[Vanilla]
To be a great conversationalist was to acquire the skill of tact; and while Leroy Cox was certainly no professional, many including myself would find him lacking in this area. For Chen to have been able to take Leroy's words in his stride was a near indication of him possessing a similar level of skill, in which I was left in the dust as the pair continued to hurl comments of passive-aggression under the guise of a conversation, grabbing at every available opportunity to take jabs at one another.
While I'd remained mostly confused at the abrupt topic of birthdays and slightly irked by our drifting focus, the oven dish of mac and cheese had kept me decently distracted and a further thirty minutes of stifling remarks finally saw an opening for me to bring this all to a stop.
"So I'm glad to see that you two are getting along perfectly on the topic of next Monday's schedule and all but," I wiped my mouth with a napkin and sipped at the iced chamomile tea Leroy had made me. "We've barely had the chance to speak about SOY or the judging and it's nearly time for someone to actually start his shift since, well, he can't possibly be paid to talk to customers about their birthdays when peak hour's about to start."
The odd tension between 'I'll-bake-you-a-cake' Chen and 'No-thank-you' Leroy Cox dissipated at once and both turned towards me with a pause. I casually pointed out the short queue that had formed at the counter and the staff behind it, who were staring daggers at the skiving member.
He'd cursed under his breath and cleared up the table at once, taking the empty oven dish and Chen's coffee cup before disappearing into the back. We watched him go.
"You sure you don't want a cake?"
I looked at Chen, blinking twice. "It's very nice of you but I can't imagine having an entire cake to myself when, in the first place, I have no one to share it with and not to mention the non-existent party you seemed to have assumed would exist."
"We could share a six-inch," he offered, laughing. "I thought of making you an opera."
"Oh no," I forced a smile, holding up both my hands to make a point. "An opera's amazingly extravagant and we both know how hard it is to master that sort of technique and um, no, really. I don't need a cake."
"I'll compromise on a tart," Chen laid out with a grin and at the rate this was going, I figured this was as far as I was going to get. "I'm already late for an interview and I'm not leaving until you say yes."
"Yes."
I provided the necessary means for him to leave and signed my soul to a tart that practically speaking, wouldn't be too hard to finish and wasn't the biggest of favours to return. A cake would have been borderline dangerous.
The smile he broke into was like a blinding beam and he picked up his duffel bag before reaching across the table for my hair once again. "Good. I'll see you soon." His gaze on me lasted throughout him wrapping a scarf around his neck, pushing in his chair and leaving the ice cream parlour, not before turning back with a friendly wave.
I delivered one in return, unsure if I was doing this correctly or if bidding an acquaintance farewell meant physical contact. Si Yin was no acquaintance. Well at least I hope to her, we weren't. Still, we don't go around hugging or kissing each other goodbye and while it could be attributed to her being Asian, I wouldn't necessarily peg her as being brought up with those values and at the same time, I never did know how she was brought up or who—
"Hey."
I looked up and Leroy was back with a second cup of strawberry-and-honey-infused chamomile tea. This, he swapped with my now-empty one. "Oh! I was just going to pay for the meal too."
"You staying till the end?" He asked and I nodded, removing my laptop from its padded sleeve and also handing him a ten dollar note. He pushed it back my way. "It's the refill."
I frowned, unable to make any sense of his words. "Yes but this is for earlier on."
"None of them are on the menu, dumbass," he laughed, taking my empty cup. "Don't leave without me."
Leroy had once again succeeded at leaving my jaw in a perpetually lazy state, and as hard as I tried to stare after the idiot's back and will him to somehow witness my glare of death, the growing crowd before the counter was making this rather difficult. After a futile attempt, I decided to redirect my attention to the several essay assignments I had to be writing.
The prompts had been sent to us by our student outlook accounts, and after several minutes of trying to remember the password I was given, I was finally able to log in and glance through my inbox.
STAND-IN CLASS REP
Mr. V. J. White,
It has come to my attention that registration for the school's annual festival before thanksgiving holidays requires the name of a class representative, which we unfortunately have not made a decision on. This is included among the notable changes made by the festival committee following the funding of 14 new non-profit organizations and increased coverage by several media outlets.
As such, I will be placing your name and contact details under the list of representatives. Miss Xu has unfortunately expressed her dissent from being appointed as class representative as has been discussed in homeroom yesterday morning. I understand that this will be done without an official voting or a general approval from the class and thus the words 'stand-in' before your title.
