“Not the spaghetti. It needs to be tossed.”
“Noted.”
While she’s relaxing, I root through her pantry and refrigerator. There’s not much. Unsurprising, considering the hours she’s worked since I’ve been here. Most of her meals seem to be from the hospital or takeout.
I do find a handful of frozen pancakes, some sausage, and a few other random odds and ends that I manage to turn into a respectable breakfast for dinner in under ten minutes. And then, I’m piling it all on a cookie sheet and bringing it back to bed, stopping just long enough to grab her book off the coffee table.
She’s curled up against the pillow, scrolling on her phone, when I step back into her room.
“Before you laugh, you should know that breakfast for dinner is my speciality.”
I set the feast at the foot of the bed and join her.
“What kind of a monster do you take me for? Breakfast for dinner is sacred.”
“Thank fuck. I’m not sure I could overlook it if you were a pancake purist.”
“Never. It was a Tuesday tradition in our house for years.” She reaches for a pancake, sets a sausage on top of it and rolls it up before dipping it in syrup. “It was always our busiest night with activities—my brothers both had practice or training and I had games. My grandma would pick me up from school and take me to the gym.
“We’d be the first ones home so I’d help her make dinner so that when everyone else got home dinner was ready.”
I turn that over in my head as she takes another bite.
Breakfast was the first thing I learned to cook. It was quick and easy, and the staples were cheap enough that I could usually sneak them without my parents noticing. An egg and a few pieces of bread going missing while they were passed out wasn’t enough to draw their attention, unlike that time I got busted making mac and cheese after school without asking.
“Is that how you and your grandma got so close.”
Sticky syrup beads at the corner of her mouth and I swipe it away with my thumb then hold it up to her. When she’s finished chewing, she wraps her lips around it, sucking it off.
“Partially. She helped take care of me a lot—trucking me to practices and open gym when my parents had conflicts. They couldn’t have done it without her, and I loved our time together. It made me feel special.”
“Did it ever bother you that your brothers got more time with your parents?” I ask.
She rolls another sausage up then dips it, letting the syrup drip off.
“Sometimes, but my brother’s didn’t get Grandma the way I did. So it was a trade off.”
“Ah, so you’ve always been like this?”
Aspen pauses mid-bite. “Like what?”
“Selfless to your own detriment.”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal. They did their best and for the most part it didn’t bother me.”
I drop my gaze to my plate, cutting off another piece of pancake before glancing back at her. “But sometimes it did?”
She shrugs one shoulder. “Sure. Once in a while I wished I could have my mom or dad there if I had a really good practice . . . or a bad one.”
Her smile fades around the edges. “But it was easier for everyone that way. My practices were shortest and closest to home. I had the least gear and was always inside.”
“Easier for who?”
“For everyone.”
“For everyone except you,” I say quietly.
Aspen scowls over the rim of her water glass. “This is not the relaxing night you promised.”
