A/N: I'm so sorry I haven't been able to reply to the beautiful long comments by my regular few readers (you know who you are :')) I'll do my best to this time!! And gosh, I know I write about working in a bakery but BY GOD it is much, much harder than I expected it to be. If there is one major thing I'd change about the Baked series (if I haven't already said I wish I could re-write the entire thing), it is how little credit I give the Honeycutts for running one. Oh, I'm part-timing in a Japanese-French bakery by the way ;v; just in case you didn't catch me saying that on Instagram.
Ah, to smell like freshly-baked bread all day every day. Indeed, a dream come true. I'll do my best to keep the updates coming! ^^ I'll be updating everyone on Instagram about Thursday's SeeSaw short story. At the moment, I'm not too sure if I can churn it out just yet but it will be a special one about Leroy /.\
Enjoy the long chapter!
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[Vanilla]
"You have a really nice smile."
I glanced up from my notepad, pen hovering over table twenty-one's ticket. The mother and daughter deuce were beaming up at me throughout my pause to register a compliment received. The only response I could come up with was to nod appreciatively. "Ah. Do you really think so? I suppose you could say it is well-practiced." They laughed as soon as I said this—leaving myself moderately confused since I hadn't identified my diction as particularly humourous. "And, for your entrée?"
Their eyes lowered back to the menu before them and the words I had been crossing my fingers to hear made their grand appearance as though on cue. "I can't decide... Lily, what are you getting?" The younger of the two then re-directed the question, glancing briefly at the silver name tag pinned to above my breast pocket. "What do you recommend? Mr. um, Mr. Cox?"
It was the only item we forgot to switch.
"Well, the scallops we have this afternoon are the freshest of the season," I started off with. "The miso asparagus it comes with is a great introduction to fusion dishes rising in popularity. I'd say the flavours and textures make a splendid pair."
Both mother and daughter seemed notably swayed by a swift but precise nudge in the right direction and decided upon the scallops soon after before moving on to dessert. I took my leave after repeating their order in full and then got straight to adding it behind the mental checklist I was in the middle of working through; a habit I'd developed ever since Uncle Al first introduced it to me at the age of seven.
Table three's entrée should be served in two minutes. Table nine's salad, cleared in one. Fifteen should be coming back from their smoke in less than five. Water for tables six and eight. Table eighteen and twenty-one just ordered—
"Waiter." I passed table eight on my way back to the kitchen and he made a brief gesture for attention. I exercised the same well-practiced smile. "Hey, think you could make some changes to my ticket? I ordered the panna cotta for dessert but, uh, I'd like whatever that first table's having. Saw them enjoying it on my way back from the bathroom. Is that possible? To change my order."
I glanced over at table one. "The caramel meringue in pate sucree crust?" Glancing down at the rim bowl of mushroom soup he had in front of him, I was relatively certain about the possibility of an order change. Nevertheless, I knew better than to make any promises. "I'll see what I can do and get back to you with a glass of water and hopefully some good news. Is there anything else I could help you with?"
The guest shook his head and I took my leave from his table with a polite bow before continuing on to the kitchen, once again, going through the mental check list and adding his request to the back. Once in the back, I put up eighteen and twenty-one's orders on the board before searching for table eight's ticket and checking the progress of his course dinner. Still on salad prep. I cancelled the panna cotta he ordered and replaced it with the hazelnut chocolate dome cake, also verbally conveying this to the head chef while doing so.
Within minutes of our switch, he'd cleared at least seven late orders that had bottlenecked the Sauté station and at present, had not a single order on the rail to fire, which meant that he'd also cleared all urgent requests in a matter of minutes. Rationally speaking, I couldn't be giving him full credit since he clearly didn't possess eight limbs and had to have the assistance of the Line in order to have carried out such a feat in such a short span of time. Admittedly however, he'd transformed the buzz of the kitchen into the sound of a well-oiled machine that wasn't falling apart by helping out whichever station that was close to their production limit. At present, there were none.
"Must've seen table one's serving," acknowledged Leroy, cleaning the edges of a plate for spotless presentation.
I hummed in surprise. "He did. And we have dessert to thank. A minute to table three's entrée, I hope? It's right before clearing table nine on my list of things."
