Love Within

Chapter 5 - Connor

I kept my arms crossed over my chest. "Not hungry." 

Tori sighed and grabbed me by the shoulders, forcefully steering me into the kitchen. I flinched. Her hands were as cold as ice, and she was touching my bare skin. It felt unpleasant. And I really wanted to go back to my room to pull on a shirt. Just then, it occurred to me.

"Hey, can you explain why I'm missing a sock and a shirt?"

She gave me a cursory glance and smirked. "You must have been dreaming of something very interesting." My face felt like it was on fire. 

"Shut up! Was not!"

"You can't prove it," she said in a singsong voice, her lips brushing my cheek. "Come on."

Reluctantly, I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. Tori set down a plate of still-hot pancakes in front of me. I cut out a chunk and stuck it into my mouth, and was surprised. It WAS good. They were soft and warm in the middle, and moderately crispy on the outside. It melted a little in my mouth, and it was sweet and rich with the taste of butter. I stifled a moan as it hit my empty stomach.

"It's good, isn't it?" Tori asked with a smug smile. "Bet you're hungry. I'm also betting that you hide how much you actually eat from Jade, you little monster." Okay, so maybe I did eat less when Jade was around so as not to scare her off, but it was totally worth it. For her, it was. "Now, are you going to apologize for insulting me without any reason?"

Without needing a single word, I gave her a pointed glance, remembering all the times she used me as a guinea pig to try out new recipes before cooking them for her boyfriend, and all the times I was bent over a toilet bowl puking my insides out. She clamped her mouth shut and turned to the stove, where she took the frying pan and dumped it into the sink. 

After I finished eating, I helped Tori with the dishes. "Don't you have work today?"

"Nah, my manager gave me the day off." Tori wrinkled her nose. 

"Lucky. When is Jade coming over?"

I resisted the urge to stomp my foot like a child. "What makes you think Jade is coming over?"

Tori rolled her eyes. "I am an expert when it comes to guys. I can tell that you're expecting someone, and it totally wasn't me."

I put down the dish I was on and dried my hands on a dish towel. "What if it was a guy?"

"I can tell that, too. It's definitely a girl. When would your guy friends ever put down their gaming consoles to leave the house, anyways?" She had a point, now that I thought about it.

"And if the girl's not Jade?"

"When would there ever be another girl?" Offensive, but another good point.

I stuck out my bottom lip, pouting. "You're mean, Tori."

She shrugged, placing a dish on the dish rack. "Yeah? Well, I never tried to hide it. Now shut up and continue washing."

"Yes, ma'am..."

......

The time was 3 pm, according to my watch, but there was still no sign of Jade. Tori was reclining on my couch, her phone in her hand, texting like her life depended on it. Or maybe it did. Tori rarely spent a minute without texting her boyfriend. The two were so deeply in love, it almost sickened me to watch them. Though, at the same time, I was happy for them. Mainly for Tori, because she deserved someone wonderful who treated her well, and she definitely had that in her boyfriend. I really wished she would be open and honest with her boyfriend about how her cooking mostly sucked, though, so I would no longer be resigned to trying her various concoctions, half of which I doubted she actually found on the Internet while browsing through recipes. Or if they were, she was probably looking at the wrong websites.