“Nate?” Irene’s voice breaks my concentration.
I give her my most charming smile. “Irene, my lovely lady, do you please have any cakes today?”
She chuckles. “Oh, stop it.” Her cheeks tinge pink ever so slightly. “I have one ready now, it’s only a vanilla sponge. Will that do?”
Placing my hand over my heart, I smile. “Irene, you have saved my life.”
She packages the cake in a box, and I secure it in the front seat with the seatbelt before setting off for Hayleigh's.
When I get there, her blinds are already open, and I stop for a moment to watch her through the window like a total creep. Ilove the way she moves about the place. She looks content and happy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for her.
I press the bell and wait, and after a few minutes, her silhouette appears through the frosted glass. She opens the door, and a beautiful smile blooms on her face.
“Nate, you have a key from decorating and doing this place up. Why don’t you use it?”
I shake my head. “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t have the key anymore. It’s in your drawer in the kitchen.”
She opens the door wider and gestures for them to come in. “Why did you do that? You can keep it.”
I hand her the box instead. “I don’t want it yet. I’ll wait until you ask me to officially move in with you, then I’ll have the key.”
She cocks her brow. “Oh, really? Who says I’m going to ask you?”
I boop her nose with my forefinger. “I do. Eventually, you’ll see how irresistible I am, and you’ll ask me. Long haul, remember?”
She laughs at that and rolls her eyes. “What’s in the box?”
I toe off my boots and place them on the mat in the hallway before hanging my coat on a peg. “Meet me upstairs with two forks.” I take the box back from her hands and take the stairs two at a time.
She shouts after me. “This better not be a weird sex game, Nate.”
I can’t help the laugh that bubbles up. “Kinky.”
I dive on her bed, the duvet is thick and bounces up around me. It smells of her, a reminder that I don’t get to see her every day, I don’t get to hold her every day, but in the small moments that I do get to see her, I cherish them.
I only hope what I’m going to ask her this morning doesn’t fuck that balance up.
Hayleigh arrives upstairs with two forks and two bowls. She walks to the edge of the bed and nods her head to the side. “Moveover then.” She hands me a bowl and fork before pointing hers at me. “I know I said I wanted to eat cake in bed, but I swear to you that if you get crumbs in my sheets, I will disown you. I don’t need crumbs going places where they have no business being.”
I hold my fork up in surrender. “I solemnly swear to never crumb up your sheets.”
Her face screws up, and she shudders. “That sounded so wrong.”
I cut some of the cake off and place it in her bowl, and do the same for me, and then we sit back against the headboard and quietly eat our bowls of cake for breakfast.
Ticking off another thing on her list.
When we finish, she sets our bowls aside and cuddles into me. I stroke lazy trails down her back. “So, tell me why you wanted to add eating cake in your bed to your list?”
She giggles. “Oh my god, I haven’t told you?” I shake my head, but realise she can’t see me, she carries on anyway. “I used to live with Emmy, not long after being in Roselake, and this one particular day, she was feeling down and not herself, and I wanted to do something nice for her. So I went out and bought a load of snacks and a birthday cake, but it wasn’t her birthday or anything, it was reduced because it was going out of date.” She stops herself through giggling.
I wait until the wheezing stops and find I’m laughing along because she’s laughing. She composes herself to carry on. “So I come home, and we put old movies on, and I spread out the snacks over her bed because that’s where she was, and I climbed in.”
At this point, I can barely hear what she’s saying because she’s laughing so much. “Anyway, she picks up this cake that I’ve bought, and she asks me why I bought it.” She makes that noise like a tea kettle again, flapping her hands in front of her face, all the while she’s fighting to control herself.
“S-so I tell her, it was a reduced birthday cake and s-she s-said, Hayleigh, it’s a b-birthday cake a-alright…” She trails off, clutching the sheets, wheezing.
I can’t help but join in laughing alongside her. “W-what was it?”
