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“Oh!” Ellie gasps, laughing as she swats my bicep. “That’s what you get for getting distracted.”
I help her down, and she lands with a bounce, adjusting the shirt to make sure it covers just enough of her to be discreet.
“As if that’s my fault,” I bite back. I playfully lift the bottom of my shirt that she’s wearing, exposing the bottom curve of her ass, just enough for me to draw in a breath. She slaps my hand away.
“Easy, handsy,” she says, her smile giving her away. “You better watch it, or those eggs are going to have something to say.”
My kitchen fills with the scent of grease that can only come from bacon and eggs. Ellie sits patiently on a barstool while I finish cooking and eagerly brings her hands together when I start arranging frying pans and plates on the kitchen island.
Save for the clinking of plates, it’s quiet between us. Ellie’s stomach growls, demanding food on her behalf, and my brows shoot up at the familiar sound.
“You know, I think you need to teach that stomach some manners,” I jokingly suggest. “It doesn’t hurt to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ every so often.”
“You’re lucky I don’t let it speak for me,” she warns. “You don’t want to be there when my hunger makes me angry.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe keep a Snickers bar in my pocket at all times.”
She giggles and reaches for a still-hot piece of bacon.
“Careful. It’s hot,” I warn her. She blows once before biting off half of it. “Or… not, I guess.” Every time I see her eat, I’m surprised by her appetite and her candidness in not hiding it.
“Coffee?” I ask. She nods at me through chews of her bacon.
I brew two shots of espresso and place them between us. We sit in silence as our utensils continue to clink between our silent chews.
“Did you have any plans for today?” I ask, breaking the silence first.
She shakes her head. “I have some studying to do, but it can wait till tomorrow.”
“You want to go somewhere?” I suggest.
“Where did you have in mind?” she asks with an adorably eager smile across her face.
“I usually have a late lunch with my friends on Sundays. The farmer’s market has a pretty nice selection of food trucks and baked goods. And it’s pretty low-key. The crowd pretty much dies down after one.”
“Your friends?” she asks as she stops the forkful of eggs that’s making its way to her mouth.
“Yeah, why? Do you not want to meet them?”
“No. I mean, yes. I just… What if they don’t like me?”
I understand her apprehension. The last time I brought her around a crowd of people that I claimed to be friendly acquaintances, she ended up in tears. But my friends aren’t the same LA crowd that I had subjected her to. I pull her free hand to my lips and kiss the inside of her palm. She uses her fingers to graze the underside of my jaw. “They’ll love you.”
Our morning continues as we eat hungrily and recharge our depleted batteries before readying ourselves for the farmer’s market. Being in my home with Ellie, moving about with ease as if us eating breakfast and getting ready for the day is an everyday occurrence, feels natural. Intrinsic in a way that there’s no adjustment period. We have somehow settled into this role as partners instinctively.
While I finish cleaning up in the kitchen, Ellie showers and dresses in the same clothes she wore the night before. I walk into the bathroom just as Ellie is fashioning a loose braid with her hair, a pileous tip pointing down the center of her back. We again settle into a routine that we don’t realize we’ve established. Moving around each other as she brushes her teeth with the sealed toothbrush I left on the counter, and I reach around her for the towel to dry my hands.
When I walk out of my closet, dressed in jeans and a vintage band T-shirt, I find her waiting patiently on my bed. It’s neatly made and smoothed out to conceal the wrinkles we made throughout the night. I want to mess it all up again, lay her down and kiss her, hold her close to me and run my hands along every curve and cleft of her body, but I don’t. Instead, I bend down to lightly kiss her on her forehead and stand straight, angling my body towards the door.
“You have everything you need?” I ask her.
“Mm-hmm. I just had my purse,” she says, patting the purse sitting on her lap.
We step into the bright afternoon light already warming with the late spring breeze. She picks up her feet, a bounce in her steps, as we walk down the stairs to my driveway. We continue our walk to the passenger side where I open the door for her, and she climbs in.
Once I’m buckled into the driver’s seat, I look at her and smile. “Let’s go,” I say. The stupid grin plastered on my face never leaves the entire drive.
* * *
