...
"Want some pancakes? I'll even thrown in some chocolate chips."
Pause. "Do you have whipped cream?"
Kathleen rolled her eyes. "Good grief, Tod," she said. "You want to watch a chick flick too?"
I shot Kathleen a look and answered, "Yes, Tod. Plently of whipped cream. And coffee too, so come over whenever. Bring anyone else at home."
Tod lived in an old Victorian two-story house with Grant, Phil, and Peter. He and Peter had grown up together -- the whole best-friends-since-third-grade thing. They'd met Grant when Tod got serious about putting a band together, and I think Peter had once dated Phil's sister. I met Kathleen when the temp agency I work for sent me to her marketing agency when the receptionist went on maternity leave. Despite Kathleen's notorious frostiness we managed to become friends quickly, maybe because I saw beyond her cold exterior and she saw beyond my aversion to having a "grown-up" job. When our apartment leases expired around the same time, we decided to throw our lot in together and found the tiniest two-bedroom house known to man. But it was perfect. We'd met the guys behind us when they threw a fourth-of-July party several years ago. Grant and Maria were already dating at that point, and there you have it. The story of how this motley crew of friends managed to find each other.
I was on my second cup of coffee and had six hot pancakes staying warm in the oven when Tod and Phil straggled in the back door, heading strait for the coffee pot.
"Grant's coming too," Tod said. "He's on the phone with Maria."
"Yelling or making up?" Kathleen asked from her spot at our tiny kitchen table, eyes still on the Saturday Chronicle.
"Making up from the sounds of it," Tod said.
We were all silent, but the air of expectation was clearly just me.
"Peter went out last night," Phil said quietly, his intuition as keen as his skill at recreating light with paint. I thanked him silently, and handed him the first full plate of chocolate chip pancakes to emphasize my appreciation. As I pulled three more cobalt blue plates from the cabinet and flipped the pancakes on the griddle, my gut twisted as I thought about Peter. We'd all noticed a difference -- Grant even commented on how Peter was home less than he wasn't. Peter had been digging a moat around himself for a while now; building a solitary island fortress that kept out even his closest friends. The only bridge across the moat at this point were the band's gigs. Peter still showed up at each one.
