Both Sullivan and a brassed off Jahseh mirror impatient glares and finely pursed lips, across four clandestine dishes and a poorly dusted worktop from Morgan. She heeds and yet happily slurs over their restlessness and instead blethers on with a poised finger between each plate. A scrolls-worth of ingredients and milieu and fifty-stepped recipes that Jahseh is sure no one had asked her for. He glances between the food he'd been promised a generous fifteen minutes ago and his brother's girlfriend, trying and progressively failing to stop himself from leaving his seat and then the shop altogether.
The day has slowly faded into its most riveting hour, where the sun slips from its pedestal to knight the moon in all its shadowed glory. A slice of gold taints the frontward quarters of Sugar & Spice, the rest is gently lit by mismatched lamps, vintage and ill-fitting yet, in its entire picture, ultimately pleasing to the eye. Jahseh's eye, despite how desperately he longs for his own bed in his own home.
Unfortunately, both Morgan and Sullivan are quickly learning he'll show for just about anything if there's even a possibility Eve may be there too. He's yet to feel an ounce of shame by the fact.
"And then this one, this is probably least impressive because most people just take it for a glorified apple pie but trust me, itâ"
Sullivan, finally, quells his girlfriend's rambling with clasped hands and a sharp inhale, "Baby, I love you. But I'm hungry. You can't put food in front of me and ask me to listen to you talk about it."
"Truly," Jahseh grumbles, in his own marred rendition of support. Undeterred, Morgan takes a step from the counter, folds her arms but grins all the while.
"Okay, okay. Don't forget to actually taste what you're eating, you're supposed to be critiquing me, alright?"
"What are we actually eating?"
"That's key lime pie, this one's called Kanelbullarâ" Jahseh wrinkles his nose as Morgan fingers the rim of a plated stack of what he'd assumed were upscaled cinnamon rolls, "âthese are called Alfajoresâ" a sheeted tray of sandwiched cookies topped with enough sugar to tranquillise a horse, "âand this is just Tiramisu. But you can't try that until Eve gets here."
Arms entangle as the three indulge, one thoughtfully and two driven by the empty ache to their bellies. Jahseh is careful with the fork he takes to his slice of pie, as if a misaligned scoop could dismantle the entire dish. Morgan eyes his slowness with jacked nerves and sugar-powdered lips. Even Sullivan, whose mouth is full and tongue perfectly overcome by the candied nectar of cinnamon.
Jahseh swallows, downturns his smile and nods, "It's good."
"He thinks he's Gordon Ramsay."
"Honestly, Jah. Why do you guys do that? If you like something, you smile," Morgan tuts. He ignores her, quietly watching as she rotates their platesâthe pie to Sul, the Kanelbullar to Morgan, and then he helps himself to the spread of Alfajores. The shortbread cookies come to dust in his mouth with a texture he can only describe as heavenly, even more so with the creamy chocolate coating wedged between them. There's a party of caramels and cocoas and crumbles along the surface of his tongue, he revels in the flavour. "One day I'm gonna make something and it's gonna make you both start dancing."
Sullivan chuckles, "You can try."
"I'll settle for a smile."
"I know what can make him smile."
"You mean who," Morgan teases, and then the couple share smothered laughter and sideward glances. For a second, Jahseh can't believe they're both his seniors.
"And then you get annoyed when I don't tell you nothing."
Sullivan scoffs. His arm winds forward to tear a serviette from the ceramic holder Morgan had placed in the middle of their mess, and he wipes lazily about the corners of his mouth. "You can't keep nothing from me and we know this."
Morgan's smile somehow widens, "And Eve tells me everything too. Mhm, I know things."
"There's nothing to know," Jahseh mutters, rolled eyes and the latent sting of denial. And yet, beneath his stone-set composure, his heart hopscotches across the lengths of his chest like the smitten sack of mush he's gradual to accept that he is. In hindsight, he only wishes he'd thought to approach Eve with discretion from the get-go. Morgan's ever-growing curiosity has driven him so far up the wall he could put his head through a ceiling, but it's assuredly no match for the migraine that pings about his dome whenever she and Sullivan rally their efforts to wear him down. Still, he keeps every last one of his thoughts about Eve near and dear to his heart.
Jahseh is yet to narrow down why he's so pulled to her. He knows prettyâpretty girls and pretty laughs and pretty smiles. What's it about Eve's that dims a room in its absence? He draws an underwhelming blank whenever he's confronted by the fact, and so he's long decided he'd rather pledge his silence until he's sure of it. For everyone's sakeâor, perhaps in the name of self-preservation.
