It may not mean anything. It may not become anything but friendship. I’m too scared of what that would look like, feel like. And I’m terrified of what that would be like with her specifically. I just…don’t know how to do that.

But I can do this. One little thing at a time, and just take it as it comes.

Lie Just A Little Longer

I wake up at five forty-five, on my own, without an alarm.

I have no idea what’s possessing me, but I go with it. Give in to impulse.

Heading out to the kitchen, I rifle through the cabinets until I find the box of pancake mix. Preheat the cast iron griddle I find in another cabinet, mix the ingredients and whisk until it’s smooth. I hear his door open as I’m ladling the first four palm-sized circles of batter onto the griddle, and the cabin is filled with the sizzling of the batter in the oil and the scent of pancakes. While they wait to be flipped, I open my door, right as he’s tromping up the steps; he has a brown paper bag under one arm and has his glass pour-over thing, full of coffee, in the other hand.

His nose lifts, and he sniffs, and his face lights up. “Hell yeah. I love pancakes.”

I grin. “Me too. I didn’t learn how to make them until college, though. My college roommate and still best friend, Tess, taught me. All throughout college, every Saturday, we’d wake up early and make a shitload of pancakes. Half the dorm showed up, usually.”

He hesitates on the threshold, and for some reason, I don’t invite him in. “I, uh, figured I’d up the ante, a little, if you’re making pancakes.”

He sets the pour-over on the stump-table by my rocking chair, and reaches into the paper bag, pulls out a bottle of champagne. My heart does a flip, and then hammers when he produces, next, a carton of orange juice.

Mimosas.

It feels too direct. Like he knows things about me he shouldn’t. I mean, it’s just mimosas. It’s a pretty common morning thing for a lot of people. He can’t know the joyful memories I have of mimosas.

Paris, with Adrian, sleeping in late and waking up to sip mimosas on the balcony with the Eiffel in the distance.

Weekend brunches in college with Adrian, Tess and Clint, Elmore and Tanya, and Kyle and Tanner, and we’d all crowd around a too-small table in our favorite brunch haunt and eat piles of fruit and pancakes and waffles and omelets from a chef station, and we’d get absolutely clobbered on mimosas and laugh ourselves stupid.