her for wrecking the breakfast I made.
“What are we doing today?” she asks.
The plan is to sort through our shit. Have a heart-to-heart and work it all out.
Frankie isn’t aware of the plan yet.
I sit back down.
She’s eased one elbow onto the glass top of the table and dropped her head so the pancakes are exactly at eye level. I watch as she lifts up the whole stack of pancakes and drops it down. Splat.
“You’re gonna get syrup in your eyeballs doing that.”
She glances over to check if I’m serious.
“I thought we’d just hang out at home,” I say. “If it’s okay with you.”
“All day?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You’re always making me do stuff on the weekends.”
“I thought you liked doing stuff.”
“Not all the time.”
“We don’t do stuff all the time.”
“Every weekend.”
“You don’t want to do stuff with me?”
She shrugs. Forks up her pancakes four or five inches. Splat.
“Was it fun over with Rikki and Laurie?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“What movies did you guys watch?”