He glanced at the magnetic kitchen timers stuck to the bar above the board of tickets. One for each ticket. How they had appeared out of nowhere was another mystery apart from their sheer numbers. "Forty-five seconds, if Sauté doesn't mess up." He sent the plate out the window, calling for table eleven's pick up before taking a glimpse at the two additional tickets I put up on the board. "You took eighty percent of the orders since we swapped. Makes me think what the rest of them are doing."
"It is simply a matter of efficiency. Timing is key. I wouldn't hesitate to send tickets into the kitchen when the head chef has everything under control."
He raised a brow, glancing sideways with a smirk. "Scallops also magically becoming a thing on all your tickets. Just when we're stretching on the herbs for the fish."
As much as I did not wish to appear smug, it was extremely difficult to suppress the smile threatening to surface. "Someone has to do all the work."
The next hour or so before the end of service was an adrenaline rush doing the very things we were suited for, and I myself, had found an unlikely way to satisfy my penchant for organization. Mentally assembling every order, pick up, request, and clear timings in my head painted a clear overall picture of both the front and the back of the restaurant and having it all under control felt immensely rewarding. Needless to say, Leroy was in his element. No one in the kitchen crew seemed to care about the switched roles, which goes so far as to say that I was the most terrible head chef they'd ever had the misfortune of encountering that having me out of the kitchen was a blessing regardless.
Either way, Leroy was dishing out instructions and orders and at a pace that kept every chef at their station sufficiently in the zone but without being far too buried at the peak of service, producing consistent, high quality dishes up until the very last of tickets on the board.
Throughout the hour, I was entering the kitchen for pick up whilst dropping compliments from guests up front every single time I returned. "Compliments from table two. Scallops were perfectly cooked and buttery." "Compliments from table six. They like the French onion soup."
Everyone seemed perfectly content with the arrangement we had and though the facilitators had stopped to speak among themselves for a short moment upon noticing the switch, they never once approached myself or Leroy for further instructions. In fact, the only person who confronted me directly was Hall himself.
He'd stopped me as I was coming out of the kitchen with desserts for table three, pulling me aside with narrowed eyes. "What do you think you're doing?"
The composure of his smile wasn't enough to hide the hiss in his tone. I'd brushed him off, requesting him not to speak in front of the food since, logically (as he so lacked), guests would not wish the berry sauce topping their panna cotta to have his spit as an added ingredient. Hall, a fuming little git, had intended to leave me brooding over certain disqualification.
I had merely snorted in response, brushing past his irrational existence and moving on to table three. "Correction, I've already been eliminated. I simply adore the look of madness on your face. Like it is now."
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"Two points," laughed the idiot, shoulders relaxing as we headed past the main entrance of Roth Hall and out onto the plaza. "Imagine the look on Chen's face."
"He'd be surprised you weren't put on head chef for the first half, naturally," I said, redoing my tie. I'd done it up in a hurry as we were changing out of our uniforms for the round. The tallied scores were right outside the dining areas, in an adjoining room between red and blue team. "Neither he nor Si Yin were at the post-round briefing. Their team didn't look very happy with the scores either."
"Cuz we were this close to beating them?" He motioned with an indecent finger and I calmly censored it with my bag. "Even though we were that far in the weeds?"
"I'm not sure about you, but the rest of the kitchen crew you were leading seemed somewhat converted to the worship of Leroy Jeremy Cox as soon as service came to an end. Certainly, they must have expounded the miracles of making such a comeback to their peers on the other team... after all, it's not every day that we get to see a bunch of competitors protest against a sole participant's disqualification. They must find you very charming."
He glanced sideways with a softer flame. As expected, I hadn't made the cut for top fifteen overall, comprising of six students from L'assiette, four from CSS and the remaining five—Leroy, Chen, Si Yin, Lee Jungwoo and a girl in her final year. Rosi and Raul, like myself, had been on the elimination list. Unlike their names, however, mine had been relegated to a special position at the very bottom, and in red. For disqualification.
"They don't know who to thank."
"Frankly speaking, I'd skip all that nerve-wracking drumroll of 'and the winner is...' any day. I've had quite enough of it, honestly. They sound perfectly ridiculous." I'd been waiting for Violet to show up after the round to fume at my disappointing elimination, but she never came.
