A knock on his door woke Oliver from a dreamless sleep at half past noon.
“Come in,” he called.
No one came in.
With a heavy sigh, he dragged himself from the safety of his bed and trudged to the door, cracking it open carefully.
There was no one on the other side.
There was, however, something laying on the floor. A tray of food.
Oliver knelt to collect and examine it. It wasn’t all that fancy. A cup of water, a bowl of green tea (no… matcha? What was the occasion?), and—
And a stack of crepes. A little burnt around the edges, drizzled unevenly with melted caramel, and topped with banana slices of varying thicknesses.
His heart jumped into his throat then sunk just as quickly into his pelvis, and he almost put the tray back. But his stomach protested, as he’d skipped dinner last night and breakfast this morning, so reluctantly he brought it into his room.
Two months ago, Oliver made dinner for the household, a fairly modest offering of a few English dishes and several of his favorite desserts. Len, the second-worst cook in the house (just barely above Gumi), had been enraptured, and he begged Oliver to teach him in his ways.
“Well, I… alright.” He wasn’t much of a teacher, never had been, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to say no. “What would you like to start with?”
“What about… ooh, what about those super thin pancakes? Those were really good! I wanna learn to make those like a true Englishman would!”
“I mean, they’re technically French, so…”
“Eh. They taste good. Teach me anyway.”
It took several days and half the contents of the household fire extinguisher, but eventually Len got the hang of crepe-making. In spite of the mess and the wasted materials and the smell of smoke that lingered in the kitchen for weeks afterwards, the memory quickly became one of Oliver’s favorites.
He never wanted to forget the sight of Len, face powdered with flour and arms and hair flecked with extinguishing foam and sleeves singed, laughing sheepishly and promising the next attempt wouldn’t be so disastrous. The intense concentration as he handled the thin dough with a pair of spatulas and uttered some cross of a mantra and a prayer that he wouldn’t drop them again. The utter glee that he vocalized loudly when he finally presented to Oliver his first decently-prepared plate. Through the calamity and the destruction and the half-serious threats of eviction Meiko spat their way, they’d laughed until their stomachs hurt and hummed and sang as they cooked and cleaned, and if ever Oliver felt he had a place in the world, it was then, lost in carefree and domestic joy alongside his best friend.
“You know what? I’m gonna surprise you one of these days,” Len had said as they began their third deep-cleaning of the kitchen walls, still darkened with soot in spite of their best efforts. “You’re gonna be sick in bed and having the worst day ever, then I’m gonna burst in and bring you a tray full of the most delicious crepes you’ve ever eaten and make it all better!”
And they were delicious. The best batch Len had ever made. And suddenly Oliver’s room felt more vast than Royal Albert Hall, and there he was center-stage, a deafening silence and overwhelming emptiness his only audience.
The tears that he was so sure had run dry the night before returned with a vengeance.
He set the empty tray back in the hallway when he was done and cried himself back to sleep.
The girls are back in town, girls are back in town