Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 207: 208 | She’s a Professional Liar

She found the shell.

Jordan could not remember the last time he smiled this hard at six forty-three in the morning. The old Jordan wouldn’t have been awake at six forty-three. The old Jordan didn’t have anyone who would break into his kitchen before dawn and wage a losing war against his cookware for the privilege of feeding him something terrible. The old Jordan had nothing in his refrigerator except expired condiments and a smoothie that had separated into geological strata.

This version of Jordan had a girl in his henley and strawberry underwear standing barefoot in his kitchen, talking to eggs.

He descended the stairs slowly enough that his feet didn’t make noise on the wood. Kumiko’s back faced him, her attention consumed by the smoking disaster in her hands. The henley hit her at mid-thigh. The neckline had slipped off her right shoulder again, exposing her collarbone and the bloom of purple and red marks Jordan had left on her neck hours ago. Each one sat in a different spot, a trail from her ear to the junction of her shoulder, and the morning light made the colors vivid enough that concealer would need to be applied in industrial quantities.

Her legs were bare from the hem down. No socks, no shoes, just pale skin and small feet and the slight flex of her calf muscles as she rose onto her toes to peer deeper into the pan.

Jordan came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist.

"KYAAAAAA!"

The spatula launched from her grip like a javelin. The pan jerked sideways and the surviving egg fragment slid off the surface and joined its companion on the stovetop. Kumiko’s entire body seized and then melted backward against his chest as recognition replaced terror, her head tipping back against his shoulder and her heart jackhammering so hard he could feel it through the henley.

"J-J-Jordan! You can’t DO that! I almost died! My soul left my body! It went to heaven and came back and now I have to explain to God why I was screaming while holding a spatula!"

"Morning."

His voice came out deeper than he intended. Rougher. The Alluring Whisper trait colored the single word with enough texture to make Kumiko’s shoulders drop three inches and her spine curve against him in a reflexive arch.

"Nngh." She made the sound against her own will, her eyes fluttering. "That’s not fair. You can’t use the voice this early. I haven’t built up my resistance yet."

"What resistance?"

"The resistance I’m going to develop! Theoretically! At some point! When my immune system figures out how to counteract whatever pharmaceutical your vocal cords produce!"

Jordan rested his chin on the top of her head. She smelled like strawberry shampoo and smoke and the faintest trace of burnt egg. His arms tightened around her waist, and Kumiko’s hands came up to rest on his forearms, her small fingers wrapping around the muscles there and squeezing.

"You’re cooking."

"I’m TRYING to cook. There’s a difference." She pulled out of his arms and spun to face him, her cheeks already flushed pink beneath the wild curtain of her hair. "I wanted to surprise you! I set an alarm for five forty-five and I looked up how to make a western omelet because Chloe-chan said you like eggs and I found this video by this lady who makes everything look easy but she’s a LIAR, Jordan, she’s a professional liar, eggs do not behave the way she claims they behave."

Jordan surveyed the kitchen. The egg yolk puddle on the counter. The scattered bread. The mug of plain hot water. The cracked egg remnants fused to his stovetop. The smoke still rising from the pan that sat at an angle on the burner.

"How long have you been down here?"

Kumiko looked at the ceiling. "...forty minutes."

Forty minutes. She had been fighting his kitchen for forty minutes. At five forty-five in the morning. After staying up until 3 AM counting his eyelashes. After the kind of sex that had made her lose motor function in both legs.

Jordan picked up the mug of hot water.

"Where’s the coffee?"

"I couldn’t find it! I opened every cabinet and I found plates and bowls and protein powder and a single can of chickpeas and what I think might be mouse poison but is probably a cleaning product and NO COFFEE." She held up her hands in a gesture of total surrender. "Your kitchen is a beautiful shiny lie, Jordan. It looks like a cooking show but it contains nothing. Nothing! Not even instant!"

"I keep the coffee in the freezer."

Kumiko stared at him. "Why would you keep coffee in the freezer?"

"Keeps it fresh."

"That’s... is that true? That sounds made up."

"My mom does it."

Kumiko processed this information with visible intensity, her lips moving as she filed the data somewhere in whatever sprawling database she maintained about the McKnight family. Jordan reached past her and opened the freezer, retrieving the bag of ground coffee his mother had sent him during the first week of the semester. It was half empty. Chloe had been using it.

"You couldn’t find the coffee," Jordan said, pouring grounds into the filter, "so you boiled water and put it in a mug and just... stared at it?"

"I was going to figure something out! I thought maybe there was tea somewhere, but there was only the mouse poison cleaning product and I wasn’t going to risk it. I have too much to live for now." She pressed both palms against his bare chest and looked up at him with enormous brown eyes ringed by dark circles and lit from within by something manic and fond. "I have a boyfriend. I have a bed that smells like boyfriend. I have hickeys in places I didn’t know could GET hickeys. I refuse to die from accidentally drinking cleaning product before I’ve experienced at least one more week of this."

Jordan started the coffee maker. Then he looked at the stovetop.

"Want me to handle the eggs?"