The decision had been rash and mildly insane; switching roles despite acknowledging the possibility of being disqualified and having our efforts to salvage whatever that was left of the Line go down the drain. Yet again, Leroy had proven his point: I was fond of taking risks. Calculated ones.
The probability of Leroy rising to the occasion in his element was nearly certain and while I couldn't be sure if I could do sufficiently well to be noticed as a server, I'd made a fifty-fifty gamble at him winning over the rest of the kitchen as their captain and had we not taken the risk of switching halfway through, Leroy would never have had the chance to shine and might have therefore been eliminated along with myself.
To factor faith and trust into any mathematical equation was a fatal error for most. A gamble, at best. Yet, for some reason, the orderly spirit in me was up of a thrill and this was one of many.
"Guess you're picking the location for our first official date." He reached over to pick something out of my hair. Fluff, I assumed. "I promise. No vetoes."
Amused, I turned to him as we headed up the hill to Cayenne. "Alright then. The Hudson Museum of Arts and Natural Sciences. I'm sure we'd enjoy a day of education in the presence of superbly curated exhibitions."
His reaction was priceless. I'd imagined an indecent finger or two but he'd altogether went for my sides with tickles which quite unfortunately snowballed into an uphill chase. It was unsightly—completely irrelevant and downright cheesy! As though lifted right out of some boring romantic novella.
He'd even suggested alternatives to persuade me like I wasn't at all joking in the first place (which I wasn't, quite frankly, but of course I'd never decide on something without his consent) whilst packing his bag for a visit to the hospital. Minutes before he left the lodge however, he seemed to pause at the bottom of the stairs, reading something on the screen of his phone and then glancing back up to me a couple of steps behind.
"She's awake. You can come," he offered, as though moderately uncertain of how I was going to respond. "If you like."
Needless to say, I was reduced to a bewildered animal scrambling for words to fill the multiple blinks I managed in the next five seconds of silence. I'd slept poorly the evening before from a heavy grey cloud of unnecessary thunderstorm thoughts, centering around the seeming reservations Leroy had about opening up to me, especially regarding his family.
"W-why, yes! Of course. I mean, why wouldn't I? It is a surprise to me that you're, well, inviting me in the first place. Which I gladly accept." Giving my uniform a quick fix was the very next thing I thought of doing; first impressions were key and if Mrs. Cox was going to see myself shabbily dressed and looking quite the disaster after three hours of service hell, I would most probably be the primary cause of her relapsing back into a coma. "Do you mind if I, maybe, took ten minutes to look presentable? In some manner."
He snorted. "You don't need it, but okay. I'll take ten too. Meet me at the front porch when you're done."
I wasn't too sure if I actually acknowledged whatever he said before zipping off (well, the fastest I could manage) to Cinnamon next door and bolting up the stairs to arrive at my door—fumbling with the keys thanks to jittery fingers sizzling with the rush of adrenaline. Multiple notifications buzzing in my back pocket did not stop me from thinking of what to wear. Scanning the rows of casual clothing I'd bothered to bring along for our three-week-stay on campus, I had a grand total of three variations. All of which happened to include an old-fashioned Argyle sweater vest: the only 'statement piece' my wardrobe could afford to cough up in a timely crisis.
It was either that, or the suspenders gifted to me by a certain idiot with surprisingly good taste. Still, I had, admittedly, been reserving that for something more romantic and I wasn't too sure what Mrs. Cox would think of a fifteen-year-old in suspenders, so.
Pairing my only dark-colored dress shirt—a navy T.M. Lewin, courtesy of Miss Rachel—with pants of the same shade and the beige vest, I made sure to pack extra tea bags and cash just in case we ran into a florist along the way. After all, I couldn't possibly be going empty-handed.
At the very least, I was hoping not to leave a disappointing first impression on Mrs. Cox; not when Leroy himself had invited me to see her the very day her condition had stabilized. In fact, surprise in the form of an odd tingling in my fingers had refused to fade. Something I'd written off as wholly private for a person like him had found its way into common ground and had, very naturally, sparked a certain extent of nervous excitement in me.
As agreed, we convened at the front porch of Cayenne in exactly ten minutes, me, attempting to assess what Leroy thought of my outfit, if it was presentable to his mother, and him, illegally reaching under my vest to run his hands along the material of my dress shirt. While T.M. Lewin was understandably irresistible in terms of quality material, I'd pointed out, red-faced and bewildered, that he could have done the same with my entire arm of fabric. He then reasoned that I was wearing a coat, and therefore had my arms covered.