I will be speaking to you more about this very soon.
Regards,
Chef Palmer
Among newsletters, internship opportunities, and mass notices sent out by instructors, I'd noticed a personal email sent by 1B's homeroom teacher and found myself reading the entire thing twice to ensure its authenticity.
I'd naturally began to find this all very confusing and not to mention, troubling by the time I processed the implications of Chef Palmer's decision and having done so without permission from the class. At once, I crafted a response—pointing out the inevitable problems that would come with me being appointed as class representative, stand-in or not. Having done all that politely, I added that while I saw no great issue with her providing my name just so that our class could register for the annual food market, I expressed hope that she would find someone else as a replacement as soon as possible.
Finished, the sudden urge to catch a glimpse of Leroy at work (since, well, I'd always been seated on the second floor instead of the first) became increasingly hard to ignore. Whether this was the beginning of my official entry into a certain idiot's fan club, I couldn't help but feel the slightest disappointment that this was perhaps the very reason every other student would have chosen the seats on the first floor over the one above; just so they could steal that glance every now and then.
So I did. Sometimes.
In the middle of writing an essay or completing the two first drafts Keith had been demanding since this morning and sending them over as soon as I could. There were times when the line before the counter would snake and block one's general view (if there was any to begin with) of the counter but hours later and thirty minutes before closing, I caught his eye.
"I'm done. Give me a minute," he came by to collect my drink before disposing it in the kitchen and then going up the stairs to the staff lockers on the second floor. Meanwhile, I quickly conveyed my distraught sentiments to the other girl behind the counter and asked if I could somehow pay for the non-existent drink.
"We could... consider it a customized order for chamomile tea?" She suggested and I hastily accepted, pulling out a ten and sliding it across the counter, hoping Leroy would take his time upstairs. Unfortunately, he proceeded to catch us red-handed and give my forehead the usual.
"I'll add it to the menu by next week." Leroy's solution was heartening, and I found myself nearly having to keep my eyes fixed on the ground just so I wouldn't be tripping over my own feet. He had insisted on walking me home.
Truth to be told, I'd very much expected for this to happen and had, in my head, ran the usual range of simulations in projection of what was to come and by doing so gather the necessary level of courage to extend an invitation to Leroy. After all, it would have been nice to spend an ordinary birthday with certain people—especially when apart from one's family.
And so after clearing my throat, I asked if he would be keen on joining Si Yin and I at the brand new shopping mall thirty minutes away from school for some stationary shopping on Monday after school. Just for an hour or so.
Leroy had paused, stopping in his tracks. "I've got work."
"Would Sunday be okay?" I offered alternatively, brushing aside the odd sinking in my chest at his curt response. "Or Saturday too, if you're alright with that."
"I'm seeing Annie on Saturday. And then working on Sunday," he averted his gaze and continued down the road. I tried to fall back into step but what had been, just moments before, easy, seemed nearly effortful at present, weighing on my shoulders and the bottoms of my feet.
"Oh. Oh, yes. You did mention going to see your mother. Sorry, it... slipped my mind. That's alright. I mean, not to mean I'm responding to an apology or anything. There's nothing to apologize for and clearly, I don't know what I'm talking about anymore, so I'll... just..." Falling silent was the only solution.
It had been foolish of me to assume that Leroy would have had the time to spend an hour or so stationary shopping with someone who didn't quite matter as much as his busy schedule, especially since he'd missed a weekend of work during SOY and had hospital bills to be paying—clearly not in the position to be wasting time looking at pens and notebooks. If anything, I was the one being unreasonably demanding.
After all, birthdays were ultimately, to everyone else, just... days.
Candles to be blown.
To expect some form of celebration was nearly ambitious, and to actually have one was a privilege so luxurious that I, a sheltered bookworm, had long forgotten the reasoning behind it all. Even so, I'd been the one deeming candles ridiculous and birthday celebrations unnecessary for nearly my entire life and perhaps it could've been the fact that I was so far away from home for the first time, away from the shelter I'd kept myself under, that I was beginning to allow such silly sentiments to toy with reason.
"Next time."
I turned, peering up at Leroy. "Um, again? Sorry I wasn't—"
"Next time you ask," he said, a quiet smile on his lips. "I'm treating it as a date."
===============
"I don't know why I got five pink pens but I did and regret is not an emotion I feel," said Si Yin as we made our way out of the third stationary shop in the building and her hands already full of dainty little bags. "What's next?"
