In a Heartbeat

You know those moments where you have to wonder why the fuck you did something?
This is one of those moments. I'm currently reconsidering my title of "girlfriend to Harry Styles".
Seriously. This guy is just weird.
Presently, he is sniffing my neck, trying to figure out what smells good.
"Nope. Not you."
I shifted my weight onto my left foot and opened the krumkake iron and slid the knife under the flat cookie, then draped it over the roller and shaped it before putting another spoonful of the batter onto the iron and closing it again.
He sniffed the sink and wrinkled his nose. "Oh, God. It's definitely not that."
"Hey, Einstein. Get a whiff of this," I said, pulling the now-kinda-cylindrical cookie off the roller.
He (loudly and obnoxiously) sniffed it, then smiled. "Found it!" he exclaimed, taking the rolled piece of Scandinavian delight from my hand and breaking a piece off. He then proceeded to eat it.
"Dear God, grant me patience in my time of need," I said, looking pointedly at the curly-haired idiot standing next to me, stuffing his face with more krumkake. He reached for another one, and I slapped his hand away. "Stop it. Those are for Christmas."
He frowned. "What is this anyway?" he asked.
"Krumkake," I replied. "It's spelled like crumb-cake but it's croom-cah-cuh. It's probably one of my favorite Norwegian desserts."
"You're Norwegian?"
"And German. And I think a little bit Dutch. But I'm half Norwegian and probably forty-eight percent German," I replied, opening the iron and redoing the rolling process. "My dad is all kinds of messed up."
"Does your dad ever laugh?" he asked.
"Do you ever stop asking questions?"
"I didn't know this stuff before, so I should probably start finding out now," he explained.
I sighed. "Yes, he does laugh. He doesn't show much emotion. But you know he likes a song when he starts nodding his head to the beat. Like so," I said, motioning toward the doorway leading into the living from the kitchen, where my father was nodding his head to a Carrie Underwood song.
Harry leaned backward to see. "That's all he does?"
I nodded, checking the light on the krumkake iron to make sure it wasn't time to take it out. "He laughs at his own jokes, though. And when he sees something really funny. But for the most part he just smiles."
"Really?"
"Really."
"What about your mum? Is there anything odd about Ivy?"
"Oh, God. Where do I start?" I said, spooning more batter onto the iron. "Everything, I guess? I just don't even know where to start."
He sat backwards on a chair. "You've gotta start somewhere."
"Are you going home for Christmas?" I asked, sitting backwards on another chair, facing him.
"I dunno. We have a radio interview here in Fargo on the twenty-seventh, so I don't even know if it's worth flying home," he said, sounding a little depressed.
"Go home. See your family. They haven't seen you in forever," I said, rolling a hot sheet of krumkake in a cylindrical thing. I unplugged the iron and rinsed out the batter bowl, then sat down in my chair again. "It's only six days from now. You could fly out in two days, be there a day before Christmas Eve then leave the morning of the twenty-sixth. You could crash here when your flight comes in. The other guys are doing that."
He pondered this for a moment. "I guess that could work. Since you're so good at planning this, could you make a schedule of when to leave for New York for the ball dropping? We've kinda gotta be there. Make an appearance and all."
"Nope. Sorry. I'm all out of schedule ideas," I said, standing up. "Be right back. Gotta pee."
"Thanks for announcing it to the world," Harry said. "In case somebody didn't hear, Melody has to pee!" he shouted.
I rolled my eyes and walked into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I pulled down my sweatpants and sat on the cold toilet seat and freed the pee trapped in my bladder. After wiping, I flushed the toilet and closed the lid (anything and everything had a tendency to assume that the toilet was a swimming pool and dive right in) before pulling up my pants, washing my hands and walking back into the kitchen.
"Have a nice tinkle?" Harry snickered. I smacked his head, probably hurting my hand more than I hurt him.
I walked into the pantry to look for chocolate, but instead of chocolate in my secret stash that I hadn't touched since a week before The Accident, I found a sealed business envelope.
Confused, I walked back into the kitchen and slid a butter knife under the sealed flap. Harry eyed me curiously, but I ignored it. I pulled the paper out of its papery prison and unfolded it.
Written on the top of the paper, in familiar handwriting, were two words.

Natalie Porter.

The rest of the words were a swimmy blur. I blinked several times until the words came into focus.
When they did, what I read wasn't at all what I was expecting.

Notes

For those of you who aren't of some kind of Scandinavian descent like me and don't know what krumkake is (or are but still don't have a clue what the fuck it is), this is what it looks like:

That shit tastes like joy.

Everyone complains about how nobody ever seems to go to the bathroom in stories. Well, there you go. Melody's bladder was full. Her liquid waste was freed. You happy now?
THAT is why nobody writes about going to the bathroom. So stop complaining, ya pussies. As authors, we just assume that people realize that the characters DO pee. Just like in books. You hardly ever read a book that tells you EVERY time the person pees. When you find a book that tells you that the main character has to pee several times in a day, I will shut up about this topic. But until then, y'all should quit complaining because it's stupid.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!

QUESTIONS FOR READERS TO GUESS THE ANSWERS TO:

What did the letter say?
Who is Natalie Porter?

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