My phone buzzes with another message from the team.
Oh great. I’m a meme now.
Sometimes I make it too easy for them, but this is next level too easy for them. I haven’t had a girlfriend the whole time we’ve been at college. Not that she’s my girlfriend.Why am I panicking like she can hear my thoughts?When I told her I was an all-or-nothing person I was mainly joking. I sure as hell wasn’t expecting her to move in.
The idea of her not living with me and the guys is weird to me now, and I’m worried about where we go from here. She says once she sorts things out with Aaron, she wants to move back. It’s hard to understand, especially since she calls this househome.
Anastasia thinks starting our relationship—yes, she said relationship—off in such an intense way might set us up for failure. Then she reminds me at the end of the school year, I’ll be moving to Canada, and she’ll be here alone. She isn’t wrong, but it still doesn’t convince me she should live with Aaron again.
She stirs in my arms, which feels about the right time to start fake snoring, but her eyes snap open, and she immediately looks unimpressed. “Why are you staring at me, you big creep?” She doesn’t give me a chance to respond. “Don’t even try telling me I look beautiful. I can feel dry drool on my cheek.”
“I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
“You are in such big trouble, mister,” she says with a yawn, stretching out all her limbs. I’m not sure if it’s the hangover or anxiety from waiting to be shouted at that’s making my stomach churn, but I’m queasy. “How’s your head? Do you want me to make you some pancakes?”
Well, shit. I wasn’t expecting that. “I embarrassed you and you want to make me pancakes?”
“You embarrassed yourself.” She chuckles. “And I know for afactyour friends are going to terrorize you today. Potentially for the rest of your life, thinking about it. You could say they’re pity pancakes more than anything. You want choc chip?”
She sits up beside me, wild hair like a lion’s mane and sleepy but warm eyes. I can’t help but reach up and cup her face, brushing my thumb carefully where her cheeks are flushed. “What did I do to deserve you?”
She kisses the palm of my hand quickly and climbs over me to get out of bed. “You’re very kind and you’re very pretty.”
“What if I get attacked by a mountain lion and it eats off my face, will you still like me then?”
I can see her trying to suppress a laugh as her lips pull into a tight line. “You spend too much time with JJ. He’s always asking me shit like this. Uh, will you still be kind when you’re faceless?”
I think about it. “Yes.”
“I’ll still like you.”
We pick up this conversation in the kitchen, where everyone is now impatiently waiting around for the pancakes Stassie is making.
“What if he gets bitten by a shark but survives and has a cool scar, but every full moon he becomes a shark. Will you like him then?” JJ asks, flinching when he tries to steal a pancake from the pile Stassie is adding to, and she slaps his hand away.
“When he’s a shark, does he live in the sea or is he in a bathtub that I have to top up and stuff?”
Without hesitation, JJ fires back. “Sea. You just have to drop him off at Venice Beach before the sun sets.”
“Yeah, I’ll still like him.”
Plating up the pancakes and passing them around, she covers her own plate in strawberries and syrup. Protein pancakes are her new obsession because it means she no longer has to tolerate the disgusting taste of protein shakes.
Henry’s been oddly quiet listening to Robbie, JJ, and Sabrina round off scenario after scenario to see where the line is. Henry doesn’t tend to stay quiet for long. “So, what I’m hearing, Stassie, is that as long as Nathan is nice to you, there isn’t anything that would make you not like him?”
She shrugs. “Uh, I suppose? I don’t know. I’m not too worried about him joining the mafia or having to only wear a clown suit for the rest of his life, so I mean, it’s not real, is it?”
“That sounds like you’re in love with him to me.”Everyone’s eyes widen and heads turn to face him at the same time. With a mouth full of pancakes, he looks between us all, confused. “Ww-hhott?”
Does it feel good that Stas would still like me if I had crab hands? Of course. Do I want Henry putting her on the spot over pancakes when we’re trying to wait this out until January? No.
Taking a sip of his water, he clears his throat. “Judging by the way everyone’s staring at me, I feel like that might be one of those things I’m not supposed to say.”
“These pancakes are amazing, Stassie,” JJ says loudly.
“The best,” I mumble, sticking another forkful in my mouth.
She’s concentrating hard on her strawberries, but she can’t hide her pink cheeks.