The song continued and I could see Zac was thinking. I sometimes wish I could be inside his brain for a day, to see how it all works in there. To see the connections it makes and . . . and . . . sometimes I wish I knew how he felt about me. He’s never told me that he loves me spontaneously. It’s usually in response to me saying it, and I’ve often wondered if he just says it back because he thinks it’s what he’s supposed to say. He struggles to show affection, even though I know he feels it. I just wish he was able to express it more often to me. It’s weird, Zac is the one person in my life that I invest more in than anyone else, and I’m not even sure how he really feels about me.

We arrived at the Kirstenbosch gardens five minutes before two, and I was barely able to contain Zac, he was so excited. He jumped out of the car and I had to grab him by the shirt before he raced into traffic.

“Cars!” I said quickly as I yanked him to a stop.

“Cars,” he repeated.

“You wouldn’t want to be squashed like a pancake.”

He turned and looked at me. “People can’t be pancakes.”

I widened my eyes at him playfully. “You never know.”

He folded his arms. “Impossible. Pancakes are made of eggs and flour and we are made of blood and flesh and bones.”

“Mmmm . . . good point. I guess bloody, bony pancakes would taste gross.”

“What would taste gross?” a familiar voice asked.

I turned. It was Jake. Messy hair blowing in the breeze. Casual T-shirt with a small hole at the collar, which for some reason, made him seem even hotter to me. Imperfect. He was holding Lisa’s hand. She beamed at Zac, and he looked away quickly, his cheeks going bright, tomato red.

“We were discussing how gross it would be if pancakes were made from people,” I said.

Jake laughed and then gave me a smile. Killer smile.

“I can’t escape weird conversations with you.” He sounded amused. We had an in-joke already. An actual in-joke.

“Eeeew. Why, why would you want to make a pancake from people?” Lisa shouted the one why. She had this unique way of talking in which some words reached out from the sentences and punched the air.

“It’s impossible to make pancakes from people,” Zac quickly jumped in, moving over to Lisa and talking at her intensely. I watched with a smile as Lisa offered up some ways in which that might be possible, Zac rebutting each one with huge hand movements as he talked loudly and quickly. Jake moved over and stood next to me.

“Never a boring moment,” he said playfully.