Chapter 256: [4.74] Waffles Are a Gateway Hug

Harlow tilted her head like a puppy that had been asked to solve a differential equation.

"What do you mean what are we doing?"

"I mean." I gestured between us with the fork. "This. The schedule. The rotation. The Christmas rock-paper-scissors tournament that you apparently won through the strategic application of paper."

"Paper is a legitimate strategy."

"I’m not questioning your strategy. I’m questioning the entire premise."

Harlow leaned against the wall, crossing one bare ankle over the other. The hoodie rode up her thigh by about two inches, revealing a strip of skin that was absolutely not relevant to the conversation I was trying to have. I looked at the waffles instead.

"The premise," she repeated slowly, "is that four girls like you and you like four girls and instead of pretending this isn’t happening until someone cries or someone gets fired or someone’s mother launches a corporate assassination, we’re going to try doing it on purpose."

"When you say it like that it sounds almost reasonable."

"It is reasonable! Sabrina did research. She found studies. There are books, Isaiah. Actual published books by actual doctors about how to make this work."

"Books written by people who presumably did not have a mother-in-law who owns a multinational fashion conglomerate and has already threatened to nuke my sister’s academic future from orbit."

Harlow’s smile dimmed by approximately one watt. Still bright enough to read by, but the edges had gone soft. "We’re going to handle my mother."

"Your mother handles other people. That’s her entire personality."

"Isaiah." She said my name the way she said everything. Full commitment, zero reservation, the word landing between us like she’d thrown it with both hands. "We know who our mother is. We’ve known for seventeen years. And we’re choosing this anyway. We’re choosing you anyway."

The hallway clock ticked somewhere behind me. Morning light caught the red in Harlow’s damp hair and turned it into something unreasonable.

"You don’t have to understand why it works," she said, quieter now. "You just have to show up."

I ate the third waffle. Chewed. Swallowed. The strawberry cream was aggressively delicious and I resented it for making this moment feel less heavy than it deserved.

"I’m going to show up."

"Promise?"

"I literally cannot leave. Vivienne has my car keys and Sabrina knows where I sleep."

Harlow laughed, high and bright, the sound bouncing off the portraits of dead Valentines who probably rolled in their graves every time one of their descendants hugged the hired help. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my waist, tucking herself under my chin with the familiarity of someone who had done this a hundred times instead of maybe a dozen. Her hair was still damp and it soaked through the front of my shirt. She smelled like peach shampoo and laundry detergent and the specific kind of warmth that only exists in the first thirty minutes after a hot shower.

I held the plate out to the side so the remaining waffle wouldn’t get crushed and put my free arm around her shoulders.

"Your hair is getting my shirt wet."

"Good. Consider it marked territory."

I opened my mouth to respond to that, but Cassidy’s voice erupted from somewhere around the corner with the force of a small explosive device.

"HARLOW, IF YOU’RE HUGGING HIM RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD."

Harlow did not let go. "I’m not hugging him!"

"I CAN LITERALLY HEAR YOUR VOICE DOING THE HAPPY SQUEAK THING YOU DO WHEN YOU HUG PEOPLE."

Cassidy appeared at the end of the hallway wearing athletic shorts and an old band tee with the sleeves cut off, her wine-red hair still streaked with black and pulled into the kind of ponytail that suggested she’d slept on it sideways and decided that was fine. Her purple eyes locked onto our position with the targeting speed of someone who spent most of her free time hitting things with rackets.

"Unbelievable." She stalked toward us. "It has been. Fifteen minutes. Since breakfast ended. And you’re already at him."

"I brought him waffles!"

"Waffles are a gateway hug and you know it."

Harlow finally released me and turned to face her sister with the energy of a defense attorney whose client had been wrongfully accused. "I won Christmas. I am allowed to deliver waffles to my Christmas person."

Cassidy’s eye twitched. "Your Christmas person."

"That’s what I said."

"He’s not a Christmas present, Harlow. He’s a human man standing in a hallway eating pastry."

"First of all, they’re waffles, not pastry. Second of all, I never said he was a present. I said he was my Christmas person. There’s a difference."

"There is absolutely not a difference."

I took a bite of the last waffle while they argued two feet away from me. The strawberry heart on top had gotten slightly crushed during the hug, which felt appropriate. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Cassidy turned on me next. "And you. Stop eating waffles like nothing is happening."

"Things are happening. I’m eating waffles during them."

"That’s the same as nothing happening."

"It really isn’t. These waffles are incredible."

Cassidy snatched the plate out of my hand. I watched the last waffle disappear into her mouth in a single, savage bite. She chewed with her cheeks full, glaring at me the entire time, her nose stud catching the morning light.

"Those were my waffles," I said.

"Were." She licked cream off her thumb. "Past tense. Keep up, scholarship boy."

Somewhere in the distance, a door opened and closed. Footsteps on the grand staircase. The manor was waking up around us, staff moving through corridors I couldn’t see, the quiet machinery of extreme wealth beginning its daily cycle of polishing things that were already polished.

Cassidy shoved the empty plate back into my hands. "I need to talk to you."

"You’re talking to me right now."

"Alone." She shot a look at Harlow. "Without the waffle fairy hovering."

"I’m not a fairy! I’m more of a sprite. Or maybe a brownie? Like the helpful kind that does chores, not the chocolate kind, although I also like those."