Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter eighteen

There's a fraction of a moment when I wake up that I forget last night, forget where I am, until I clock the different wallpaper, different bed; until I roll over and I see Lou asleep beside me. Gently snoring, her hair all over the place. It's wavier than usual, the ends curling. I have never seen her before she has brushed it before.

This room is lighter. Brighter. More lived in. I didn't take it in last night — I had other things on my mind — but now I take a moment to look around from the comfort of Lou's bed. Her room is at the back of the house, her window facing the lake, and she has a skylight directly over her bed. Sunlight pours through it, turning her sleeping form into a pool of liquid gold. She's on her front, the comforter covering the lower half of her back. I could lose myself counting the freckles I can see.

I don't know what to expect today. If last night was a blip, or if we've turned a corner. When Lou wakes up, is she going to be wracked with regret or will she kiss me good morning?

I slip out of bed. My footsteps are silent on her thick, plush carpet. It's free from dirt and stains, but I see several of her long copper hairs that have woven themselves into the fibers. I pull one out and hold it up to the light and it shines a hundred different colors: orange and bronze and gold and honey, glinting in the sun until it drifts back to the floor.

This won't do. I go back to my room and find something to wear, and I make myself busy downstairs. Breakfast. I can make breakfast. I find the bread, a thick unsliced loaf directly from the baker, and I carve off a few generous slices. I crack a few eggs into a bowl and find a whisk to whip them into a froth, and I open every drawer and cabinet and cupboard until I find cinnamon and vanilla extract and a splash of heavy cream. I dig out a dish to lay the bread in, ready to soak up my sweet, eggy concoction when Lou emerges. Who doesn't love French toast? It's one of my specialties, even better with a drizzle of syrup and a few fresh berries. Which, when I search the fridge, I find. Lou really did stock up.

The coffee machine is brewing. My heart is thudding heavier and harder than usual, caught in this moment where I don't know how things are going to go. If Lou will ask me to leave, or act like nothing happened, or tell me it was a mistake. I find it a lot harder to imagine good things happening. Low expectations, right? I can't be disappointed if I expect nothing. And yet I know that if Lou comes down here with anything but a sleepy, post-sex smile, I will crumble.

I pour myself a coffee. Add plenty of milk and, in the absence of flavorings, I try a dash of vanilla essence. Can't be too different to coffee syrup, I figure, except it gives my coffee a potent, almost alcoholic taste. I almost spit it out, but after a second mouthful it grows on me. I need the caffeine anyway, for whatever is going to transpire this morning. I'm too distracted to do anything but sit and wait, my mug warming my hands as the sun warms the world, until I hear movement upstairs and I spring into action. Pour my eggy cinnamon mix over the four slices of bread, find the perfect pan to fry it up and a couple of matching plates. It's agony waiting for Lou to emerge, but then she does, and the fear melts off my chest.

"Hey," she says, and she gives me a sleepy, sexy smile. "What're you making?"

"French toast."

"It's like you read my mind." She joins me in the kitchen and her arm is around my waist, her fingers resting over my hip bone, and when I turn my head, she's right there. I am a sunflower and she is the sun: I will always look to her, reach for her. I blossom under her touch, anxiety unfurling its tight petals when her lips touch mine.

Okay, she isn't filled with regret. I lean into her, my hand over the base of her spine, and I kiss her back.

When breakfast is ready, we take it out to the table on the dock with fresh coffee and a bowl full of extra fruit. Raspberries and cut-up strawberries and plump blueberries that bleed purple when I pierce them along with a forkful of French toast.