Bouquets of Chocolate (manxman)

Epilogue

Valentine's Day; 14 years old

I only had a few minutes left until Jordie would walk through the door. Valentine's fell on a Saturday this year - thank god for that, because it meant I could convince Jordie to sleep in for a change -, so we'd agreed to meet at 10am. Even though it was still half an hour until then, I was fairly sure he'd be ridiculously early. So I had to somehow get myself together until then.

As if on cue, the front door opened and with it came hurried footsteps down the hall.

"Sammie!" he called moments before he stopped in the kitchen doorway, out of breath even though he literally lived next door.

I gave him my best smile.

"Hey Jordie."

He ran over to give me a hug and we stood there for a second, before he let go and finally set down his duffel with some of the kitchen equipment he'd started buying. For a 14 year old, he had an impressive collection. Last year, he'd decided to become a pastry chef, so he'd been trying out all sorts of techniques and desserts.

"Hey, so I just wanna make something classic today. Want to play around with hazelnut cream, burnt caramel and dark chocolate. You in?" He briefly looked up my way as he was busy unpacking.

I could see the excitement in his eyes. Back then, we still worked on one kind of chocolate together, it was only after, when our interests in pastry started drifting apart a little, that we started making our own each.

"Sure, it's your year to decide after all," I said. Jordie rewarded me with a smile and even with my awful mood, I couldn't help but smile back a little bit.

He immediately went to work, started chattering about anything and everything. I was sitting at the table, glad that he was facing away from me, and I was chopping up the chocolate on autopilot. Whenever appropriate, I contributed with a half assed laugh or a hum, a one word answer here and there.

"You know, if you chop that anymore, we might not even have to melt it anymore, Sammie," Jordie suddenly said with a little chuckle at the end.

"Huh?" was my smart answer, but as I looked down at my sticky, chocolate covered hands, I just let out a groan and just about stopped myself from smacking my palm to my forehead. The table was a mess, the knife as smothered in chocolate as my fingers, and the chopping board was sticking to the board thanks to the chocolate that had melted through the heat of my hands and the amount of chopping I'd done. Wonderful.

"Shit, I'm sorry, I'll sort it out now." I said, uncharacteristically panicked, and started fumbling around.

"Sammie, what's up?" Jordie interrupted my flapping, holding my hands up in the air out of the way of anything that could possibly become another chocolate victim. His voice sounded concerned, because this was Jordie, but he was also an awkward just-about teenager, and so his eyes were flickering everywhere, not able to hold my own, and I could see the short tempered annoyance seep into his features as I wasn't answering.

"Nothing," I finally chose to say. I realised the second it left my mouth that that was the wrong thing to say, because he took a deep breath to calm himself down, eyebrows meeting over his nose in a frown, and now he finally was looking at me.

"You're lying," he accused, tone sure as anything, and he wasn't wrong, "but whatever. None of my business. Let's just get this done, it's already 2."

And with that, he let me go and turned back around to tend to his caramel. I didn't know what to say. We rarely had disagreements, let alone fights, so this was relatively new territory for me.

For now, I went to wash my hands. I thought I had gotten away with me shitty mood because I didn't usually talk much anyway, but I guess I was wrong. If there was anyone that would notice, of course it would be Jordie.