Chương 8: Trying to Be a Better Person Is Never Fun

"I have got to stop waking up like this," I groaned. My hand instinctively went to my temple. My head was pounding. But at least I was in my own room. Alone. That was a relief. Wynnie was cute. Beautiful, even. Okay, drop-dead stunningly gorgeous. Yet back on Earth, I'd endured countless few-week flings that went nowhere. They left me feeling hollow, and they often hurt the people I'd started seeing. Part of starting anew meant that I needed to be more responsible with people's hearts—and that included my own.

Also, honestly, it meant I needed to be more responsible with my body, too. In a new world, starting things off with a bang—ha ha—would've been unwise. It was questionable enough that I'd already made out with the innkeeper who was putting me up. I didn't want to take advantage of her good graces and her feelings. Taking things slowly would be the only honorable, gentlemanly thing to do. So, sooner rather than later, I was going to have to talk with Wynnie about things.

Mostly, I didn't want to rush into anything, and maybe we should pump the brakes on whatever we'd just started. Though I'd have to find a better idiom than "pump the brakes." Ugh. Dammit. Without my phone to distract me for forty-five minutes in bed before getting up, I had no reason to stay under the covers. Going screenless felt like a life hack. Since arriving here, I found myself with hours more each day. With a quick motion, I threw them off and hopped to my feet. The floor was practically an ice rink.

It might've been summer, but coastal climates are notoriously cool, and Seaport was apparently no exception. The wintry morning air chilled me uncomfortably. We'd stoked the hearth the night before to ensure it was working, but apparently it didn't last long. I shivered uncomfortably as I dressed. Part of me was excited to see Wynnie again this morning. The other part of me was terrified. I'd always dreaded "the talk."

Any conversation about expectations for a relationship, overstepping boundaries, or just figuring out how each person felt was terrible. If I'd known isekai was an option back on Earth, I might have yeeted myself off a bridge far sooner in life just to avoid a few of these "talks." Making my way out into the main room, I heard clanging coming from the kitchen. Smoke filled the room from the hearth as usual. Everything felt just as ho-hum and dreary as it had the day before.

It was just that this time, I was a bit more nervous about greeting my host. We'd kissed. Big time. I opened the door to the kitchen with a gentle push. Wynnie fussed over the hob, wrestling with the fire.

"Dad-gummit, why won't you just stay lit?" She kicked the metal stove in frustration.

"Did I catch you at a bad time?" She whipped around.

"Drew!" Her hands went to her temples as soon as she said my name. The volume of her exclamation hurt me, too.

"Ow. Oh, I have such a headache." I chuckled.

"Me too. I should've warned you about that."

"About what?"

"About what punch feels like the next day." She rubbed her eyes, clearing them of dizzy sleepies.

"How did something so sweet and delicious manage to kick me in the head that hard? It barely tasted like booze at all."

"That's the magic of cocktails. The only downside is that the sugar in them makes the hangover even worse."

"I was just about to start breakfast for you. I've been trying to get this doggone fire running for the last ten minutes." I closed the distance between us and inspected the hob. Her mistake was simple. She just didn't know how to build a good fire. The wood she'd piled into the stove was jammed haphazardly in without sufficient room for it to breathe. Not only that, but the vent that controlled the airflow into the chamber was almost completely closed.

And here, I'd been wondering if this was a known issue with ice mages. As if perhaps their mana or abilities or whatever just made fire particularly uncooperative. But no, there was nothing wrong with the stove itself, and her ice magic wasn't sabotaging it. She just lacked expertise. I scanned the room for some oven mitts or a towel to help me grab the hot, exposed iron areas of the stove. She looked over at the half-concocted breakfast ingredients, but didn't reach for them.

"You were going to make breakfast for me? What about yourself?" She offered a hopeless expression.

"I can't really eat after I've had that much to drink. Maybe some water and stale bread. I know some people like a big, greasy meal with bacon, eggs, and all the fixings, though." The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Not me. Most I could handle right now is toast and a cup of black coffee. This world does have coffee, right?" She nodded emphatically.

"The traders bring it up from the coast twice per year. I always stock up. Usually, I just give it to myself as a treat." After a bit of my help, we got the stove up and running. Wynnie toasted slices of stale bread directly on the cooktop. She smeared on fresh, rich butter, which looked far yellower and clumpier than the pale, sterile, rectangular bricks back in the States. While she handled our minimalist food needs, I took over coffee duties.

I was by no means an expert, but years of food service grounded me in the basics. Anything from a French press to a Moka pot posed no challenge, and I could handle a basic espresso machine if you didn't care what the latte art looked like. Here, however, it looked like I could choose between cowboy coffee and a questionable pour-over through a fabric filter. The choice was obvious. I spooned a few heaps of rough-ground beans into the jerry-rigged contraption that held the fabric filter.

When the water was ready, I poured slowly from the kettle, watching the bloom spread across the small mountain of beans. Muddy brown streamed into a saucepan I'd set up to catch it.

"Why are you pouring so slowly?" I kept my eyes focused on the filter.

