Cinnamon. Vanilla. Sweet smelling goodness floated from the kitchen. And coffee. Ohhh, Chloe sighed. The fresh coffee made getting out of bed this morning so worth it. Only a sight hangover headache from the night before ruined the whole blurry bliss. She padded from her bedroom, rubbing at her eyes and slowly waking up.
“Good morning.”
Chloe stopped and blinked. Adam. Adam actually stayed the entire night this time. She hurried to brush down her spiky black hair. He stood there in his shorts and held out a plate piled high with pancakes. The whole implication of what this morning meant for their relationship, which had only been casual up until now, fled from her mind when she saw the syrupy drippy yumminess.
“Wow,” she said. “This smells delicious.”
Adam motioned to the table with a grin. “Go on, sit down. Probably need some coffee, right?”
“Oh God, yes.” She sat down at her usually cluttered table, which now was cleared off except for a set of silverware and a full coffee mug. Adam joined with his own plate. Together they ate in silence, enjoying the extra fluffy cakes and not trying to mention the shy awkwardness of seeing each other for the first time at breakfast.
A strange tingling in her fingers made Chloe drop her fork. “Wait, where do you get the pancake mix from? I don’t remember there being any in the cupboard.”
“Oh,” Adam said after swallowing a bite. “That canister marked P-Mix. Looked like flour to me. That…that was pancake mix, right?”
He paled and pushed back from the table like he was going to get sick. “My fingers. My legs. They are starting to feel funny.”
Chloe groaned as she felt herself floating off the chair. “Oh no. Oh no no no….”
Adam too floated from his chair, his bent knees banging on the table. He scrambled to grab hold of the chair but like a helium balloon, he drifted to the ceiling. Chloe reached up and caught the ceiling before her head could bang on it.
“Chloe? What’s going on here?”
Chloe almost wanted to burst out laughing at Adam’s panicked expression. He was a strong built man, muscles lines with tribal tattoos that she found sexy. Right now he looked as lost as a puppy, floating several feet from the floor. Now she really had to tell him the truth, something she wasn’t prepared to do so soon.
“That wasn’t exactly pancake mix,” she said. “It’s pixie dust or trying to be pixie dust. It’s not quite perfected yet but seems to work okay now. I wonder if it was the addition of the syrup…”
She was rambling and she knew it. Adam looked at her with confusion. “Pixie dust? Like Peter Pan stuff?”
Chloe took a deep breath. “Yeah, like that. It’s something that I’m in to…you know, witchcraft, potions, and spells.”
At first he looked like he didn’t believe her. His eyes flicked from her to the floor back to the ceiling mere inches from his head. “ You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Chloe avoided his bemused glare by looking longingly at her coffee mug below. She pushed off the ceiling and tried to dive down, as if the air was water and she was diving down to the ocean floor. But it was like she was wearing a giant life-preserver and quickly she buoyed back up. She didn’t even get close to grabbing her cup.
“Now what?” Adam asked. He flipped himself so that his back was against the ceiling, knees bent and hands folded behind his head. Looking like he was casually lying in bed. “How long is this stuff supposed to last anyway?”
“I don’t know. I never actually got it to work before. What did you do?”
“Me? You’re blaming this on me? I just wanted to make breakfast.”
With the heated words, he dropped down several feet. “Whoa!” he cried out. His arms flailed as he tried to steady himself in mid-air. “What the hell?”
“Adam!” Chloe said. “Are you okay?”
He glanced up at her and suddenly broke out into a grin. “You’re not wearing anything under there.”
Chloe could not help herself. She gave a shriek of laughter and tried to cross her legs as she was wearing nothing but a t-shirt. And she knew exactly what he was looking at.
Adam then shot straight back up to the ceiling. “Oofph!”
Chloe clapped a hand to her mouth. “Happy thoughts! That’s it! That’s what made it work. Just like real pixie dust, you have to think happy thoughts. And I know EXACTLY what you were just thinking about,” she laughed.
“So you’re saying as long as we have these ‘happy thoughts’, we will float here?” Adam still grinned and reached over to her. He took advantage that she was holding her hands up to keep from bumping her head. His fingers caressed her hips and he kissed her. “You must have been thinking good thoughts when eating those pancakes.”
“Hmm, mmm,” she agreed as she trailed kisses along his jaw.
“Yeah, me too. I was glad to wake up next to you. I liked it,” he said. He kissed her again, this time long and hot. She pressed against him, the blood rush even better than anything coffee could produce.
“At this rate, you know, we’ll never get down from here.”
Adam did not disagree.
nico serene 