Page 63 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

I return my attention to the cutting board, organizing the onions next, sliced into precise half-moons, uniform thickness, arranged in neat overlapping rows before they go into the pan. Then garlic, minced so fine it’s almost paste. Then the proteins, cut into exactly two-inch cubes because consistency ensures even cooking.

“You’re very precise,” she observes.

“I like order.”

“I’ve noticed.” A pause. “I noticed you alphabetized my chaos shelf. And straightened every crooked spine in the store without realizing you were doing it. And you check the locks in threes.”

My hands still on the knife.

She sees me. She sees the parts I usually hide, the compulsions, the rituals, the need for control that most people find excessive or strange. And she’s not mocking them. She’s cataloging them, the way she catalogs everything, filing them away in that beautiful chaotic brain of hers.

“Does it bother you?”

“No.” Her voice is soft. Genuine. “It’s kind of beautiful, actually. How your brain works. Like everything has a purpose. Like you’re always solving a puzzle I can’t see.”

Something loosens in my chest. A tension I didn’t realize I was holding, the fear that she would find my compulsions off-putting, a quirk to be tolerated rather than accepted.

“Most people find it excessive.”

“Most people are boring.” She kicks her feet against the cabinet below her. “I like watching you. You move like every action matters. Like you’re building something, even when you’re just making dinner.”

“I am building something.” I slide the vegetables into the heated pan, listening to the satisfying sizzle. “I’m building you a meal that includes actual nutrients.”

“The audacity. I was surviving perfectly well on Pop-Tarts.”

“You were surviving. That’s different from thriving.”

“Thriving is overrated. Survival is underappreciated.”

She hops off the counter to fetch plates, and as she passes behind me she says, too casually, “Question six.”

My hands still over the pan.

“Your FAQ.” She’s arranging forks with sudden, tremendous focus. “Question six. The mate thing. You wrote ‘ask me in person.’ So. I’m in person. I’m asking.”

Tell her. This is the moment. She’s asking. She came to you with the question in her own two hands, and all you have to do is answer it.

“The sauce is reducing,” I say. “If I don’t stir it now, the garlic catches.”

The sauce does not need stirring. I stir it anyway, cowardice dressed up as cooking, and I feel her watching my back, feel the small flicker of hurt she files away the way she files everything, and I hate myself with a thoroughness I usually reserve for misshelved books.

“Right,” she says lightly. “The garlic. Very important.”

Coward, my lycan says.

My lycan is right.

I look at her then, really look, taking in the way the late afternoon light catches her hair, the way her eyes crinkle when she’s being contrary, the way her body relaxes in this space even when the rest of the world makes her tense.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“Okay.” She straightens slightly, unconsciously bracing for something. “What is it?”

“You haven’t driven since the accident.”