Hey. So I decided to update today. I had planned to update sooner but that didn't seem to happen. I find it odd how I have no life but still am too busy to update. Enjoy, my precious readers.

The previous night ended with a very in denial teenage boy deciding that I was in denial.

I left it at that despite hours of bantering, but to my surprise, it was playful banter, despite the fact that we were both being serious. The only thing was that the playful banter was on the brink of flirting.

I fell sleep on the couch around nine thirty only to wake up carefully tucked into the same bed I was tucked into the night before.

I got up and went to the kitchen to find Austin making pancakes. He was currently pouring a bunch of salt into the batter. "Too much salt." I said vaguely.

He looks up at me. "Salt? I thought this was flour."

"And under all that bad boy exterior appears to be stupidity." I say into an invisible tape recorder.

"Is that inappropriate sarcasm that I hear?"

I make my way over to the bowl and look at the glob he calls pancake batter. I grab a new bowl and some eggs and pancake mix and start to make pancakes the right way.

"Are we ever gonna get this right?"

"We? I know how to make pancakes," I say. "And this is why women are always in the kitchen."

"That and they look good in aprons."

"You are such a boy."

"Just as long as I have the XL chromosome."

I give him a look. "That's not even remotely correct."

"So... another pancake fight today or something else?" He changes the subject.

"I wouldn't mind playing psychologist on you."

"What?" he asks.

"You know, ask you a bunch of questions and how you feel... figure you out."

"How would you feel if I tried to figure you out?"

I wipe some flour from his cheek. A prime example of incorrectly making pancakes. "You already did, didn't you?"

"Not completely. I only know some details."

"Whatever. Session starts at noon. Sharp."

"Wait. So you come into my house and tell me what to do?"

"Precisely. Besides, I didn't come here. You brought me here."

"You stayed. You could have left, but you didn't."

"I like it here."

I make him sit down directly across from me on the other couch. The notebook I picked up was full of paragraphs that may have just been sentences and grocery lists. I scribble down some questions in sloppy, quick writing.

"Ready?" I ask.

"I guess." he says, sounding very unsure of himself.

"When was the last time you looked at the clock?"

"What kind of question is this?"

"A very serious one, I'll tell you that."

"I don't look at clocks. Seeing the what time it is what phones are for.

I tap my pencil and write down his answer, doing this for every question after that. Little by little, I started to add more questions but it was one question in particular that I almost regretted writing.

"When was the last time you were in love?" The way I had said it, so confidently. I didn't even realize what I had wrote until I had said it out loud. There was no going back, but his love life wasn't important in figuring him out. If he loves at all is what's important. The guilt or pain or regret or whatever I was feeling went away just as long as it took for him to answer.

"I'm in it right now."

Awkwardly, I drop my pencil and ignore the questions after that, but considering that not that many were left, I kept going.

"Last time you ate peanut butter?"

"A few months ago."

"The unimportance of that last question made me realize how unimportant all the other questions are." I say, wondering what was going through my mind when I wrote the questions.

"Now can we eat pancakes?"

"What is it with you and pancakes?" It wasn't until I had asked that I realized that there must have been something, some truth, or softness, even, underneath his love for flapjacks.

"Well, my parents... nothing. I just like pancakes."

I pick the pencil back up. "Go on. You were saying something about your parents. Tell me. I am your psychologist after all."

He gives me a weird look before reluctantly continuing. "Fine. My parents always worked and I never saw them. So I'd get up early in the morning to make pancakes with them and we'd have quality time as a family."

"How did that work out?"

"Good at first."

"But then..." I try to get him to continue. I wanted to know so I knew what I'd be getting myself into if I followed my heart, trying my hardest not to come off as a person sticking their head where it didn't belong. "I mean, you still don't know how to make pancakes."

"I never learned."

That's when it came to me. "Your parent's negligence towards you left you at a crossroads. You had two options. Leave it at that or spend time with them, which would have to be your decision, not theirs. You started at a young age, trying to please them, and hang out them, eventually making you a people pleaser, but, more importantly, likable. After you moved, you felt resentment towards your parents and their abandonment and became a bit rebellious over the few years you were gone," I look at him, trying to read him, and I know what I'm reading is correct. "No anger problems were left behind, but the hate you have for your parents still lives in the pit of your soul and you cast that hate upon certain people, people you think deserve it. What hurts the most, to you, is that your parents didn't even know you got arrested. You hate that you can't go home and find them lecturing you or visiting you or whatever. Furthermore, you hate them, and you hate the world. But pancakes—pancakes are your one good memory of you and your parents spending time together , enjoying each other's company and you'd give anything to have that feeling around. So you love pancakes and the slightest smell of them sends an internal glory through your body, enabling you to feel the love you think your parents never had for you."

