Page 93 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer

I blink. “Is this a kink thing or?—”

“It’s a safety thing,” he says, mouth quirking despite himself. “Dino nuggets, not grand gestures. Errands, not adventures. Boredom saves people.”

“That is… extremely unsexy,” I say.

“Wait till you see my pancake game.”

I don’t want to smile. I do anyway.

He releases my arm but keeps his fingertips at my elbow like a question. “You shower,” he says. “I’ll start breakfast?

“I’ll start coffee,” I counter. “You start breakfast. Both like pancakes. Jaq likes them with chocolate chips; Jill prefers them without. And they need to be the chocolate chips shaped like hearts but tell them they’re stars, not hearts. They’re too cool for hearts.”

Noah’s eyes crease with a memory of a smaller kid who asked for extra hearts. “Got it. Hearts we don’t call hearts.”

We give each other a look that feels more like a handshake than a kiss. Terms agreed. Temporary. Precious.

I stand on my toes and press my mouth to his jaw, quick. “We’re okay for today,” I say.

“For today,” he echoes. “I’ll take what I can get.”

forty-six

. . .

Elle

By the timeI hit the kitchen, he’s already got the griddle out, the coffee brewed, and the radio low. The house smells like fresh coffee and melted butter and a version of my life I’ve been missing so hard I don’t quite know how to identify it. Noah wears low-hung sweatpants that show off that same v-line muscle I ran my tongue along just hours ago, and not much else. He flips a pancake with his wrist and gives me a look like, “don’t even try to pretend you’re not impressed.”

“I live to be impressed,” I deadpan, pouring coffee. “You remember we have two children who are like night dwellers in people suits before eight a.m., right?”

“Can’t wait,” he says, and God help me, he means it.

The twins stumble through the front door moments later. Jill appears first, hair a beautiful disaster, hoodie trailing from her fingertips behind her like a queen who lost the parade map. “Why did I think an in-school suspension was better again?” she grumbles, then stops dead. “Holy shit.”

“Language,” I say automatically.

Noah lifts the spatula in salute. “Morning, Jillybean.”

“Daddy.” Her cheeks go pink. “Are you— Did you— Why—Are you making pancakes?”

He waggles the spatula. “Suspension special.”

“Is that a thing?” she asks, suspicious and hopeful.

“It is today,” he says.

Jaq shuffles in next, hoodie up like the sunlight offends them. They clock the pancakes, the coffee, Noah at the stove, and inhale like a vampire who just found an open artery. “We doing… breakfast… together?”

“If by ‘we’ you mean ‘you inhaling food like a python,’” I say, “yes.”

“Can mine be—” They stops, corrects mid-sentence like they rehearsed it in their head. “Uh, round.”

Noah’s mouth tips. “Super round,” he says gravely. “Absolutely not heart-shaped like Jilly-beans. Those are for saps. No offense, bean.”

Jaq nods, satisfied. Jill snorts. I pretend I’m not melting into a puddle on the tile.

We eat at the table without phones. Someone (me) burns the first batch of bacon reminiscing about the night before, and someone else (Noah) claims he prefers it that way. Jill tells a story about a girl on the swim team whose mom keeps a spreadsheet of eligible boys with columns.