violation.”
“It hasn’t finished brewing.”
“Coffee counts as breakfast.”
“Currently, it’s warm water with ambition.”
She laughed while lighting the candle with my stove lighter, then laughed again and accidentally extinguished it. We spent the next minute arguing about whether an accidental breath invalidated a wish. Her laugh sounded different without our friends filling the room around it.
I fetched plates.
While she cut the cake, I read the rules along the bottom margin: no substitutions, no deleting embarrassing entries, no claiming anything was close enough. The pen had pressed