"Good coffee takes care. If I rush it, it'll get watered down."

"Oh. Okay, but why don't you strain straight into the mugs?"

"The first drips taste different from the last. If I pour it into one vessel to split between us, the flavor and quality remain the same for both cups."

"Huh. Yeah, that sounds pretty obvious when you say it that way." She shifted her position, leaning against the counter to watch me finish.

"You really care about quality and taste, don't you?"

"It's how I made a living. But yeah. Anything worth doing is worth doing right." I wasn't sure whether that was an axiom or a platitude, but either way, it had ominous undertones for me. If I were to try for romance in Solus-El, I wanted to do it right—not with a hasty, drunken hookup right off the bat. My stomach gurgled from the stress of the conversation I still needed to have. Or maybe it was from the hangover. Probably it was that. Wynnie fetched a small tin of sugar and a saucer of cream.

She added an excessive amount of cream to her mug, stirred in a small spoonful of sugar, and sighed contentedly after the first sip.

"Best I've ever had."

"Really?" I had to try my handiwork. My first sip was black, unadulterated with cream or sugar, so that I could pull out tasting notes on the beans here. Immediately, I felt so bad for Wynnie. They were over-roasted to the point of being burnt, bitter from lack of care, and hadn't been stored properly. It was obvious that the traders who brought coffee here hadn't been by in a while, because the beans had gone bad. Excessive cream and a bit of sugar helped the second sip, though.

For a few minutes, we stood side by side in the kitchen, barely facing each other. The steady sounds of crunching toast and slurping coffee filled the bare room. Slowly, I could feel life coming back into my body. And Wynnie's timid, hopeful, almost conspiratorial smiles tugged at my heart.

"So, about last night," I said, already regretting the words as they came out of my mouth. A rosy red glow flushed her cheeks, and she looked deep into her half-finished mug.

"I don't know what came over me. I don't usually do that. Ever."

"I do, unfortunately. Too often," I confessed.

"Regardless of what I want, I don't want to pressure you into anything. You said things stay pretty casual for you. I hate that I might have just become that for you. It's all my fault, and I feel awful about it." Wait, she was the one apologizing? My emotional maturity and self awareness were an exciting work in progress, yet hers appeared fully developed.

"Please don't feel bad. The only thing I can blame you for is being gorgeous, kind, and fun."

"You think I'm fun?" There was that timid smile again.

"I mean, yeah. I've been having a great time. It really takes the sting off of being dead, you know?" She giggled, then immediately stopped herself. To be fair, it was an odd joke. More than a bit of truth was hidden in it. I reached across the small, circular table at which we were seated. My hand found hers, which was sitting an inch away from her untouched toast. She grasped my fingers.

"As for us kissing… I'm sorry that I fell into old habits with you. It's not fair for me to give you the impression that I'm relationship material when I'm clearly not."

"No relationship?" She looked at me pleadingly.

"You don't like me that way?" This was the part that I hated the most.

"No, no, it's not that. Promise. It's just, uh." I had to dig into the well of anime I'd watched, LitRPG I'd listened to, and the odd men's adventure fiction I'd read before bed.

"In all the stories from my world, the person reborn into another world does better in their new life than their old one."

"You think you can do better than me?"

"No! Goodness, no. That's not what I meant. I—""I'm teasing. I get it." She waved her free hand vaguely, sending a swirl of coffee steam curling under our noses.

"You don't want to wake up in a strange land, get drunk, and kiss the first girl you meet."

"Second," I corrected her.

"Lady Talia got there first."

"Woof. Good thing you didn't try to kiss her!" Wynnie laughed a bit of tension away.

"Okay, you didn't want to get drunk and kiss the second girl you met. You want to change here. For the better, whatever that means." I wasn't exactly sure what I meant, either, but I meant it.

"I think I can. Change, that is."

"Me too." She squeezed my hand gently and sighed in disappointment.

"So you like me, but you don't want to do anything about it."

"I do like you. I just don't know if it's going to work out. Bad track record and all."

"Well, if you like me, then maybe we could just... take things slow?" She bit her lip, hope flashing across her face.

"I know you're worried about falling into old patterns. And honestly, I don't even know what I'm doing. So maybe we could just be friends first? At least until you have a better idea of what's going on?" I felt a weight lift off my chest.

"Friends?"

"Yeah. Friends who maybe kissed once when they were drunk."

"Friends who definitely kissed," I amended.

"And… and friends who might do it again someday when they're not drunk." She gave me a shy smile.

"Is that weird?"

"No, that's actually perfect." I squeezed her hand back.

"If we're going to do this, I want to make sure we do it right. Not all sweaty and drunk right after we met. Thank you for understanding."

"Just promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't write me off completely. If you go shack up with some other floozy in town tomorrow night, a girl might feel you're just giving her a line to let her down easy." I shook my head.

"It's not that. Really, this is about me figuring things out."

"Well, here's to us figuring things out together. As friends. Promise you'll give me a chance first." My throat felt tight.

"I promise." She smiled, then pulled her hand back to pick up her toast.

"So, what's next?"