The weekend felt nearly horrendous in its passing, what with the sudden and tremendous growth of immediate assignments and announcement of there being two multiple-choice, shade-the-bubble tests on Monday afternoon that were both fifteen percent of the total grade of the respective modules. Granted, I couldn't possibly be expecting the entire world to magically get on their knees just because it was my birthday. The afternoon was exactly what I had been looking forward to all week—a quaint, enjoyable time out stationary shopping with Si Yin.
"There's MUJI on the fifth floor and HEMA on the sixth," I told her, checking the list I'd drawn up just the night before, wondering if my companion's concerns of having five pens in different shades of pink were misdirected. "The stationary selection at MUJI isn't the only good thing about it."
"Guess we're buying the whole store," was all she said in response, shrugging as we made our way to the escalators and headed for our next location.
The mall, opened to the public just a week ago and about a thirty-minute bus ride from our school, boasted an incredible shopping experience of nine floors full of favourite brands and lots that were seemingly allocated to small start-ups or personal businesses. The second store we'd popped by being one of them; where we emerged with hand-crafted notebooks and wood-carved pens.
I was in a mood considerably better than the sum of my weekend, having put up with the odd and troubling emotion of shifty disappointment. And while I would have liked to put a finger on some reasoning behind me being upset, I was also constantly checking my phone during the spare time I had between revision periods I'd set for myself over the weekend. All that buzzed were messages from Si Yin about our Monday excursion, and if I'd wanted to pop by her house soon after for some tea. That being my birthday present.
Surely, there must have been... some sort of mistake. Even now, I couldn't resist the urge to pull out my phone and glance, worried, at the lock screen and confirm that the only text I'd received (and felt much too concerned about opening) was from Chen after I'd thanked him for the fatally perfect strawberry tart he'd presented me with this morning and him coming back to me with yet another round of birthday wishes.
"Is he still texting you?" Si Yin had lost all interest in scanning the rows of pens and highlighters to peer over my shoulder. I told her that it had merely been our second message of the day.
"Really? Why does it sound like he's been sending you one every five minutes," she muttered under her breath before returning her attention to the highlighters and picking out three at one go. For some odd reason, I felt the urge to agree.
"It's just the issue with, you know, Layla Tenner and, well, you may have heard about her absence from school and it's been a week since anyone saw her but all her classmates are saying is that their homeroom teacher claims she's taken two weeks off due to family matters. Naturally, Chen's been very concerned about all this as the school's number two, so."
Before I knew it, Si Yin had grabbed herself a basket and an array of coloured pens, highlighters, and minimalist pencil boxes had been added to her loot. "This is weird. You ever think if Leroy cared a little bit more about other human beings than you, he'd actually have more opportunities to interact with the interested party. This can't be correction tape." She picked up the packaging and turned it around. "It is!"
Her bringing up a valid, sound conclusion that had so coincidentally been about my current primary subject of concern soon became the grounds for my consulting her with the five-day-truce Leroy and I had unknowingly signed. I'd taken to the internet in search for a term that wasn't a 'Cold War', only because I knew what they were and how they tended to affect friendships or relationships in general in the written novel and my current circumstance appeared nothing like how it was between the US and the Soviet Union back in 1969.
"Maybe he's just honestly that busy," Si Yin surprised me with an answer so alarmingly plain and ordinary that I was shocked into considering it. "Or he's been doing some research on how to romance main characters like yourself and then plotting his way to victory! Look, he's succeeding already. You're thinking about him. By the way, Seb's going to be here in about ten minutes. We need to pay for the goods and head right out with the biggest shopping bag they have so that my mom doesn't think I just bought pens for my cousins and siblings. They don't exist, by the way."
While the logical first answer she'd decided to give would have thoroughly upset me over the truth value it seemed to hold over the second (Leroy considering someone like myself as a potential romantic partner), I ended up assigning credit to, well, the likely truth since, naturally, truth must necessarily triumph over falsehood.
My godfather's husband would have begged to disagree.
"It's strange, this feeling is," I told her as we walked out of MUJI after paying and asking for a bigger shopping bag in which Si Yin could put all her other tiny ones in. "I never knew not receiving a text from another human being could be this frightening. Uncle Al's always made me think acceptance emails from universities were the worst of electronic waiting. I'm worried he's found me quite boring."
