Playing "House" like you're 6 again

After a while, you came back into the real world, the real world meaning the house outside of your temporary room in the Pearson's guest room. Both Mr. Pearson and Allison were at their respective jobs and Evelyn was at school. It was still the morning, around 11 AM, but you were getting rather hungry; likely a side effect of you having the "Sleep Optional" trait would be that you would have to eat more because you were awake more.

Stupid Affection Multiplication App, fixing one problem but causing another one.

Oh well, it wasn't that big of a deal. At college you had an unlimited meal plan, and had plenty of money saved up from a job you had in high school if you ever wanted to eat off-campus food.

However, you weren't on campus right now, you were in Tennessee. You couldn't easily just pop over to a dining hall and get food, and the closest restaurants were about 10 minutes away since the Pearsons lived in the mountains outside of town. You could take Amy's car, but something just felt a bit off about that.

That left whatever you could find in the refrigerator and your mediocre cooking skills. You could make a mean chocolate chip pancake and some overnight French toast, but anything other than that you needed the recipe for as well as lots of trial and error. If only the Affection Multiplier could give you a boost in cooking.

Wait, it probably could. You look at the Great Student perk. Would it work with things that weren't your traditional classes? Even if it didn't, there were culinary classes you could take at college, so that might work.

Well, regardless, you had 0 Affection Points, so that wasn't going to help at this moment. Especially since you would learn how to cook quicker with the perk, not instantly get the ability to cook a five-course gourmet meal at the tap of a button.

Well, they seemed to have pancake mix, and all the other simple ingredients like milk and vegetable oil. Who said you couldn't have pancakes for lunch? You'll only be a college kid once, this time of your life where you can make irresponsible life decisions only happens once.

Last night, Allison had told you that you could take or make yourself whatever food you wanted out of the pantry and fridge if you were hungry. Well, that was all the justification your brain needed to grab all the ingredients, locate all the cooking ware, and mix up some batter feeling like you were a regular Gordon Ramsey.

Likely because of all of the commotion in the kitchen, Amy walked down the hall from her room and said, "Whatcha up to?"

"Oh nothing, just whipping up some lunch," you responded.

"At 11?" she asked incredulously.

"Well, not all of us are used to waking up at 10:59," you retorted. "Plus, I was hungry, so why not?"

"Pancakes?" she continued, critiquing your choice of food.

"They're one of the only things I know how to make," you say with a bit of a pout. "What's wrong with pancakes?"

"Nothing, just a bit of an odd choice," she waved it off. "Need any help?"

"Actually, that would be nice," you admitted. "Can you set up the griddle?"

The two of you worked together making pancakes for the next 15 minutes, you pouring the batter onto the griddle, her bedazzling them with probably more chocolate chips than necessary, and then you flipping them over and taking them off the griddle. After you had ran through all of your batter, there were about 10 fluffy pancakes sitting on the plate.

"There's no way we're gonna eat all of these," Amy observed.

It's very possible that there was a bit of a twinkle in your eye as you responded with "That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try to eat all of them".

"Cody, you're gonna make yourself sick."

"It'll be worth it for pancakes. I promise."

You got ready to set two seats at the table, but then Amy took the plate of goodness into the living room.

"C'mon, we can eat in here," she simply said. "My parents won't mind, we always ate in the living room if we were feeling lazy. Remember? You and I used to do this all the time."

You did remember. Spending evenings over at the Pearsons' house, you noticed that they often did eat in the living room; a stark contrast to your family who were very strict about eating only at the kitchen table.

After settling down on the couch and putting the plate in front of you, Amy relaxed and leaned back into you as she surfed through various shows on Netflix to put on in the background.

Suddenly, she said, "Oh my fucking god, these are so good. What did you put in these?"

"A bit of vanilla, a bit of extra sugar, and a dollop of fairy dust that your mom just had sitting in the cupboard," you responded jokingly.

"You're such a dork," she said with a laugh. "But seriously, these are so good. Especially considering your track record with food isn't the best."

"Please don't tell me you're going to bring up that story," you said exasperatedly, already expecting what she was going to say.

"After all, you did accidentally put popcorn in the microwave for 24 minutes instead of 2 minutes and 40 seconds that one time last year," she finished, looking very proud of herself.

"Damn it, you can't go a week without bringing that up," you said, embarrassed.

Just then, you saw something in the corner of your vision.

Anderson, Heidi

Affection Score: 79 (+2)

Love Score: 6 (+0)

Lust Score: 18 (+1)

Okay, that was a bit weird. It reminded you of when Amy's score randomly went up that one time after eating supper during the storm. Again, maybe she was just thinking of you. If this was gonna keep happening, it might get a bit annoying, but seeing the updates was more useful than annoying, you guessed.

Your phone pinged with a text message.