“Sounds good,” she agreed. “I’ll get that right in for you.”
“Kimchi pancake?” Millie echoed curiously. “What’s that like?”
“It’s, if you can believe, a Korean pancake filled with sliced Kimchi,” I explained teasingly, trying my hardest not to sound like a jerk. “They slice it up really thin and mix it in batter. I’ll be sure to share some with you.”
She flipped her luxurious brown curls over her shoulder, propping her chin against her chin.
“That’s sweet, thanks,” Millie replied. “Caleb said I’d like you. He also told me you work in the English department?”
“I’m department chair,” I agreed.
“What’s your specialty?” she furthered. “Do you study American or British literature?”
“British mainly,” I explained, finishing off the last of my beer. “I’m stuck in the Shakespearean age, so ignore me if I use a dead word now and again.”
Beside her, I noticed how Caleb shifted in his seat. That happy of look of his flashed with something I hadn’t seen in him before, and over the table, his free hand inched closer to hers.
“Last time we hung out,” Caleb remarked, “he used the word delfic.”
“I meant ambiguous, but I’d been studying seventeenth century texts all afternoon!” I defended myself with a laugh.
Caleb’s smile corkscrewed to one side. “Which is about when that word died.”
“And all the stars you study have been dead for thousands of millennia, right?” I countered teasingly. “Who of is really stuck in the past?”
“Now, play nice, gentlemen,” Millie teased. “I didn’t come dressed to referee.”
“Oh, don’t mind us,” Caleb insisted with a pat of her arm. “We always like trying to one up the other.”
I added, “It’s why we were so good training together.”
“Training?” Millie echoed.
“Triathlons,” he explained. “Five Iron Man competitions later, and we’re somehow still getting along.”
“We haven’t killed each other yet,” I joked, coaxing a laugh from Millie.
As the waitress returned, we picked our selections of meat and vegetables before digging into the plate-sized pancake dish. Millie enjoyed her two slices as well as hearing about our first years training together and even a little about my time in Britain. When she mentioned her year working in Ireland, her faint lilt made sense.
“Maybe I can help you next, Warren,” she remarked between sips of chilled sake. “I will say, it’s going to be hard to leave Caleb behind.”
“Do you enjoy astrophysics?” I wondered.
She shrugged. “I enjoy lots of things, stars… Shakespeare… this sake.”
“And what about Caleb have you learned?” I asked with a chuckle. “What skeletons were hiding in his closet, so to speak?”
“Oh, Caleb doesn’t have any skeletons,” she said, her voice softening and her eyes sweeping over the man beside her. “He didn’t have any room for them until recently.”
“Really?”
“Did you know that Caleb kept half of his books in a filing cabinet?” Millie told me conspiratorially.
I turned on my old friend, shocked. “Books belong on a shelf or in the library.”
“Exactly my point,” Millie agreed.
“I was going to get around to displaying them,” Caleb defended himself. “My office was just… messy.”