Upon arriving at the main station after a bus ride of Googling for 'florists near me' (and also ignoring the multiple notifications that I was, again, receiving on my personal email account), Leroy and I made a short detour to fetch a bouquet of blush pink carnations adorned with stems of baby's breath. Satisfied with the purchase, I was about to hand them to my companion since it would perhaps be more appropriate for him to be presenting Mrs. Cox with the flowers and me, an outsider, quietly supporting somewhere behind when I noticed he'd produced what looked like a Japanese-style lunch bag (the kind that was really just layers of cloth secured by a bow at the top) and was holding onto that instead. And thus, I was once again left on flower duty.
We boarded the train headed further out into the suburbs and found it relatively empty—which, again, allowed for a cozy little spot in the middle and the luxury of presenting the window seat to one another. I finally resolved the issue by proposing a turn-based system, which seemed to both ease his concerns and leave the semblance of a troubled smile on his lips. Realizing my mistake, I hastily corrected myself.
"What I meant was that, um. That should we travel anywhere at all, just the two of us, then this turn-based system would apply for effortless decision-making. It is not that I believe more visits to the hospital is necessary—I mean, should it be, then of course, I would be honored to come along—but in the case that your mother recovers, which I hope is the case, then, well... oh you know what I mean."
He laughed, shaking his head and stuffing his coat in the compartment under his seat. "I'm just tired. Aren't you?"
This, I admitted to. "Head chef is certainly not a role I am suited for. Barely an hour in the kitchen and I already feel as though I've aged a grand total of thirty years." I watched him laugh, once more. Relaxing into his seat with his eyes closed. "The more time I spend with you, the more I see why your father sees you as an investment. Your culinary talent is undeniably... endless."
He'd glanced my way then, a single eye open. "Guess what he said to me yesterday. While Annie was in emergency." I'd paused, unsure. He rested the side of his head against the glass just as our train began to depart from the station. "He told me to get my ass back in school. To win the damn thing.
"Which was what I let him down on last time, by the way. Annie's stroke before the coma... right in the middle of the final round."
I listened closely, tired but not nearly as exhausted as Leroy must have been. The hour-long ride he'd usually spend catching up with sleep, he spent instead letting me in. I couldn't tell if it was for he benefit or mine or possibly both; the issues he faced within his family was something that had always been beyond my knowledge or understanding and hence, part of my insecurities regarding the truth of him. Hanging onto every word and waiting for him to finish before settling for a moment of hand-holding in silence instead of more questions, more needling at his father's intentions. He'd mentioned something purposefully vague, which I think he was afraid to acknowledge or consider the prospect of happening; that should his mother require special attention or post-coma treatment that the hospital could not provide, they'd have to find her one with better facilities.
The underlying implications of that... I myself found rather hard to digest, and hence decided not to consider them until time required me to do so. This, without a doubt, was a rare occurrence. I was never the kind of person to allow for exceptions when it came to rational predictions or the anticipation of a near future.
Against the words of someone who gave them out sparingly however, I had no place to.
In the face of death; of certain issues beyond our comprehension of its magnitude, how was Leroy to feel the weight of a mere inter-school tournament that mattered not in the face of a life?
"Like Pierson," he gave a surprising example. "Crying because he hadn't seen his friends for a day. Yeah, sure. Okay." He somewhat laughed. "Or... no offence. Those who treat exams like it's their whole world? Like there's nothing more important than getting that grade? Yeah, maybe it's for a scholarship. Or some college entrance thing. But you know. Grand scale of things... when you put it in perspective. Would you miss your parent's death for an 'A'?"
The initial surprise and chill of his words had worn off and given way to a new form of guilt I'd never before experienced. Being a complete beginner at reading and comprehending certain emotions, I hadn't even been able to tell that Leroy had been struggling with such personal concerns of his; things that didn't quite show on his face, or even, the flame in his eyes. Which, now that I come to think of it, was how quiet candles were.
Back then, he'd sounded so calm receiving that call in the middle of the night. I-in fact, I myself had mostly regarded him as someone relatively in control of his condition.
