Best Friends Forever

Flipping the French toast with the spatula, I suppress a smirk. “And rocky road ice cream. Can’t forget about that.”

“Yeah, actually, we will need some of that,” she admits.

Silence falls between us, and I stubbornly try to ignore it. This doesn’t have to be awkward, I tell myself. Not at all. Everything is pretty smooth sailing for us. It’s just like riding a bike.

“So… about our pact,” she starts awkwardly.

Something in her voice makes me freeze as I open the oven door to let the frittata finish. I turn and catch her eye. She is really staring at me, hard, the smile gone from her face. I see her swallow nervously.

“I mean, I just thought I would go ahead and put it out there,” she continues in a rush.

I can see she’s uncertain, maybe even upset.

“Sorry, what are we talking about?” I ask, keeping my voice even.

Apparently, that was exactly the wrong thing to say. Her eyes widen dramatically and her fingers grip the countertop.

“Our pact?” she says again hoarsely.

I shake my head helplessly, trying out a friendly smile. “Um, you’re going to have to help me out here, Pen. What pact? Do you mean a bet or something?”

She pushes herself back from the kitchen island and begins pacing back and forth, the soles of her feet slapping softly against the slate. I begin to feel like I have done something horribly, horribly wrong.

“Pen? What is going on?”

She mutters to herself for a few seconds before turning to face me with a stony expression, the lines of her jaw suddenly squared off and hard.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter,” she replies tersely.

“It kind of seems like it really does matter," I reply cautiously.

“No! It doesn’t!” she blurts out. “Because I was going to let you off the hook anyway. So this is better, right? That you don’t even remember? I mean, how perfect is that?!”

I remember back to that moment last night where she was all open and sincere, how that is the perfect Penny moment. This would be the opposite moment: angry Penny is pretty terrible.

“I don’t remember our pact,” I say softly, trying out the words to see if anything floats to the surface of my memory.

“Of course you don’t!” she continues, her voice rising. “Because now you’re a ladies’ man! Now you’re the Beaumont bachelor! Why would you remember a stupid thing like that? We were just kids!”

The timer goes off, and while I am grateful for something to do to camouflage my confusion, my stomach is churning. What the hell is she talking about? If she weren’t so mad, I would just go ahead and ask her.

“We were kids, yeah,” I agree, figuring that is the safest course of action here, no matter what.

She continues muttering while I get food to the middle of the dining table. Maybe food will calm her down? Should I go get Ethan? Really, I don’t know what is going to set her off.

“Just consider it canceled, okay? Just forget ab

out it.”

I meet her eyes, trying to figure out what it is going to take to defuse the situation. Her hair floats away from her face in weightless tendrils, and the skin beneath her eyebrows is reddening, a seriously bad sign.

“So, you’re canceling it.” I nod.

“You don’t even know what I am canceling, so please don’t pretend to have an opinion about this, okay?”

The food on the table looks great. I’m hungry. I know she has the stamina to fight with me until everything is cold, so I might as well just bite the bullet and ask her.

“What was the pact?”