Chapter 128 128
Kaelen's POV:
The Denny's smelled exactly how I expected it to smell: grease and maple syrup and that weird cleaning product they use in every chain restaurant in America. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, one of them flickering in a way that was probably going to give someone a migraine, and the booth we'd picked had a tear in the vinyl that someone had tried to fix with duct tape.
It was perfect, way more than perfect!
Annabeth was sitting across from me with her hands wrapped around a strawberry milkshake that was the exact shade of pink that shouldn't exist in nature. She had a straw in it but hadn't actually drunk any yet, just kept stirring it and watching the whipped cream dissolve into pink swirls.
"The menus are sticky," she said.
"You promised sticky."
"I know. I'm just confirming." She finally took a sip of the milkshake and made a face. "This is... aggressively sweet. Like someone melted a bottle of cough syrup into ice cream."
"That bad?"
"No, it's perfect. It's exactly what I wanted." She grinned at me over the glass, that real smile that made her whole face change, and something warm settled in my chest.
The waitress came by with my Grand Slam. She was maybe fifty, with too much eyeliner and a name tag that said "Debbie" and a tired expression that suggested she'd been working the New Year's Day morning shift for longer than she wanted to. She set the plate down in front of me without ceremony.
"Anything else?"
"We're good," I said. "Thanks."
She walked away and I looked at my plate. Two eggs, over medium because I'd actually specified this time. Two pancakes. Two strips of bacon, two sausage links. Hash browns that looked like they'd been cooked sometime yesterday and reheated this morning.
"The pancakes look sad," Annabeth said.
"They look exactly right."
"You have very low standards."
"I have exactly the standards you gave me." I cut into the pancakes, took a bite. They tasted like flour and air and the faintest hint of something that might've been vanilla extract three generations ago. Mediocre. Unremarkable. Completely average in every way.
I smiled.
"Good?" she asked.
"Terrible. Try one."
She reached across the table and stole half a pancake off my plate with her fork, didn't even bother asking, just grabbed it. Some of the syrup dripped onto the table and she didn't notice or didn't care.
"Oh wow." She chewed, swallowed, made a face. "These are genuinely not good."
"I know."
"Like, they're not even trying."
"I know."
"This is the best fucking breakfast I've ever had."
I laughed, this surprised sound that came out louder than I meant it to, and the old guy in the booth behind us turned to look. I didn't care. Let him look. Let everyone look. We were alive and together and eating terrible pancakes on the first day of a new year and nothing else mattered.
Outside the window, the parking lot was mostly empty. It was ten in the morning on January first, and most people were probably still sleeping off whatever they'd done the night before. We'd watched the ball drop on TV at my parents' house, surrounded by my family and Marcus and Sarah, and at midnight Annabeth had kissed me in front of everyone and Marlen had made gagging noises and my mom had cried a little.
A new year. A new start. All those clichés that actually meant something this time.
"Oh, wait." Annabeth pulled out her phone. "I need to document this. Mara's gonna want proof."
"Proof of what?"
"That I finally went on a boring date like a normal person. She was very insistent that we do boring couple things." She angled the phone toward me. "Smile. No, not like that, you look constipated. Just... be natural."
"I don't know how to be natural on command."
"Kaelen."
"I'm trying."
She took the picture anyway, then scooted around to my side of the booth, pressing against me so she could get us both in frame. Her hair smelled like that shampoo she used, something with coconut, and I could feel the warmth of her through our jackets.
"Okay, one more," she said. "This time look at the camera like you actually want to be here."
"I do want to be here."
"Then show it."
I turned my head and kissed her cheek right as she took the photo. She made a noise, half protest and half laugh, and pulled up the image to look at it.
"Okay that's... actually really cute." She was smiling at the screen. "Damn it, you made it cute."
"Sorry."
"No you're not."
"No, I'm not."
She typed something on her phone, hit send, and then put it face-down on the table. "There. Sent to Mara. She's gonna be so smug about this."
"Smug?"
"She spent her entire winter break telling me we needed to do 'normal couple activities' instead of, quote, 'looking at each other like you're both about to cry or fuck at any given moment.'"
I choked on my coffee. "She said that?"
"To my face. At my aunt's kitchen table. While eating Christmas cookies." Annabeth shrugged. "That's Mara."
Her phone buzzed. She flipped it over and grinned.
"She says, and I quote, 'FINALLY. You look like actual humans on an actual date. I'm so proud I could cry.'" She showed me the screen. "And then three crying emojis and a... is that a pancake emoji? Why is there a pancake emoji?"
"Denny's has pancakes."
"Right. Obviously." She typed back something quick and set the phone down again.
I went back to my Grand Slam, thinking about Mara's visit. She'd come for winter break like she'd promised to Annabeth, showed up two days before Christmas with a suitcase and opinions about everything. I'd been nervous to finally meet her, after all the buildup. After Annabeth had told her we'd broken up during Thanksgiving, then got back together without ever really explaining the gap in between.
"She likes you, by the way," Annabeth said, like she'd read my mind. Or maybe through the bond. Hard to tell sometimes. "Mara. She told me you were, quote, 'surprisingly normal for someone who looks like he models for romance novel covers.'"
"Is that a compliment?"
"From Mara? Yeah. Definitely."
"She asked me a lot of questions."
"She asks everyone a lot of questions. It's her thing." Annabeth stirred her milkshake. "I think she was trying to figure out why I was so weird about you for months. The whole hot-and-cold thing, the breakup I wouldn't explain, the mysterious 'family stuff' I kept using as an excuse."
"Did she figure it out?"
"No. But I think she knows there's something I'm not telling her." Annabeth's face did something complicated. "When I got back after... everything, I told her my phone broke during a hiking trip and I didn't have a way to contact anyone. And that I was dealing with intense family stuff."
"She believed that?"
"She believed it because she wanted to believe it. And because the alternative, which is that I'm lying to her about something major, is too weird to consider." Annabeth picked at the edge of her napkin. "She's been my best friend since we were, I don't know, seven? Eight? And she's spent years telling me about her conspiracy theories, about creatures that aren't supposed to exist, about all the weird stuff she reads about online. And this whole time I've been rolling my eyes and calling her crazy and meanwhile I'm literally a dragon."
"Half dragon."
"Whatever. The point is, she'd probably be thrilled if I told her. She'd lose her entire mind and then ask me a thousand questions and probably want to see me transform and it would be her favorite thing ever." Annabeth set the milkshake down. "But I can't tell her. Because the more people who know, the more dangerous it gets. For her and for us."
"You're protecting her."
"I'm lying to her. Those feel like the same thing right now but they're not."
I reached across the table and took her hand. Her fingers were cold from the milkshake glass, and she let me warm them up, let me hold on.
"When she came for Christmas," Annabeth said, "she kept looking at me weird. Like she was trying to solve a puzzle. And then she'd shake it off and be normal Mara again, loud and nosy and asking if we'd had sex yet."
"She asked you that?"