The crevice between his world and mine appeared wider and far deeper than I'd first imagined it to be. At present, I knew not how to feel. Examinations and grades were, like he said, extremely important to me all my life and were among my top list of priorities without having to encounter something as heavy as what Leroy was currently experiencing in my fifteen years of living.
In simple terms, I was sheltered; while he, a single flame, had been bracing against the wind.
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The unread emails from this afternoon were beginning to accumulate with every buzz I could feel from the inner pocket of my coat. I'd chanced a quick, unwilling glimpse at the lock screen for a short preview but they were mostly notifications from WordPress about comments on my dashboard, pending for approval. Recalling that I'd recently published a recipe of the lemongrass fried chicken I made for Leroy a week ago, it did not cross my mind to pay the comments any mind since, well, there were far more important things to be attending to.
Seconds after arriving at the front entrance of the hospital and heading right in, the head nurse, whom I recognized from my previous visit, came up to Leroy at once to inform him about his mother's condition.
"She's in the middle of a visual assessment. It should be ending soon, before dinner is served at six-thirty, but I did tell her that you'd be late since, I told you over the call, she insisted on keeping you busy in school."
Her and Leroy walked slightly ahead, speeding past the waiting area and towards the lift lobby. I followed behind with the bunch of carnations in hand, unsure whether the extreme palpitations I was feeling were the result of anxiety and nervousness over meeting someone of such great importance or excitement and anticipation of being able to confirm that she was in good health after an extended time of uncertainty.
The head nurse had left Leroy and I to take the elevator up ourselves after giving him a rundown of the past couple of hours; and while we were standing in the lobby, waiting for any of the three elevators to arrive, I caught a glimpse of his fingers—now out of his pocket—itching towards the 'up' button despite knowing that pressing it a second, third time would not miraculously speed up its arrival. His grip on the lunch bag was tighter than necessary; shoulders tensed and his steps, like a wound-up spring he was trying hard not to let go of.
It was after arriving at her designated floor and emerging from the elevator that I noticed the strained weight in his feet. How he was trying so very hard not to run. To match my pace. I tried to speed up, fazed by the physical manifestation of his control over all-too-powerful feelings but required his guidance around the hallways nonetheless.
Then, it was stopping outside a room with a special label and, even before looking past the open door, hearing a voice from the many dreams, many distant, fond memories that brought as much joy as pain from resurfacing, time to time. I had recognized it at once; how it sounded exactly the same as I remembered it to be and should a cold stranger like myself be feeling such an extent of emotions, then surely Leroy would not be able to keep himself together for long.
He'd glanced at me then, as though asking.
"Go." I said.
And he did; off he went, right past the door and into the room while I stood out in the hallway, forgetting about the flowers and learning against the wall in a blind spot, gazing past the open door into the room and hearing his footsteps as he walked in and then, coming into view by her bedside as her conversation with a nurse came to a gradual stop and the latter stepped outside to give the pair some privacy but neither—neither of them said a word.
I heard her laugh. Feebly. And there was no hug. No kiss. No nothing. Not until Leroy started to unpack the lunch bag he'd brought along and the fragrant scent of crispy fried chicken fresh out of the deep fryer in a small, quiet diner wedged between a hairdresser's and a florist, came wafting out into the hallway.
He pulled up a chair by her bed while watching her eat, helping her with the fork and holding a napkin under her chin as she bit into a chunk of the one thing they never failed to share. It was then that I wondered how it was like for someone like Leroy to have tears running down the sides of his face or to even have them in his eyes, red.
For some reason, I imagined them to sting. Like heated droplets of wax; running down the sides of a candle, lit.
*
"You ready?" He came out to say after several minutes of speaking to doctors and nurses, and that was after a very brief, quiet exchange of words with his mother who had been continually glancing at the doorway which thankfully had me out of sight for the entire duration. I was listening in on the nurses speaking aside about her condition, relieved to hear that the upper half of her body was in a state of recovery. She could also speak—which was honestly the best news of all time.
"Quite frankly, no," I admitted behind pink flowers, looking at him through the stems and fancy bouquet paper. "I think you should give her the flowers and tell her that I came. Now that I've thought things through, it's been barely five months since we last met and she would be in quite the shock and and and I think you're forgetting about my uncle being part of the entire reason your mother's diner was under scrutiny in the first place! I-I can't possibly... the nerve of me to walk right in—"
"She wants to see you." He cut to the chase. Candle flames amused.
