Tell Me You'll Miss Me | ✓

21. pancakes

I watched the steam rise from the hot chocolate Nora had just slid onto the table.

We were both overdressed considering that the location we'd wound up in was the nearby diner. Nora had assured me it was the place to go for something she called "cheer up pancakes," even though I insisted that Dad probably made the best pancakes of at all. Then again, maybe my perspective on his cooking was skewed since the pancakes were a constant win and everything else he made tended to turn out very hit-or-miss.

She looked down into her own drink. I couldn't tell what it was – it smelled like vanilla but looked like coffee. Her eyelids were painted a glittered silver that I couldn't seem to stop staring at. This definitely hadn't been what she'd expected, and I felt terrible. Not only were Summer and I in the middle of something, totally messing up the evening, but Nora had been greeted by an embarrassing, weeping mess.

Nora's teaspoon clattered gently against the ceramic saucer, and her sparkly eyelids flicked up and hid themselves. She locked eyes with me and I made an effort to put a smile on my face for her, lifting the hot chocolate to my lips and taking a tentative sip of the slightly too-hot beverage.

"These pancakes are gonna blow your mind," Nora promised me. "Girl problems, boy problems, new school problems, new town problems, they can fix it all," she laughed. "I spent most of my free evenings here while I was settling in. I probably paid the employees' wages for the year."

My smile grew with a hint of genuine amusement, but I knew I wasn't doing well at faking being great company, let alone a great date.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't wanna," Nora began, "but if I were you, I'd get it off your chest before the pancakes come and you forget what you were even bummed out about," she teased, fixing me with a sympathetic look.

I shifted in my seat, because the problem with talking about the issue was that there were only two people I ever talked about this stuff with. One was Summer and the other was my father, who was probably texting Summer about all of the drama right now. I wasn't sure I knew how to open up to anyone else.

"It's-- fine, really," I grimaced.

"Well, it will be," Nora kindly offered. "Post-pancakes."

She grinned at me in a way that made me a little sad. Admittedly, I was already sad, but what I mean is that she only made it worse by a drop or two. I realised, looking at her perfect grin, that she was still the beautiful out-of-my-league model babe dream girl she always had been, but also that I didn't really want to date her.

This was nice. It really was – she was one of the prettiest people I'd ever seen, and she was here sat opposite me, buying me pancakes and being sweet to me, but I couldn't imagine a world where we were a legit item. A quiet voice in the back of my brain said I was a dummy, because I was literally on a date with a model and yet also figuring out that I didn't even really want this and, like, who does that?

Luckily I didn't have to listen to that voice for long, because my mouth started working all of a sudden, as if of its own accord.

"I don't know if pancakes can fix this. I've never been upset with Summer, not really, and then I found out--"

"Oh," Nora interjected, her eyes wide enough that I was worried she'd just remembered we had a final due in by the end of the day, or that she'd left her hair straighteners turned on back at her house or something. I halted my venting, waiting on an explanation, but all Nora said was, "Wait, no, keep going, I just--"

"I know you know," I explained, something like exasperation in my voice. "She asked you to ask me out, right? That was, like, literally the next thing I was going to say."

"Well, sure," Nora said, "but I didn't know that was what made you upset. Are you guys for real fighting over this?"

I almost wanted to put my head in my hands. What was this? Us dating? We weren't fighting about that – we were fighting about how she was sneaking around behind my back, as if I shouldn't get to have a say in these things.

I took a deep breath and tried to muddle all of my frustrations into one coherent thought.

"We're fighting because she didn't take my feelings into account," I finally said, quickly busying myself with slurping down some of the hot chocolate so I didn't have to think about immediately following that up with anything.

Nora rolled her eyes, which probably should've made me madder, but she had that same perfect smile on her face. It made it hard to be angry, even though I could feel something unpleasant bubbling away inside of me. She didn't seem to understand how infuriating Summer was being, nor how serious this was for us. Or at least, for me.

"I'm pretty sure the only thing Summer cares about is your feelings," Nora chuckled. "She didn't really do a very good job of explaining the situation, but she basically told me it'd be a bad move to not ask you out since you kinda think I'm cute and-- I'm, like, pretty sure she said I'd have to be a total idiot to not want to get with you," Nora laughed. "She even played the whole but don't break her heart card, after I said I'd see how it went. She said if I did, she'd break me." Nora paused for a second. "So, this doesn't count as breaking your heart, right? I really don't want Summer to be on my case. I think she probably could break me..."

I cracked up at that, surprising myself. All of the words and details were swirling around my brain, too quickly to make any sense of any of it, and I felt even more lost and confused than I had before.

"You're not breaking my heart," I confirmed. "I don't think... I think we're good as friends," I offered, feeling a pang of relief when Nora's grin grew into a beam.

"Hell yeah, we are," she cheered. "You are super cute, though, for the record. You're just not really my type. I like girls who are taller than me," she shrugged, "and girls who look like they could kick my ass," she laughed.

The waitress paused at our table to slide two plates of highly-stacked heavy-looking pancakes to us. I must've looked taken aback because she looked at Nora and shook her head before glancing back at me. "I told Blondie here that one plate would probably be enough for the two'a you," she tutted, before wandering away again to serve some coffee at the table opposite.

Nora was somehow already working on a big mouthful of pancake, but she managed to mumble out a reassuring, "She doesn't know what she's talking about. You're having a shitty day. You need all the pancakes you can get."