We were on our way to the mall's pick-up point where Sebastian would be waiting in the usual limousine when my companion decided to mark this day 'memorable beyond belief' in our timeline of friendship. She hugged me.
"I know I suck at remembering people's names but I do remember other stuff. The previous time you talked about being boring in front of Leroy, he almost made out with you," she released me from her arms and gave my shoulder a firm pat. I was still in shock from the physical contact. "I should be a detective."
"I-I, um, appreciate the... generosity of your... compliment. Again, I wasn't sure if he was going to do whatever it is most people don't think twice about before they do—I mean, when I was in high school, it was everywhere, really—that's not what I was... I just. The hug was... thank you."
It was hard not to spot Sebastian amidst other family cars waiting in line for a limousine to move out of the way. We hurried over at once.
"I honestly don't know if I did it correctly. My mom's only hugged me once and that nearly gave both of us a heart attack but that was it." She hopped into the limo after forgetting to wait for Sebastian to open the door for her. He'd looked so offended, running back to the driver's seat after the heartless rejection. "Oh yeah, happy birthday."
*
I once thought my best friend was a princess in disguise and with this visit to her mansion, I now consider it a fact of truth.
While the limousine should already have played a role in my understanding of her social and financial position, Si Yin's disposition and demeanor in school, when factored into my calculations of the aforementioned, could never arrive at a reasonable marrying of both worlds. And stereotypes aside, my best friend (again, I must declare this a hopeful circumstance) had set her own category of a wealthy, talented member of the Asian race.
"Beware of the maid standing on the third step from the top. The one on your left," she said as Sebastian ferried us from the main gates and past the manor's front garden that was basically a park with a long stretch of cobblestone pavement leading up to the building itself. "She likes the food I make."
Si Yin and I were staring out of the limo and into the distance of the driveway, where she had a welcoming audience of at least ten maids, standing on the front steps in a uniform that resembled Sebastian's. No skirts.
"What's wrong with liking the food you make, Si Yin?" I blinked, nearly forgetting about her chauffeur's temper and opening the door myself as soon as he pulled up. "I like your food."
"Guess your tongue isn't all that magical after all," she shrugged. "I am now 'beware-ing' you."
Having alighted with our shopping bags and, well, other stuff for school, the housemaids nearest to Si Yin and I hurried to receive them after presumably greeting her with a friendly welcome.
"小姐，您的朋友们正在厨房和游泳池的后边预备庆典的装饰与—"
"Ohmygod you can't just! He's right there!" My companion burst out at once with her fingers pointed in my direction, to the surprise of the maid addressing her until her thoughts began to form. She turned to me. "She said your tie looks stupid. Sorry about that."
I watched her turn back to her attendant and begin whispering into her ear as though they had some secret information regarding my tie. Glancing down, I couldn't see a problem with it unless it was its prim and proper manner that had somehow been a cause for concern. I'd done it up just the way Uncle Al had taught me to.
Mildly embarrassed, I thought of loosening it or perhaps unbuttoning the top-most button of my dress shirt to appear slightly more casual, but the thought of resembling Leroy's horrendous state of everything around his upper body, or, well, him in general, was all the more offensive. I left it fully buttoned.
"Alright, just leave the bags with everyone and I'll bring you on a house tour," Si Yin was back with a skip in her steps after having had a seemingly rejuvenating private conversation with her maids, who all appeared equally ecstatic to see her home. "Do you prefer it with food? Like, while we're walking. Or no food."
I asked her what sort of food she was referring to and her answer was popcorn. "Or fried fish skin. Crispy stuff. Seasoned with my secret pepper mix," she added.
"That's impressive. You make your own snacks?"
"I thought everyone did that," Si Yin promptly received a container of what seemed like wavy crisps of cod skin, fried to perfection. She popped it open and instantly, an aroma of curry leaves and a subtle smokiness hit the back of my nose and I identified an interesting mix of well-balanced seasoning. Oh. Roasted coconut.
"So much for 'secret recipe'," she sent a piece into her mouth and the crunch echoed its way down the marbled hallway of portraits and pastoral paintings. I reached into the container for one. "This is my great-grandma, apparently. And that's my mom's dream house which she got some guy to commission and I told her she could never live in it because there's no internet and she's got to drive two hours away to buy ingredients to cook. She responded by saying we would have a farm. I can't remember why."
