Simon laughed. “I knew you’d notice. Secret ingredient.”
“What’s the secret?”
“Cardamom,” Simon said without hesitation. I knew he wouldn’t keep it a secret from me.
Not that there was much point, since all my previous attempts to make pancakes had ended in disasters ranging from batter all over the floor to setting a kitchen towel on fire. As a result, I was banned from trying. Probably for the best.
I nodded, taking another bite and searching for the new taste, taking the time to appreciate it again. That gave me another few seconds of not thinking about anything else, which I was grateful for.
“I’m going to strangle both of them with my bare hands,” Simon said, licking chocolate off his thumb. I watched his tongue swirling around the tip of it with a completely normal amount of interest for a perfectly platonic friend.
“Please don’t,” I said. “They send you to prison for attempted murder and you can’t make me consolatory pancakes in prison.”
“Who said anything aboutattemptedmurder?” Simon asked, eyeing the remainder of the stack of pancakes.
I pushed the plate toward him. He always let me eat all of them, which I wished he wouldn’t do. He’d made them. He ought to enjoy them.
He pushed them back toward me.
“They’re—”
“—for me,” I finished for him. We’d had this conversation dozens of times. “I can’t eat them all.”
“I’ll wrap the rest up for lunch. You might even take a lunch break, that way.”
I huffed. Ididtake lunch breaks. At least once or twice a week.
It still counted if I took them at my desk. And lunch was comprised of coffee. Coffee was one of the major food groups, after all.
“Do you know I love you?” Simon asked wryly.
I looked down at my plate, heat rising up the back of my neck. “Yeah,” I told my pancakes, licking chocolate off my lips as I cut another bite. “Yeah, I do.”
I knew Simon loved me. He was the one person in my life who’d never made me doubt that.
If only he loved me a little differently.
That was why I’d moved out. Because he didn’t, and was never going to, and I couldn’t take being so close to what I wanted every single day while knowing I’d never have it.
“You’re still not murdering my sister,” I said, spearing a piece of pancake with my fork. “Or Corey.”
“Only because you say so.” Simon moved to the sink, turning on the faucet to rinse out the bowl he’d used and clean the spatula.
“You can get from the second of July to the fifth off, right? Thursday to Sunday?”
Simon didn’t turn to face me, but I could still see the way his brows furrowed, mouth turning down in confusion.
“I guess?” he said. “It’s short notice but Abdul has been hinting that if I don’t take some leave soon he’ll break my kneecaps so I have to.”
Abdul was Simon’s boss at the museum. I’d only met him once and he’d given me the impression of being maybe the cuddliest man on the face of the Earth. He’d made me a cup of tea while I’d been waiting for Simon to finish something up and talked at me about exciting new developments in the scholarship on mirrors in the Classical world.
Ifhewas starting to threaten Simon to take some time off, I felt way less guilty for asking him to.
“Why?” Simon continued. “Are we doing something for the Fourth?”
“The wedding,” I said. I hadn’t told him it was so soon, had I? “You have to come with me.”
3