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Not waiting for her to answer, I make my way to the kitchen and start a pot of coffee in the drip brewer. The kitchen is still sort of a mess. While I’m waiting for the coffee, I drop the congealed mass of dried-out spaghetti noodles into the garbage and follow that with the crusty remains of the sauce.
By the time the coffee is done, I have the kitchen mostly back to order. Everything is where it should be, but I can’t find the cookie sheet. It’s not in the fridge, and not in the sink so…
When I open the oven door, and acrid wave of burnt garlic fills the kitchen. I slide the cookie sheet out of the cold oven, knocking what used to be bread loose from the surface with my knuckle, spraying black crumbs to the floor.
“Oh… I forgot about that,” she admits meekly as she shuffles into the kitchen.
“No big deal,” I shrug as I deposit the black masses in the garbage. “Unless you needed to save them for something? You want to start a construction company? I think they would make good bricks.”
“Har har har,” she drawls, plopping into the kitchen chair with a groan. “You’re hilarious this morning. Feeling good, are you?”
Taking the coffee pot off its hot plate, I pour her a cup and slide it on the table, shrugging. As she pulls it toward her, her robe slips off her shoulder and reveals that kissable corner of her neck again.
“Frankly, I feel amazing,” I admit as I sit across from her. “You don’t feel amazing?”
She shrugs shyly, casting her eyes away. “Should I? I did just get dumped.”
Her words rock me back a little like an ocean wave picking a shell up off the sand. There are a thousand things I want to say. Yes, you should feel amazing. That was amazing. We are amazing, don’t you see that?
“He didn’t deserve you,” I say simply.
Unlike me, who does deserve you, obviously. Hello?
Her eyelashes flutter as she forces herself to look up at me. She frowns sadly, clearly guilty and confused. I know I should sympathize with her, but I don’t know why she’s being so stubborn about this. If she would just take a moment to think about it, she’d see this is actually perfect.
“Clay, I’m so sorry,” she murmurs. “I don’t know what came over me. The wine, maybe? You were being so sweet to me. We never should have—”
“—oh, of course not. Don’t worry about it.”
The words fall out of my mouth before I even have time to think them. Just reflexive instincts, just saying man things to man up the situation. No big deal. Who cares? Not this man.
“Really?” she replies hopefully. “Because you mean the world to me, Clay, you really do. I would hate to mess this all up right before graduation and everything.”
I wave my hand in the air dismissively. “It was just sex, Penny. No big deal.”
She bites her lower lip, her chin trembling slightly. I vividly remember kissing her the last time that happened, taking all that pain away by holding her in my arms. She should let me do that again.
“Because you are literally the best thing in my life,” she continues, clearly unaware that she’s stomping all over my heart, marching back and forth like she’s doing military drill moves.
“Back at you, Pen,” I smile confidently.
“No, seriously!” she insists with a wide smile. “I seem to be able to screw up every other relationship. But not this. We are just too perfect.”
“Absolutely,” I agree, hoping she will just let it go.
She sighs deeply, settling back with the mug cradled between her fingertips, drinking the coffee slowly. It’s just black now. Two years ago, we might have had half-and-half and sugar. Now we hardly ever have either, and we just got used to it that way.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever find anybody as awesome as you, Clay,” she says into the mug. “And to be totally honest, the sex was… Amazing?”
She looks at me directly, her cheeks going bright pink as she stomps gleefully all over my heart. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
“Pretty good, yes,” I nod tensely.
She rolls her eyes. “Pretty good? Are you kidding me? It was outstanding, Clay, and you know it! That thing you did with your fi
ngers? When you—”
My hands go up automatically. Stop.