We came upon what appeared to be the manor's entertainment room, which would have served as a function room for events or for the hosting of parties and balls back in the 19th century. I say this because Si Yin's home wasn't exactly designed to be the most modern-looking, what with the kind of architecture we have nowadays. Her parents seemed to have Victorian tastes, which could only mean that everything in the mansion would have had to cost more, either way.
"This is the place my mom uses when she has friends over. This is the floor. It's white. That is the ceiling. It's also white. It has gold things that protrude out of it. The chandelier. It is gold and... jewels. The fireplace. A chair. A rug, thing. The view is nice."
She said this all whilst moving in a grand circle around the room, gesturing to whatever it was she decided to direct my attention to and rather stiffly introducing the tiniest of details. I figured she hadn't ever had to give a tour around her exceptionally monstrous mansion (I would have had a hard time too and all I had was one room), and was struggling to lead her attention around in what she felt was the correct order. Plus, she kept glancing at her phone.
"Si Yin, um. If this tour is causing you any distress, I wouldn't want to—"
"Stress? No no, like, I'm just thought you like, you will like the flooring. I mean, we all like flooring," she resorted to saying and I laughed, telling her that I indeed, had a peculiar interest in floors.
"Really? Okay the floor in my room is really cool but let's move on to the next room first. I think it's the bathroom but I don't know. I think we have five. Or was it twenty-three..."
Turns out, it was thirty-one. We asked Sebastian, who'd so professionally positioned himself at the most convenient of locations: outside Si Yin's room, upon which we'd emerged from after a quick tour, and had him relay the information. After a long and tedious tour of the east and west wings, including her mother's private kitchen studio and Si Yin's experimental one which she'd converted her walk-in closet into without the permission of her parents, we were finally making our way back down to the first floor where the dining room was.
"Thank you for showing me around. The wallpaper was exquisite in every room. And so was the flooring," I told her, honest. After all, Si Yin wasn't obliged to give me a tour of her place that I would have paid to enter for some educational experience of, um, history. Like a museum of some sorts. She could very well have had us confined to the dining room for afternoon tea and then do away with my presence after thirty minutes.
Either way, we were finally getting to the main part of the visit.
"Told you the flooring was cool. Okay but now's the cool part," we passed into the room behind the grand staircase leading to the second floor that would have led to the courtyard behind the mansion and were at once met with the most stunning floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned at least a hundred feet across a spacious, high-ceilinged room. The strangest thing was that I couldn't see what was beyond it.
"This window thing?" Si Yin gestured at the panels of glass, grabbing a remote as we entered the room and neared it. "It blocks out all the light and becomes black when I press this button. When I press it again, it goes like bam 'cuz all the light floods in at once and I have no idea why my mom decided to have it 'cuz it gives her a really bad migraine when it does that but guess she makes bad decisions too. It's expensive as heck."
"What! You cannot be serious," I whispered, realizing how much our voices were echoing around the large, spacious room. "Such ridiculous technology. I've never heard of glass doing all that."
"It works like interrogation rooms," explained my companion. "Like in prison."
I nodded slowly, wondering if it was the best analogy to be making. She handed me the remote and pointed at the shiny black button in the middle, prompting me to give it a go.
It had been nearly an hour since we'd arrived at Si Yin's place, and after a long day at school and an adventurous time shopping for stationary, the sun would have to be setting by now, beyond this glass. Logically speaking, one could expect a canvas of lavender hues and faded mandarins against a cloak of azure, rising into the darkness of my favourite shade, Prussian blue. And judging by the location of the manor, the silhouette of a forest would complete the picture and hence complete the seal of envy that any sane human being would feel for those who lived in a home so heavenly.
Pushing the button, I did not feel any of that. Why?
Because beyond the glass was not a flawless landscape painting of marvellous shades and colours but the most adorable, soothing forest of pastel helium balloons circling a birthday banner of a gentle shade, complete with what looked like sparklers in the hands of at least ten familiar faces and in the middle of it all, the most, utterly monstrous face of a devil with a smirk on his lips and in his eyes, the light of the candles on a cake that was in his hands.
I was hearing them singing it—the song. All of a sudden. And then there was the company of a breeze and the voices of a bunch of people on a laptop, gathered in a room that looked oddly like mine back home and it was. Rosi was holding it as they, too, sang with everyone else standing in front of the pool with the sparklers and the lights and god, even the hats. Si Yin put one on me and before I knew it, there were poppers in my face and someone yelling about watching out for the cake.
