“That was crazy how you jumped out of bed last night. Scared the shit out of me,” he said. “Is that a common thing?”

I had no idea why the nightmares of going to the morgue and identifying my parents returned. It was something that happened repeatedly when I first lost them. After a few years it stopped. Since I started seeing Cash, I had two of the nightmares.

All I could think of was that I subconsciously feared losing him, and that fear brought back the horrible dreams.

“Must have been a weird dream. I don’t even remember it,” I lied. “I don’t know what that was about.”

“Crazy,” he said.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Who knows.”

It was time to change the subject. I opened the carton of eggs and stared at the white oblong spheres. “How do you want me to cook them today? All I’ve done is scramble them. Is there a better way?”

“Better?” he asked.

I’d eaten more scrambled eggs in the last eleven days than I’d eaten in a lifetime. I glanced over my shoulder and hoped he hated them as much as I did. “Is there a way you prefer to have them cooked? If you got to pick?”

He lowered his coffee cup. “How do you like them?”

I preferred over medium, but doubted he’d agree. I’d scrambled them since we began eating breakfast together, hoping he found them suitable. But I was sick of them.

“Hard-boiled,” I lied. “How about you?”

“Boiled is okay. If I was in a restaurant, I’d go for over medium.”

“With toast to soak up the yolks?”

“Fuck yes,” he said.

“Let me see what I can do,” I said.

I cooked the bacon, fried the eggs in the grease, and toasted four slices of bread. It wasn’t the healthiest of breakfasts, but it was what my father cooked for me nearly every morning, and it was what I’d grown up enjoying.

I set a plate in front of Cash and watched for a reaction.

He looked at the eggs and smiled. “Looks just like Rudford’s.”

“Rudfords’s?”

“Place right off the Eight-oh-five in North Park. Been there since nineteen forty-something. Best breakfast this side of my mom’s place.”

I tore the corner off a piece of the toast. “I’m sure I’m not up to par with Rudford’s or your mother’s, but hopefully this will be a good third place.”

He carefully lifted one of the eggs, placed it on top of a slice toast, and cut the half the display into bite-sized pieces. After devouring the chunks, he lifted the remaining portion and ate it in two bites.

He wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “Cook ‘em in the bacon grease?”

“I did. Is that okay?”

He chuckled. “My ma keeps bacon grease in a coffee can on the back of the stove.”

“My father used to keep it,” I said, recalling the porcelain dish he kept it in. “But my mother would toss it out with the trash.”

“If I tossed my ma’s grease, she’d whack my knuckles with a spatula.”

“She sounds like a hard case.”

He chuckled. “She is.”

I nodded toward his plate. “So, you like them?”

He tore the corner off the remaining piece of toast. “Love ‘em.”

I watched out of the corner of my eye as he poked the piece of toast into the yolk and stirred it around. After eating the yolk-covered piece, he repeated the process.

I smiled to myself.

Because I was alone, there wasn’t much on most days to reminded me of my parents. Eating breakfast was one thing that did. It was a tradition that my father maintained throughout my childhood and continued whenever I’d pay them a visit.

Since Cash and I began eating breakfast together, thoughts of my parents had returned. Instead of feeling sorrow for their loss, I’d been grateful for the memories that had surfaced.

“My father taught me how to cook.” I looked up. “This was how he loved his eggs.”

His face washed with confusion. “Is he…is he not around anymore?”

It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t told Cash about my parents. It wasn’t something I’d consciously kept from him. It seemed I assumed he knew.

I took a sip of coffee and met his gaze. “Someone rear-ended them on the Five. It’s been just me for almost ten years. July twenty-ninth, it’ll be the tenth anniversary of their death.”

He reached for my hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“It must have been God’s will,” I said. “That’s what I tell myself, anyway. I wish you could have met them, though. They were they best.”

As he held my hand in his, his eyes remained fixed on me for a long time. After taking a precursory glance at my plate, I looked at him.

“What?”

“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said.

I squeezed his hand and smiled. “Thank you.”

He reached for his fork. “Did you like ‘em like this? Like your dad cooked ‘em?”

I smiled. “I did.”

“Hell, I’ve been staying all night over here for what? A week? Why have you been scrambling them?” He poked another chunk of toast into the yolk. “We could have been doing this.”

“Eleven days,” I said. “It’s been Eleven days.”

“Eleven days of scrambled eggs?” He chuckled. “You’ve been counting?”

“Not the eggs, but yes.” I smiled. “I’ve been counting.”

“I don’t keep track of days.”

“At all?”

“Nope. Every time that clock ticks, it’s one second less that I get to spend on this earth. I make the most of my time here, and don’t bother keeping track of what’s gone. If I did, it’d just remind me of what little I’ve got left.”

“What about birthdays?”

“I don’t celebrate ‘em.”

I laughed.

“I’m serious,” he said. “It’s another reminder.”

“But you know how old you are.”

“I’m not an idiot,” he said with a laugh. “But I don’t need to celebrate being another year closer to death.”

“I’ve never looked at it that way.”

“I can’t look at it any way other than that. I never understood someone wanting to celebrate a date that reminded them that another year had passed. That they had one year less to live on earth. It’s like, hot fuckin’ damn, I’m one year closer to death. Let’s have a fuckin’ party.”

He cut the remaining egg and toast in unison, eating one piece of each with every forkful. Cash was definitely cast from a different mold than most. I couldn’t imagine him any other way.

For the next minute or so, we ate our breakfast in silence. In the living room, twenty feet away, my Tiffany & Co knock-off clock ticked away each passing second with a pronounced clack.

A reminder that I’d spent one more second with the man of my dreams.