66. Milo #2
Holden comes in next. He’s wearing yesterday’s slacks and a T-shirt of mine that I have no memory of him acquiring. He clocks the pancakes immediately. He stops. He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Milo.”
“Good morning, Detective.”
“It’s too early for this shit.”
I tsk. “You say that and yet everyone needs to eat. And I made one specifically to your specifications.” I gesture at one in the center of the lineup. “That’s yours, I went for understated authority, I think I captured it.”
Holden looks at the pan-cock. It is—and I will say this with all confidence—the most handsome pan-cock I made. Proportional. Dignified. The pan-cock of a man who has his life together.
“I hate to say it, but you’ve captured my likeness extremely well,” Holden says.
I beam. “You’re welcome! Syrup and berries are already on the table.”
Amy snorts, drawing Holden’s attention.
“Fuck, sorry, Amy. Didn’t see you there.”
She’s blushing as she looks everywhere but at Holden and his pan-cock. “No problem.”
He takes his coffee and drops into a seat near Knox. “How are you?” he asks politely.
“Well, I’m at a pancake party at seven-thirty in the morning where the pancakes are penises and breasts and one of the men is wearing boxers with a picture of a giant T-Rex shooting lasers from the dick bulge.
” She glances over at me as I look down at my laser-eyed dinosaur and tell him not to take her comment personally because he’s doing a great job. “How do you think I’m doing?”
Holden chuckles. “Say no more. I understand completely.”
Amy laughs, which is the first real laugh she’s done since she walked in, and Holden’s mouth does the thing where it almost smiles and then catches itself. I add another two cocks to his plate.
Micah and Eli come in together. Micah is in sweats and bare feet. Eli is fully dressed.
He spots Amy at the counter and stops. I watch the calculation move across his face—the teacher and the killer doing the math in real time, landing on the one thing that’s worried him since the last time he was here.
“Amy.” He clears his throat. “Do you, uh, think we could skip mentioning any of this when school goes back?”
Amy looks at him. Then she reaches over and picks up one of the dick pancakes, bites the tip clean off, and chews, unhurried.
“In what world am I bringing up a gang bang at an elementary school, Eli?” She swallows.
“I’d lose my job. Besides—it’s none of my business what people do in the bedroom.
It has nothing to do with me unless I’m taking part.
So we’re good. You’re good. Summer break is for letting loose and having fun.
Love is love, no matter how many people are involved.
” She points the bitten pancake at him. “I have no further comment.”
For a second Eli just looks at her, and something he’s been carrying for weeks quietly sets itself down.
“More people should think like that,” I say, flipping a fresh cake. “World’d be a way better place.”
“Thanks, Amy,” Eli says, relieved until he sees the rest of the pancakes. He closes his eyes for one full second. Opens them.
“Why?”
I beam, flipping my latest tit cake. “Because the morning called for it.”
“What the actual fuck?”
Micah is laughing into his hand. Amy has stopped trying to drink coffee because she keeps almost spitting it. Knox is eating his enormous pan-cock with methodical efficiency. Holden is staring at the ceiling.
“Eli,” Micah says, gentle. “Just eat the pancake.”
“Pan-cock,” I correct.
“Which one is mine?”
“That one,” I say, pointing.
Eli looks at it. It is—I’ll grant him—anatomically the most modest of the dick pancakes. I made his the smallest because Eli would have died, physically died, if I’d made his the largest. I have an instinct for these things. I made it tasteful. Implied, rather than rendered true to life.
“You made mine small,” he says, flatly.
“I made yours elegant. It’s an art piece. It’s a suggestion. Anyone can pipe a cock pancake. It takes a master to imply one.”
Holden chokes on his coffee.
Eli pours his coffee, unhurried. When he rounds the counter, he sets the mug down, looks at me, at the pancake. Looks at me again.
“For the record,” he says, “I’m a grower, not a shower. This is misrepresentation.”
Micah, who has been holding it together with admirable discipline, loses it—head down, shoulders shaking, one hand over his mouth like he’s trying to physically contain the sound. Holden is openly wheezing. Amy is dabbing at her eyes with a napkin.
“Sage can corroborate,” Eli protests. “Right, Sage?”
Sage, who has just appeared in the doorway wearing Holden’s T-shirt, takes in the scene, registers what’s going on and says, “He grows.”
Eli closes his eyes.
“Thank you, little savage.”
“I’m not finished. He grows substantially. Milo’s pancake is, in fairness, a severe under-representation.” She locks her eyes on me. “And you damn well know it. I saw you all looking at each other last night.”
The kitchen explodes.
Micah folds over, laughing helplessly. Holden actually has to put his mug down before he spills it. Amy makes a noise that is half horrified, half delighted. Knox keeps chewing like none of this concerns him, but the corner of his mouth twitches.
I press a hand to my chest. “Thank you, kitten. Finally—truth.”
“You are not helping,” Eli mutters.
“I’m helping preserve history,” I say. “Future generations deserve accuracy.”
Sage drifts further into the kitchen, sleep-soft and gloriously unbothered, bare legs under Holden’s shirt, hair braided from last night and mussed around her face. She looks thoroughly fucked and thoroughly pleased about it. It does unholy things to my breakfast appetite.
Holden’s gaze drops to her legs, then lower, then he schools his face into something neutral that would maybe fool a less observant audience. “You should be in bed.”
She blinks at him. “You should be less bossy before I’ve had coffee.”
“That’s not how I work.”
“Unfortunately,” she says, sliding onto the seat between him and Knox.
Holden’s hand goes to the small of her back the moment she’s in the chair, automatic. Knox slides his coffee across to her without being asked. She takes it. She drinks. She closes her eyes for a moment over the cup. Then she opens them and looks at the pancake I’ve just slid in front of her.
It is the largest one. It is generously proportioned. It has, if you look carefully, a small heart piped onto the tip in red food coloring.
“Milo . . .”
“Eat your pancake, my Queen.”
She eats her pancake. I plate up a stack for myself and pull the tray of bacon from the oven, setting it in the center of the table before I squeeze into the corner. I look at the people gathered.
This. This is what we built. The unit at breakfast. The woman in the middle.
The friend at the edges starting to see what we are and not freaking out over it.
Seven people and a stack of inappropriate carbohydrates and the kind of morning that the version of me from six months ago would have laughed at if you’d shown him a postcard.
It’s the first time I’ve truly felt as though I belong.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
I glance at it, and see the lock screen lights up with a news alert.
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN FOUND DEAD AT COUNTRY CLUB FITNESS CENTER—APPARENT SUICIDE.
I look at Eli. His phone is face-up on the table next to his coffee, and the alert is sitting on his screen too. He meets my eyes for a fraction of a second. His face doesn’t change.
Holden’s phone buzzes a half-second later. He nods.
I refill Amy’s coffee and plate up another round of pancakes. I keep the morning going for as long as I can. Reality will intrude soon enough.