This, I could not possibly argue with. Swallowing once, I breathed to calm thunderstorm thoughts and then let him lead me past the door and into the room whilst having the bouquet act as part of my natural habitat. I chanced a glimpse at his mother's face but she'd picked up a hand mirror at the exact time I'd chosen to look and could merely be seen fixing her hair.
"Told you he looks the same."
I heard Mrs. Cox's laugh in response to her son's illegally false statement and felt the very tips of my fingers warm with nostalgia. "Sweet boy. Ten times smarter than you will ever be, Leroy. Are those for me, dear?"
I'd lowered the bouquet to allow my eyes some leeway and saw that she was gesturing to the very flowers in my hands. Immediately, I was fumbling.
"Y-yes. Carnations, they are. A mother's love, they represent." Disaster, I am. "Oh good god I did not just speak like that."
Both had their ways of displaying amusement and I, an embarrassed thing, hadn't even felt the hand on my lower back propelling me closer to the bed. Before I knew it, I was handing Mrs. Cox the flowers and then realizing that she wouldn't be able to put them in the vase herself, hurriedly offered to help her with the arrangement. Her smile was as sweet as I had remembered it to be.
"Please do. One look at the flowers by my bed the minute I woke up—I knew it had to be some unruly little lion who put them right in without thinking twice. It's probably what gave me the heart attack," she added in a whisper and I nearly burst out laughing. Leroy had rolled his eyes then and presented his mother with the indecent finger of his and before I could splutter words of shock and demand he put it away, Mrs. Cox responded with one of her own.
That was the moment I realized I had been wrong about the idiot picking up all of his indecencies from the kitchen or his father. Mrs. Cox, herself, was a professional!
"Alright, shoo. Run along."
I nodded at once, not quite pausing to register the exact implications of her words. "Yes of course. Certainly." I hastily removed the carnation stems from the wrapping when she stopped me with a hand.
"No, no. Not you dear," she then turned to her son at the portable bed table, dismissing him with a wave. "Sweetie, what are you doing? Go! Get something from the store or the cafeteria downstairs or, I don't know. The bathroom. Don't you ever pee? It's not good to hold it in you know."
Leroy had been popping chicken bites into his mouth when she said this and, well, I wasn't sure about him or, well, myself, since I'd never been on the receiving end of the kind of parental embarrassment techniques (an apparently worldwide phenomena) I recalled reading about in fictional forms but this was very apparently a perfect example of it, unfolding right before my very eyes. Needless to say, I was somewhat glad that it remained beyond my comprehension or understanding.
"I'm not leaving him with you," Leroy had the audacity to challenge despite the obvious victory his mother proudly had over him. He slid one of the boxes my way and nodded at the fried chicken chunks.
Gingerly, I reached for one. Just to avoid standing still like a pebble wedged between a lion cub and his parent. For some reason, he'd made it exactly like how he did back at the orphanage in round two of the interschool. I made no comment, knowing that it wasn't the time or the place to be—
"I can't believe you have the nerve to claim the title of fried chicken king when your sweet soy flavour tastes ten times worse than the ones I make. I'm still better." Mrs. Cox did not hesitate to inject, and Leroy was back to rolling his eyes and blocking his mother's view with a glass of water. He was thoughtful enough to include a straw.
"Stop fucking embarrassing me. You're doing it on purpose and I know it."
"Alright, then shoo! I told you, go pee or something," the supposed patient who'd spent hours in the emergency room was as fiery as her son was, but perhaps a hundred times more on the outside. "I want to speak to him alone."
Needless to say, this got me nervous at once and Leroy being, well, being him, he'd approached me with a look in his eyes that I was used to reading as a question of whether I was going to be alright. I ended up nodding. He too that as a green, grabbed his phone and wallet, and left the room but not before glancing over his shoulder with a non-verbal warning gaze directed at his very own mother. Again, she dismissed him with a wave.
"Come, sit down," she gestured to the chair by her bed as soon as her son was out of earshot. I did, fixing my tie and smoothing out my vest before clearing my throat and turning to her, bracing myself for a conversation. I'd expected nearly everything, but again, she surprised.
"I heard what you said, you know. That time you came to visit."
