Page 242 of What We Bury

Frowning, I look up as Amy comes around the corner into the kitchen in rumpled clothes. Her hair is pulled back, and most of her makeup has been slept off. She’s holding her shoes in one hand like a woman attempting a walk of shame into her own apartment.

Definitely not asleep in her room, then.

She stops when she sees me. She takes in the scene, me in boxers, the pan, the piping bags, the row of anatomically commemorative pancakes plated on the counter. Her eyes do the full circuit. Then they come back to me.

“Milo,” she says, carefully. “What are you doing?”

“Good morning, Amy.” I hold up the pan with my current dick creation. “Can I interest you in a pan-cock?”

She stares at the pancakes. The pancakes stare back, because two of them have chocolate chips for nipples now, which was a late addition I’m very proud of. She looks at me. Her face does something complicated—half astonishment, half dawningrealization that this might be her actual life now—and she sets her shoes down on the floor deliberately.

“I need coffee.”

“Absolutely. Coffee first. I bought the beans Knox likes. They’re some Portland direct-trade thing.”

“Okay.”

I pour her a cup. She takes it with both hands, and leans against the counter, watching me pipe another pancake.

“Were you out with Tyler?” I ask casually, forcing my voice bright because every time I think about that guy I imagine slitting his throat.

“Um, no.” She takes a sip. “Actually, I needed a break.”

“From?”

She looks at her coffee. Then at me. Then at the pancakes. Then back at her coffee. “From Tyler. From everything, I guess. I stayed at a friend’s.”

“Why didn’t you just come home?” I ask, sliding a pancake onto the stack. “Your bed’s right there.”

“I did come home.”

I pause, spatula aloft. “Oh?” And then it lands. “. . . Ohhh.”

“Yeah.” She takes a long, fortifying sip. “Got as far as the hallway, heard enough to last me a lifetime, and called a cab. I needed a night where I didn’t have to think about it anyway.”

“It?”

She hesitates. “My relationship.”

I don’t push. I just nod and slide an extra pat of butter into the pan. Then I think about other fun ways I could murder Tyler while I make Amy a non-anatomical pancake—a circle, regular, neutral batter—and slide it onto a plate with butter and maple syrup.

“For you,” I say. “Because the last thing you need right now is to eat a dick.”

“Why is mine a circle when everyone else’s is”—she gestures at the lineup—“that?”

“Because you’ve had a week and I respect that I’ve yet to ask you your preference about pan-cock and tit-cakes.”

She lifts her coffee. “I’ll take tit-cakes, thanks.”

I drop a single chocolate chip in the center. “There you go.”

She sips her coffee, taking in the little chocolate blob melting in front of her. “Sage is really gonna love these.”

“Yeah. They’re commemorative.”

“Commemorative?”

“The kind of pancakes you get after five men collectively deposit approximately three tablespoons of DNA-filled protein inside you.”