I approached it, and knew at once that looking into the eyes of the one who was holding it would be a dangerous, deadly venture. I once read about a moth in a story who said that death was hard to resist near the end and here I was, swept away by the temptation to give in to the fire.
In the beat of a heart, I blew at the candles that were still and they flickered.
Caressed.
=============
"Told you it was like in prison. Everyone could see us through the glass," said Si Yin after the hubbub had died down and I'd spoken privately to Uncle Al and Aunt Julie over Skype, where they'd revealed some sort of stunt pulled by the team and how they'd managed to get the two of them involved. All I could understand over the noise and occasionally frozen screen was that it had everything to do with Leroy. The details were hard to work out, especially since I couldn't recall an instance in which he could possibly have a way to contact either of them for the occasion, but we settled on talking later at night.
"That is such a ridiculous function," I told her, laying down the laptop and watching as Raul and Bank jumped into the pool at freezing temperatures, one at a time. "Why would they even have that programmed?"
"It's three settings in total. The 'both-sides-no-see', the 'inside-see' and the 'outside-see'. So I told one of my maids to set it to the correct one so that everyone else could tell when we were coming and light the candles and sparklers and all," Si Yin explained as we headed over to the poolside grill, where Nabila and Leroy took the liberty of dishing out the food. "It's a seafood party by the way."
I blinked, resting my gaze on the oysters sitting atop the spitting flames and promptly doing a double take. "You cannot be serious. They're huge!"
"Sorry. We had to settle for those since they ran out of snow crabs and lobsters. But we do have some king prawns," she added, jelly fingers steepled as she wobbled them about nervously, re-directing my attention to the other side of the grill where the prawns were. I told her that this was more than enough.
"I've never had such a luxurious celebration in my whole entire life," was all I could say, to which she was quick to remind me of her poor gift-giving skills and that food could never go wrong. "Not to mention, the cake looks really good. And is this why you refused to show me the kitchen and instead focused on the elaborate design of the toilet paper in every bathroom?"
Si Yin provided a sheepish laugh in response. "My job was to buy time. At least I nailed something on the list."
"Everything was perfect," I found myself on the verge of tears and made the quick decision of pulling her into a hug. I could therefore hide and recover in the meantime. "Thank you for organizing this. I'd never thought I would receive an invitation to a birthday party my entire life and here I am attending one!"
"Oh. That's nice. I kinda invited myself into this one but honestly I don't get many invites all the time too," she reached around to pat me on the back. "It's mutual. But you can't just thank me 'cuz everyone else helped too.
"Especially your man who's probably going to put me on the grill next if we keep this up," Si Yin went on in a lowered voice and I promptly rolled my eyes.
"He wouldn't dare."
The next couple of seconds featured Si Yin in a state of panic before Rosi soon returned with the cake neatly sectioned, handing them out on paper plates whilst introducing the ingredients she'd used in an afternoon's rush.
"It's a vanilla mousse cake with butterscotch crumbs on top and a dark chocolate layer in the centre to balance the sweetness that comes with it. Happy birthday," she gave my shoulder a pat and handed me the biggest slice before calling out to the people in the pool. Si Yin suddenly recalled that turning on a switch by the side of the pool would produce heated water, successfully converting several others to join the foolish pair in the water.
"You get the first one," Nabi said as soon as I tried to help out at the grill, removing a shucked oyster from the flames and transferring it to a cooling rack. While this one had its excess juice cooked till evaporation, I could tell from the dozen others laid out on the grill that she'd added some kind of butter sauce in each shell. The fragrance was absolutely incredible.
Raul and Bank soon came swimming over to the food and by that I meant gravitating towards it on land, hovering over the cooking seafood and waiting to be fed. There were fish packets—cod, asparagus and fennel—and whole mackerels on the menu, the latter grilled to perfection and paired with a sweet garlic sauce provided by Si Yin.
Throughout the entire evening, I'd found myself unable to count the number of times someone had piled more food on my plate while I would be distracted by group conversation, keeping both my mind and stomach quite occupied till I was beginning to feel the effect of a severe food coma.
All this while, Leroy had not once spared me one of his long, hard stares and while interaction had not necessarily been sparse, they were mostly in groups—in which he'd be offering one of those king prawns he'd topped with mentaiko and blow-torched to rich and creamy perfection, and then when he handed me an ice cream bar. The odd tension that could have very well been attributed to the colouring of my own lenses after a near week of not having proper conversation with him soon made its way into the discomfort of my chest.
