Fight Like a Girl | ✔️

20)

He flips the pancakes, batter splatters, it was too soon to turn them over and he curses under his breath. For a while, I watch him, he's focused, concentrated on breakfast. I appreciate how much he seems to care.

"I'll read through them and pick someone," I say, gathering the pamphlets into a pile. "Can't hurt to talk to someone, I suppose."

Dad looks up from the pan in surprise and smiles. "That's great, kid."

I want to apologise for this morning, for calling out his infidelity, again. But I don't. Instead, I sit down on a barstool and twist a curl around my finger in front of my face, watching the strands pull tight and spring back, over and over again.

"These smell kind of—" dad struggles for a word, holding the spatula with a pancake on it to his nose.

"Plastic?" I finish for him. He nods. "Yeah, homemade is better."

"I don't know how to do them from scratch."

"I know your old," I say. "But google is a thing, recipes exist on there. You can even find step by step YouTube tutorials. For dummies."

"Shut up."

I laugh.

"Watch this," he says and puts the pancake back in the pan before lifting it by the handle. He slides it back and forth, flicks the pan and sends the pancake into the air and behind him. It lands in the sink.

"Score," I cheer.

"Thanks," he puts the pan back on the stove top. "But it was meant to land in the pan."

"You didn't have to admit that, I was going along with it and pretending it was meant to land in the sink."

He pours the bottle over the pan and makes a new circle. "We'll have to lather these in cream and berries just to hide the taste."

"Mhmm," I agree.

"You know who makes good pancakes?"

"Mom," I guess.

"Oh, she does, sure. But I meant Niles."

"He's made you pancakes?" I wince. "He's your assistant, not a personal chef."

"He offered, once, when I was hungover a while ago. I told him not to, but he insisted and said he could take the rest of them home to his grandmother. The kid makes good pancakes."

"That's not much of surprise," I grin, staring at the gleaming marble countertop. "He loves his food. He'd be the best person to travel with, you'd end up discovering all the best food from each culture."

Dad's quiet, he doesn't respond, and I look up to find him watching me, perplexed.

"What?"

"You like him, huh?"

My face becomes hot. "I guess."

"As in feelings, more than a friend," he asks, and I shrug but it's obvious. There's a little whirl of butterflies buried deep down.

"A little," I admit. "He's cute and we have fun together. It's a bit of a crush but nothing major."

"You know he doesn't—"

"Yeah, I know."

Dad focuses on his pancakes again. "Is that something you could deal with?"

This is so not a conversation I want to have with dad. "You ask that like he has a thing for me. It's not like I think we're going to date or anything."

"He might like you," dad says. "I think he does but I doubt he'll initiate a relationship because you're not an ace like he is and that means it could end badly."