Hopeless Romantic | ✔️

15| Cooking and Dancing to One Direction

"It's true," I said, pouring batter into the waffle iron and closing it. "It might have to do with the Tyler thing, too, though."

Cayden reached forward and gently nudged me. "That's my boy! You went for it the other day, then, yeah? You didn't give us the gossip!"

"Yeah, I–I went to see him like you told me to. And we had breakfast. And it was really nice," I said, smiling as I took one of the waffles and put it on a plate to eat. My first waffle of the morning, and sinking my teeth into it was like heaven. I needed some butter and syrup and then everything would be perfection.

"Plus," I said, "not just Tyler is making me so happy. It's everything. And today is another day of planning another BEST DAY! It's going to be such a beautiful wedding. They have a rustic-modern theme with a pale green color palette. I just know there are so many amazing things I can do for them!"

"You are just so bubbly for it only being 9 in the morning," Cayden said, shaking his head and shoveling in a bite of waffles. "Tell us more. Talk to us. We're your gay uncles."

"I cannot believe you always reduce us to uncles. We're his gay parents. You're the working housewife, and I'm the dad that goes off to work and cooks when I get home," Jeremy said.

"Housewife!"

"What? You work at a coffee shop, and then you spend the rest of the day making sure the apartment isn't, like, falling apart or turning into a mad house," Jeremy explained. "And I work in a freaking cubicle all day, then come home and cook dinner so my family doesn't starve."

Cayden rolled his eyes. "I'm only letting you win because you actually do work in a cubicle, and the thought of being contained to such boring space makes me shiver." He turned his attention back to me. "We're your gay housewife and cubicle-worker. Please, enlighten us on the thoughts going on inside of Clay Greenwood's head."

I was thinking of a lot of things, really.

For one, I was thinking of pairing mauve with my new client's pale green color scheme because it would add an exciting pop of color for the decor.

Then, I was thinking about the music playing over my speaker. One Direction was over now, and "Gimme Love" by Joji was playing instead. The first half of this song made me want to dance, and to be honest, I mostly skipped the second half.

Mostly, though, I was thinking about Tyler. I was thinking about how dumb I'd been running from him for weeks, too scared of what might happen if I let myself reconnect with him. I'd been worried for practically no reason, seeing as Tyler had been so understanding, and all at the same time, he kissed me the first night we actually ended up talking. It was crazy to me. We hadn't seen each other in a year, yet he just kissed me. Many times.

Now, I was thinking about his lips.

"I think Tyler's great," I admitted, pulling my last waffle out of the hot iron and unplugging it. I went to sip my coffee. "He still intimidates me, but I think that's normal. We just... talked so much at breakfast, and he's so nice."

"And you're okay with, you know, your difference in views?" Cayden asked, and Jeremy lightly hit his arm. "What? I'm being serious!"

"He's having fun! Let our boy have fun!"

Cayden looked back at me. "PC, we want you to have fun, and we're really glad that you finally reconnected with Tyler. Above all, we're really happy that you're so happy," he said, taking a pause. "I'm only asking because I know you, and I know how serious you are about the real thing."

"We're just getting to know each other. I don't know," I said, shrugging.

Sure, I wanted the real thing. All the love, the brownie love, everlasting shit. Tyler didn't really know what he wanted in a relationship or life in general, as he'd told me. A part of me wanted to shove the idea of being with Tyler away the moment he said the words, because he was in a place where he was really trying to figure things out, and I already had pretty much everything figured out for myself. I was usually the more immature one out of my friends, but I felt like the roles were switched with me and Tyler.