Not a word had been exchanged on an individual level and in any other form of connection; a gaze, a look.
Most of the party had been moved towards the now heated pool filled with extravagant floats and pool noodles of different shapes and sizes. Rosi had gone with Si Yin for a quick house tour and while Nabi, Bank and Raul continued to splash around in the pool, I tried to distract myself from the presence of a certain someone they'd left me with by nibbling on my ice cream bar.
"You're dripping."
I looked down. "O-oh." Embarrassed that he'd caught me eating like a child, I had my tongue hurriedly working its way up the melting flow. He handed me a Kleenex, which I thanked him for and used to wipe my hands. Halfway through the commotion, everyone at the pool had moved further down the courtyard and towards the outdoor shower area for a rinse.
We were quite obviously and awkwardly... alone.
Nervous, I chanced a glimpse at him only to see that he'd has his eyes fixed on me already. Before my mind could register the instinct to look away from the flame of a candle, burnt, he handed me a box.
"Oh! I... what's this?" I hadn't expected another gift after, well, after the general surprise party that had far exceeded my expectations. "I hope you haven't, um, gone to too much trouble."
"Open it," he glanced at the box, then returned his gaze to me. I obliged.
Inside, on a bed of ivory satin, was a notebook the size of my palm that appeared to have been personally bound and put together by hand. The bindings were clumsily sown and the hardback glued together in an amateur fashion but upon opening it for a closer look, found hand-written recipes and small, professionally taken photographs of the end product. There were at least fifteen well-curated recipes in the notebook.
I turned to Leroy. Stunned. "You made this?"
"It's just the first edition of my book. A draft," he nudged the box closer to my lap. "The main gift is still inside."
Already, I was extremely pleased with what I had in my hands and to think there was more, I would have had to—
"I'm waiting." I heard him say, a lilt in his voice. There was a great pause in which my thoughts came together for a brief discussion and in the midst of it all, tie up the loose ends I'd previously failed to connect. The soft lapping of water filled our silence. Leroy kept the tension going; as though he knew it was worth it.
Frankly speaking, I was furious.
"Leroy." Picking up the fountain pen, I asked if he'd kept the receipt, watching the candle in his eyes flicker once. "I want you to return this. The school has a policy and it's within seven days. I'm assuming that you'd heard about this from Si Yin and would therefore have at least till tomorrow to return it. Or if you'd purchased it recently, then returning this would be of no problem."
There was not a sliver of obligation on his face. "I worked my ass off the entire week."
"I figured that would have been the case, since we haven't been in contact and I didn't get the feeling you were lying when you said you were going to be busy."
"Just keep it."
"No. The triple digits are more than enough to pay for a week of ward fees."
"That's why I worked extra."
"Well then, you could get yourself the next week off to relax or concentrate on the AB exam you have coming up."
He stood—staring down at me with a frightening indifference despite the heated exchange of words. The flame in his eyes was still and unmoving; even so as he reached for the box and retrieved the pen from my hands. Then, went for the palm-sized book in my arms.
I resisted, clutching it tight.
Without peering up at him, I could nearly sense the confusion seeping into his mind. He tugged on it once more and I refused, holding on to the book like a tempered child. "I-I'm keeping this one."
Leroy promptly paused, his grip on the item laxing. "What, the book?"
"Yes," I couldn't bring myself to look him in the eye. Slightly embarrassed. Simply put, I was behaving like a whiny, demanding eight-year-old and not once in my entire life was I ever keen on behaving like that. "I quite like it."
Clutching it tightly in my arms, I refused to part with the first edition of his very own recipe book and quietly pleaded once more—afraid that the tension pulled taut would snap at the very volume of my words.
But it was at this that Leroy proceeded to roll his eyes and snort, easing the string entirely and closing the distance between us with a step.
"Fuck you."
I blinked, startled. Retreating a little with the item in my arms and fearing that he would catch me off guard and snatch it from my possession. "I still don't know how I should be responding to that." My companion seemed to pause, as though seriously considering a solution.
"You could... say it in return...?"
The hint of a laugh upon his lips was slightly reassuring to see, and while I had been firm and insistent on the matter with the expensive gift, to actually refuse his hard was a frightening feat. At present, honesty was my best bet.
"Well, I am rather fond of you," was all I could think of saying. "And it isn't in my policy to lie."