He didn't look amazed or awestruck or angry or sad or anything. He didn't feel anything. His expression wasn't just unreadable; it was blank. It wasn't a book in a foreign language you couldn't understand; it was a book with no pages or writing. It was empty. That empty feeling was inside of him. A feeling that everyone has or will feel one day. He was feeling it and I knew exactly how he felt. His feelings were unspoken as they always were, but he didn't speak of them; I did. The fact that I knew his feelings changed something inside of him. His heart grew three times larger, but not for Christmas or Whoville, but for me. That was when I knew I needed to stop fighting.

I sat the notebook and pencil down and went over to him. I rested my head on his shoulder and thought to myself, but only for the first two seconds. After that, my thoughts were gone. I wasn't thinking, but I was feeling, everything. I felt happy, mad, sad, excited, joyful, angry, exhausted, tired, awake, hungry, full. I felt like the glass was half-empty and half-full at the same time. This feeling was something I had felt hundreds of times before, but it was this time that made it special. Because this time it was with Austin.

"Crack the egg carefully, don't get the shell into the bowl. That is the biggest mistake you could ever make."

"What's so bad about the egg shell?"

"Do you really want crunchy pancakes?"

He shrugs. "It's something new."

I was teaching him how to make pancakes. Trying to fulfill the emptiness his parents left him. I didn't think I could change him by doing this, but I did think of the possibility of it happening by doing this. Besides, I didn't want him to change. He was fine the way he was (in some areas). Of course, he shouldn't hate other people for his parent's neglect, but if he enjoyed pancakes and basketball or whatever he likes, I wasn't going to get in the way of that. Nineteen days were left and I had only hoped that they didn't go by fast.

He clumsily broke the entire egg on the edge of the bowl, yolk filling his hands. I throw him a napkin. "Try again. Do it firmly, but gracefully."

"Ally, you can do something firmly, and you can do something gracefully, but you can't do something firmly and gracefully. It's un-American."

'So is not knowing how to make pancakes', I wanted to say, but didn't.

He nudged my shoulder. "I know what you're thinking."

"What?"

"That this is way too much flour." I look to see him pouring the entire bag of flour into the bowl. I bury my face into my hands that were covered with flour and yolk.

I yank the flour out of his hand. "That's it for today. Being a teacher is way harder than I thought it'd be."

"You're giving up on me?"

I toss the flour in the trash, considering it was practically empty. "I would never give up on you. I will never give up on you." What I said was equally true and unsettling. What was so unsettling about it? Possibly the fact that'd I'd never said that to anyone before, or felt this way before. I'd given up on people in the past, but not people that I had cared about.

I notice my phone balled up with what I wore to the party. It was hard to not notice it, especially since it was vibrating

I pick up my phone and walk over to Austin. "Thank you for this, by the way, Reason To Live." I say, too caught up in the moment to pay attention to the messages and voicemails from Elliot.

"How else was I going to send you 1000 messages per day?" he says.

"Seriously. Why?"

"Well, if my parents make one million useless dollars, I figured I might as well give it to someone who needs it. So, I gave it to you."

"I don't need-"

"Yes, you do. You need a lot of things. Things that can only be provided by me."

I shrug. "I guess. I need a pain in the ass, which you provide on a regular basis." You also need someone to care about you and care for you, which he provides on a regular basis. I told myself. The inner me, altar ego, doppleganger, I should say, told me. It, they, she, whatever, was right in every way.

"I'm also providing you a place to stay."

"Yeah. Thanks."

"A place I'm asking you to stay."

"Stay? You want me to stay here?"

"You have no where else to go, so why not?"

"I've been staying at Trish's."

"Yeah, but do you really want to stay at that boring, old fiesta house?"

I hold in my laugh and replace it with a cough. "Are you asking me to move in with you?"

"No. I'm just asking you not to leave."

The choice was clear, but I had a shadow of doubt that nothing would work out. I could almost picture myself storming out of here, crying, the very next day. I could picture being heartbroken and hating him forever. But I could not picture us being apart. I couldn't picture us any other way, than together.

I have to say, I like this chapter. I'm not tooting my own horn, but I am building up some tracks for the train. That is, if the term 'tooting own horn' means a train's horn. That is, if trains have horns. Eh, I'm no train expert. This chapter was definitely in your favor because I was about to stop at so many points, but then I figured I could make a more lengthy chapter. Not super long, but it's not super short. I hope you liked it and if you did or didn't, please feed me with your comments and feedback. I'll update on Saturday as planned, unless aliens invade the Earth. Then, I'll update on Sunday. Just kidding, I don't believe in aliens. But I do believe in zombies... well, only after I watched Warm Bodies. What do you think is going to happen? I'll give you a hint: Something happens in the next chapter that starts with an S. Guess? Or don't, sometimes guessing is dumb. Oh well. Bye.