The Roommate Agreement(49)

My lips twisted. “You’ve never heard you singing in the shower, clearly.”

“Hey—I’m a regular Ed Sheeran in the shower. I can sing the fuck out of ‘Shape Of You.’”

“No.” I shook my head. “You can’t. Unless you’d like to drown cats and compare your voice, that is.”

He grunted. “You’re making pancakes.”

“Yes.”

“I know what that means.”

“You forgot to put your Pop-Tart wrapper in the trash?”

“Bad news,” he said.

“I don’t know. If you think I ran to the store at seven a.m. for chocolate syrup and berries for bad news, well, maybe you’ve put the news on.”

“Should I have?”

I put the latest pancake on the stack. “Not in my experience. It’s never good when I look.”

“I can’t decide if you’re trying to let a guy down gently or if you’re trolling the fuck out of me.”

I shrugged and poured another pancake. “Figure it out.”

“If I could, I would.”

Another shrug. “Eh.”

I flipped the pancake. It landed perfectly in the pan, and I grabbed my phone. I changed the song to “Shape of You” and grinned at Jay. “Sing, monkey, sing.”

He laughed, coming over to the coffee machine. “Only in the shower. It doesn’t sound the same outside of it.”

“Aw, damn. I thought there’d be some kind of entertainment for breakfast.”

“All right, I’m starting to think you’re trolling me.”

I flipped the final pancake onto the stack and turned off the stove. I carried it over to the island and came back for the toppings. Jay joined me, carrying two coffees, and set one in front of me.

“Thanks.” I smiled and took three pancakes for my plate, leaving him five.

His eyebrows shot up. “If you’re leaving me an extra pancake, I know it’s bad news.”

“Shut up and eat.” I grabbed the chocolate syrup and drizzled it over my pancakes, then took some of the sliced bananas, strawberries, and raspberries.

“There’s an order I can live with.” He did the same, piling his plate with the cut fruit before he drizzled basically half the bottle of syrup over his plate.

I side-eyed it for a second before going back to my breakfast.

Really. And he said I was the one with the bad diet.

There was more sugar on his plate than in the candy aisle at Target.

And I knew because I was a fan of that aisle.

We ate in relative silence, only occasionally glancing at each other. My phone circled through music in the background while the dishwasher whirred and the fridge buzzed.

And it was so, so comfortable.

And not because I was used to it. It just was. It was comfortable and…well, comfortable.

It felt right. To sit in silence and eat with him like this, even if he was full of nervous energy.

I had to put him out of his misery soon.

I swiped a slice of banana through the syrup and put it into my mouth before settling down my cutlery. Jay was still making his way through his, although he was going at warp-speed compared to me.

I didn’t know how he could eat so much.

Standing up, I put the last of my breakfast into the trash and took the plate to the sink. No sooner had I rinsed mine off than Jay groaned and held his stomach.

“If it’s bad news,” he said, turning to me. “It was worth it.”

“Good to know you value food over me.” I swiped the plate from in front of him and put it straight into the bubbly hot water in the sink.

I felt the warmth of his body before I felt his physical touch.

He came up behind me, trapping me against the sink with his body. It was awfully bold for someone who thought what I had to say was bad news, but I digress.

“What are you doing?” I asked, amused.

“Trapping you until you give me what I want.”

“Are you out of coffee?”

“Don’t sass me, Shelby.”

“Aw, you’re taking away my very DNA.”

He dipped his head, his lips brushing across the bare skin of my neck. My hair was currently looped on top of my head, but his breath sent loose tendrils fluttering over my skin.

“All right, stop it!” I turned, pushing him away. “Stop that!”

He grinned.

“One date.” I held up one finger. “I mean it, Jay. One date to prove that we can do this.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes, really. But that’s it—until it happens, nothing changes. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this properly.”

His eyes glinted as he moved toward me. “As it happens, I have an idea.”

“That scares me.”

“I know.” He pushed my bangs out of my eyes. “We changed how we live together because of The Big Bang Theory, so why don’t we try another thing from the show to see if we can make our relationship work?”

It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “I’m not writing a relationship agreement.”

“Not that.” He barely hid his laughter. “When Penny and Leonard got back together.”