Naturally, I was a block of ice. Now staring at the floor and the state of my shoes, I was beyond recovery. "I am so terribly sorry to have put you through such torture. Th-there is no excuse. I am frightful at conversations."
"Vanilla," she warned and I immediately felt as though I was being lectured by an aggressive version of Aunt Julie. "You are not. I've always liked that you were around the little lion. He'd probably be an idiot without you helping him with homework or using complex vocabulary around him. I still don't get why you wanted to be friends with him back then. And truth to be told, I don't get what it is you like about him now." Her laugh was contagious, and I found myself easing into her words that were kind and characteristic. "But he's hot isn't he? Takes after me, of course."
I did a double take. "W-well! He... he is very attractive..."
"So?" She went on. "Is it the food? People always fall in love with a good cook."
I gave that some thought; finding it oddly easy to be honest despite our past. "I can't deny that he is professionally trained and extremely skillful at what he does. And talented at every culinary aspect thinkable. Yet... well. I'd hesitate to attribute my feelings to that. I mean, it should play a part, but... he could be a plumber, a driver, a teacher—though god forbid he'd be able to teach anything with that sort of patience—and I will perhaps never arrive at any concrete reasoning to my feelings for him.
"He is important to me. That much, I know and have come to understand."
I looked up to finish and was at once fazed by her smile, trembling at the bottom lip and the wavering in her eyes as she attempted to recover. She had a moment and we were quiet in that time. This was how long it took for me to realize that this was the social cue for being on the verge of tears.
"Oh. Oh dear," I scrambled for tissues. "This must be the seventh time I've made someone cry from having a conversation with myself. Including the previous time with you, that would be eight."
She laughed. "Sweetheart. I'm crying because I'm happy! Don't be silly. Come here," her arms opened weakly, still feeble despite the strength in her voice. I had paused in shock, unfamiliar with the arms of any other adult who wasn't a part of the family who had brought me up. We embraced.
"I'm glad you were here for him when I couldn't be," she said into my shoulder. "Sometimes, it scares me. How I dream about the wind just snuffing him out."
To hear someone else apart from myself speak the truth of the candle flame as how I had come to understand him felt almost therapeutic. Yet, to hear it aloud was... was concrete. It made the image seem so much more than it was inside my head and the reality of it—the reality of the flame he'd reduced himself into—seemed almost painful to digest.
There were times that I, myself, had made the mistake that everyone else had fallen for, and regarded him as the strong, grounded person he seemed to be when it was really just difficult, sometimes, to tell what exactly it was he was feeling. Thinking. Hiding.
"So?" Mrs. Cox recovered moments after blowing her nose and wiping stray tears, leaning away from the hug. "Is he a good kisser?"
I nearly stumbled back into my chair and missed the seat entirely. Needless to say, I was starting to flush.
"You don't have to say yes. I wouldn't be surprised. All that little lion does is talk about your adventures and—while it is, of course, very nice to hear about you—imagine having to lie still, unable to close my ears when all he ever talks about is how good he is at kissing. Ears should really have the same function as eyes. Earlids. You'd think we'd have the common sense to evolve. Who knows? He may very well be the one who is terrible at it and you are simply the one with more experience!"
Clearly, this was not a subject within my expertise or simulated conversations and I was not in the proper state to respond but thankfully, Leroy returned with a can of coke and green tea from, presumably, the vending machine downstairs and was glaring at his mother as though he knew exactly what she had been talking about.
They soon got back to bantering and after listening to them and sipping on the green tea he handed me for a couple of minutes in a daze, I decided to check the time.
That was when I registered the exact number of notifications I'd amassed in the span of the last four hours. A hundred-and-fifty-six. All notifications from WordPress about comments and, naturally, I was no longer going to reasonably assume that my godfather and Miki had left that many comments on my blog about the lemongrass chicken recipe.
Three was the usual. Five per post was a stretch and ten was almost impossible with the kind of scarce readership I had. A hundred-and-fifty-six in four hours.
Confused and anxious, I had a finger hovering the preview of the emails, unable to decide if opening and looking at them now was the right decision but scrolling further down the lock screen seemed to provide more information on the matter at hand. There were text messages from Si Yin and mentions from Keith in the Chronicle's group chat. The last preview-able text from Si Yin was a cause for concern.
IGNORE THEM