"And... 'fuck you' means you're not fond of someone?" Leroy did not appear to understand but his lips were growing into a smile that drew closer at every passing second. He was suggesting something radical and beyond the capacity of my mental dictionary and the moment he caught me disarmed, he tossed the giftbox aside and held my shoulders. "Is this a confession? Are we dating now?"
At this, I promptly froze over. The stare I had on him was wide and most probably in ugly alarm.
"You... me?" Things were beginning to simmer into a mess of thundering beats and fireworks in the dark.
"Dumbass," I felt him take the sides of my head in his hands. "I made it so fucking obvious."
"W-well, I'd somehow convinced myself that we had some sort of chef-critic-taster, tutor-student, childhood-friends thing going on! This is very sudden and, although, um, not an unpleasant escalation of events, I am admittedly still in shock."
Leroy snorted, leaning close. "Do the chef-whatevers share blankets and touch foreheads and check each other out after bedroom-banter?" He gave me a look. "No."
"Excuse you. What does 'check each other out' mean, exactly? Human beings cannot 'check' someone else out, you do that in hotels. And, bedroom banter? I'm afraid you are quite disillusioned. Besides, mind you, Si Yin would beg to differ. According to her, or, well, at least according to the videos she'd show me from time to time, Korean-pop band members who, well, have the relationship every band member would have with one another, are rather physical in their expression of affection as well. It's apparently called skinship," I explained amidst averted gazes, unable to look him in the eye as our faces drew closer and closer for some odd reason. Leroy had my head trapped between his hands like an idiot sandwich. Only gentler. Why was I thinking of Gordon Ramsay at a time like this?
"So they kiss?" His gaze flitted somewhere lower down my face before returning to hold mine. "On the lips?"
He was very, very close by this point and I was beginning to think he would do the same thing he'd done the previous time under the fireworks—tease and end it all in the usual treatment, successfully messing with the terrible beat of my heart and the false, silly thundering of romantics in which I swore I'd never fall for ever again and so I looked him in the eye and refused to back down.
"Yes. Maybe."
I found myself regretting these words as soon as Leroy's hands lowered to my shoulders and locked them into place with a look in his eyes that I could only describe as bad.
"O-or maybe not. I'm not entirely sure but I have heard of rare cases whereby—mhn!"
???
!!!
?!?!
The failing of words was what I'd always assumed to be the most tragic of circumstances but it was at this point that Leroy Jeremy Cox the idiot had to prove me wrong and his hand caressing the back of my neck I'd felt oddly in my knees and this was all so very, very bad.
I needed to breathe and also inform him of the odd tingling in my legs but he leaned further into it and started i-illegally stroking my ear which was extremely troubling because I think I sort of, s-sort of, surprise caught a-and then maybe gasped so I think it was, well it couldn't have been anything else but I think it was his tongue—
"This," I managed amidst a staggering inability to keep up, blank as I watched him give his lips a lick. "Is... quite, very... illegal—"
It was like he had enough of my incoherent protests and felt the need to dive back in but this time, quite literally as we tipped over the ledge and fell into the pool where, oddly enough, candles could remain lit.
_________________
A/N: *insert lenny face* so it's finally here. And I suppose there's a much warranted explanation due since, well, perhaps some of you readers might be unfamiliar with, but I'm actually the kind of writer who absolutely adores character foils in literary contexts.
Baked series readers might be familiar with the allusion to Chip and Xander being a sunny sky and a thunderstorm respectively (so, weather), which while referred to throughout the series, was never quite as well developed as my true potential should lie.
Vanilla and Leroy are quite literally water/ice and fire. Most of the tension between them is created from language that suggests a reference to this. The first time they nearly kiss, its under fireworks on a lake that reflects the fireworks. The first time Vanilla sort of realizes that Leroy is special to him is in the rain and now, it is quite literally, after candles on his birthday, as they fall into a pool.
I've always liked the dynamics of these two, which will grow as time passes and you as the reader will hopefully look out for these tiny little breadcrumbs of motifs and symbols, which I am unfortunately unable to fully reveal with language due to the nature of the writing—in first person.
For realistic purposes, I cannot be as elaborate and beautiful in my writing as it is in Flight School, where my talent truly soars (oh!! It's a pun!!) and where I get to pave every path with cobblestones of exact language and meaning that I have always dreamed of doing.
Still, I don't want to be leaving readers of romance genres behind and out of the loop. It would be very uncharacteristic of me. Here is a mild taste of my true style, and what I desire to convey. I hope you'll stick around 😊
-Cuppie.