Illicit Liaison (A Romakota AU)

Tokens of Apology

Beginning the next day, Dakota avoided Roman all over social media. Whenever Roman was online on Facebook and noticed activity from Dakota on the platform, he left messages for him in hopes that Dakota would feel less burdened and less guilty about Rafael calling off the engagement. As Dakota received the messages from Roman, he muted Roman's chat head on Messenger indefinitely. Dakota then proceeded to look Rafael up on Facebook afterwards.

After a bit of research all over Rafael's social media from information that he got from Roman when the older man drove him back to his house on the day they were caught, Dakota soon found out that Rafael is Brazilian. He though, "If there's anything I could do to make things right between him and... Mr. Todd, I've gotta add some Brazilian flair to it."

Dakota then pinched his chin while thinking.

All of a sudden, he remembered looking through photos of food in Rafael's profile. Dakota said, "Alright. I think I found a way." Dakota then went back to the Home page of his Facebook profile and continued scrolling until he got bored a few hours later.

Once Dakota put his laptop on Sleep, he closed his laptop and laid down on his bed. As soon as his head rested on his pillows, he closed his eyes.

Then, Dakota found himself crying silently. He then covered his face with one pillow and quietly said to himself, "If both of them could hear me, I'll tell them that I'm really sorry for everything." Dakota continued crying until he suddenly fell asleep.

Because he fell into a deep sleep, Dakota missed out on eating dinner with his father. However, Dakota's father also did not wake him up anyway, since he noticed that Dakota seemed out of energy in the past couple of days since avoiding Roman.

As Dakota woke up the next day, he quickly opened Google. Dakota then looked up some recipes coming from Brazil. While searching, Dakota said to himself, "Hopefully I find ones that wouldn't cost me such a fortune, and are easy as hell to make."

Dakota found some recipes a few moments later.

He soon stumbled upon Emmymade's video on how to make sequilhos, which piqued Dakota's interest due to how accessible its ingredients were. Dakota thought, "Let me do a test batch of this. There is no way in Hell these melt in your mouth."

So, Dakota grabbed his laptop and went to the kitchen. Afterwards, Dakota looked for some butter, cornstarch, and a small can of condensed milk.

After following Emmy's directions with making the dough and baking the cookies, Dakota cooled them down before eating one. As Dakota started eating, he was taken aback in disbelief when the cookie truly did melt in his mouth. Dakota said, "Whichever Brazilian grandparent that had the brilliant idea of coming up with these truly did God's work."

Dakota then finished the test batch of sequilhos that he made. He did not feel guilty eating every cookie he made, since he did not make a dozen of them.

Afterwards, Dakota looked for more dishes from Brazil in his laptop. A few minutes of searching later, he stumbled upon a recipe for coxinhas. When he looked through the recipe's ingredients, Dakota thought, "I'll reserve this for when I'm finally ready to track down where Roman's ex lives. But hey, this seems simple enough to make. I'll give it a shot."

So, Dakota saved the recipe for coxinhas that he found.

Soon enough, Dakota found a recipe for a Dutch pie over a cooking blog. He found it confusing that it was considered a Brazilian dish and asked himself, "Are they sure this is made in Brazil? Why is this dessert named after The Netherlands, then?"

Dakota then read the dish's background.

He slowly nodded as he was reading, but still was left dumbfounded behind its creator's reasons of naming the pie as such. Dakota shrugged his shoulders and said to himself, "Alright, I'm just gonna trust this food blogger's claim about where this dessert came from. Hopefully Roman's ex doesn't decide to beat my ass to death when I try to give him this pie."