Buttercup [H.S]

Chapter Thirty One

"So the dude just spray painted your walls like a total fucking psychopath?" Louis asks, astonished, with his head stuck out of the back door as he smokes a cigarette.

I shrug, checking the timer on my phone before peaking through the oven door. Two more minutes.

"Yeah. Like blood-red paint," I say, watching Louis eyes widen at the ludicrosity of the story I'm telling him. His reaction would be funny, if this story wasn't my life, and Kyle wasn't still on the loose. "And he cut up my sofa with a kitchen knife."

"Fucking hell, Love," he shakes his head. "The guy sounds totally off his rocker."

I snort. "I mean, he is."

Before Louis can say anything, footsteps clatter down the hallway, and a rather grumpy looking Niall appears in the kitchen doorway.

"I smell something," he says, rubbing the remnants of sleep from his eyes. "Like...cinnamon and ginger. What is it?"

"Riley's baking," Louis explains, his cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth, which causes Niall to sneer and shove his friend further out of the door and in to the garden.

"You know Harry will kill you if he smells that in the house," Niall admonishes Louis. He turns to me, stepping further into the kitchen and taking a look through the glass oven door himself. "What're you making, Flower?"

Both Niall and Louis had taken to calling me 'Flower' or 'Petal' ever since they overheard Harry's nickname for me. At first, Harry had hissed at them to shut the fuck up. But he soon seemed to ignore it.

Not that I'd seen him much since the day I'd given my statement at the police station.

I wasn't staying in his room anymore. It'd been me that had suggested it, when we'd tried to sleep in his bed that same night, and in the darkness our lips had found one another's too easily. We kissed, my hands in his hair, his on my jaw, until the saltiness of our tears reached our mouths and I told him that I should sleep on the sofa.

So that's where I'd been, for the last two nights and Harry had mostly steered clear of the living room. He'd gone into the market for work this morning, music therapy afterwards, after I insisted I'd be fine here. And I wasn't alone. I had his housemates for company.

I open the oven door when my phone beeps and pull out the tray of cupcakes.

"They're apple, cinnamon and ginger cupcakes," I tell Niall, setting the hot tray on top of the trivet on the worktop. "They're nothing fancy, I just used what Harry had in his cupboard."

Niall looks at the even row of spongy cakes as I turn them out of the tin to cool down.

"Hmm," he says, bringing one up to sniff despite them being piping hot. "Are you going to ice them or anything?"

I shrug. "Depends on ingredients."

Louis has come back in to the kitchen, cigarette no longer in sight, and he dives forward for a cupcake but Niall slaps his hand away.

"If you had access to any ingredients," Niall says, "How would you serve them?"

I chew my lip in thought, thinking fondly back to my now ruined kitchen and the pantry stuffed full of ingredients I once had access to.

"I'd make a sauce, maybe," I say idly. "Maybe cider and caramel, to go with the apple and cinnamon."

Niall nods to himself, as if deep in thought. Then he starts opening his designated cupboards and then the fridge, pulling items out into the counter top.