"I never even got to ask how your first date went. I had to hear about it from Sul," Morgan jeers.
"It was breakfast."
"Until you tried to wring that kid's neck."
"It was still breakfast."
"You're in deeper than I thought," Sullivan laughs. His elbows steady along the golden ledge of the worktop, so close that Jahseh could knock them from their comforts in one fell swoop. He opts to swallow his frustration, instead. "All that for a bag. You need to learn to use your words."
Jahseh shrugs, "He gave it back, didn't he?"
"So are you interested in Eve? Or just being friendly?" Sullivan presses. Morgan's chuckles are low and warm as she again shifts their plates.
Her tongue smothers her fork's worth of cream against the roof of her mouth, and then she swallows. "Since when is Jahseh friendly?"
"Since he met Eve."
Two barrels of full-beam glint skim the four walls of the shop, Jahseh is thankful to redirect his attention over his shoulder and towards the car perpendicular from the storefront. He can't make out much past the windshield, not that its haphazard placement and glaring headlights imply any mystery. They watch the car jerk three inches closer and then three inches back. The driver's side door propels stoutly ajar, rolled out red carpets for Eve, who eventually dismounts and all but flounces into the shop.
"It won't fit, I swear."
She's all huffs and puffs, hard-hitting gestures and eyebrows a-furrow. Jahseh leans a smidge to inwardly scope the free parking space her car is bummed intoâneedless to say, it more than fits, but he can tell by the pouty downturn to her frown that she's less than likely to appreciate his honesty. Instead, he blinks and she blinks, and so do Sullivan and Morgan, until three pairs of eyes shift from Eve and towards Jahseh. At the subtle tapping of a foot against the leg of his chair, he's sluggish and then bittily reluctant to read the room. Eve raises her eyebrows, a sheepish smile pans across her face. "Please?"
"I got it."
He deafens his ears to the snickers at his heels and follows Eve outside. Amusement becomes him, his strides slow as he watches Eve clamber into the driver's seat. She palms the steering wheel at a laughable 9 and 3, although she falters when Jahseh stops beside her. His wrist balances atop her door. "What are you doing?"
"What are you doing?" He prods, then tips his chin towards the passenger's seat. "G'arn." Jahseh takes an obtuse step out of her way, Eve huffsâanother weighted huffâand instead scales her centre console until she's topsy-turvy one seat over. He laughs, quietly, gets into the car and pulls the door shut as he does so.
He's quick to snuff the quiet before it can settle. "Why so grumpy?"
Eve slouches rather than sits, she takes two fingers to her temple and soothingly kneads. "I had a long day. I should've left work earlier." Her jaw ticks, as Jahseh lets the car slip forward, gears into reverse and borderline drifts into the space she's sure was half the size only five minutes ago. Seamlessly, of course. "Show off."
"That's mature," he grunts. He kills the engine and with it its blaring hum, a fuzzy toll tickles the canals between his ears in its place. Eve's gaze fixes beyond her windshield, beyond the confines of her car and the pales of a moment with Jahseh. Yes, their never-ending, nigh on flammable moments.
Jahseh doesn't want to ask what's on her mindâbut then again, he does. He hates that she can do that to him; take a knife to his sound mind and split it right down the middle.
"What?"
He's sharp and gruff, but Eve only shrugs it off. Her shoulders hitch a little, slump a little, and then she sighs. "He never came back, you know."
"Who?"
"Kamale."
So?
Luckily, Jahseh is well-versed in bitten tongues and poker faces. He's still stifled to understand why she cares. It takes him longer than he'd ever admit to her to even recall the boy's face, but when he does it's shadowed by the potent smell of piss and the echo of his fleeing footsteps that morning Jahseh had set him free. He only gave Kamale the rest of that day to fuck with his mental, to rear ugly thoughts and uglier memories, and then he sweated his troubles through seven sets of fifteen reps and kept it pushing. That night, he slept like a baby.
"I don't get it."
"Well, he said he would."
Now, Jahseh doesn't bother to fight the morbid laughter that spirals up his throat and out his mouth, insensitive as ever. "And you believed him?"
Her hair gathers in the clefts between her fingers as she rakes right through to her scalp. "I know. That was stupid. He told me his stepdad hits him, and then I let him go. I didn't even make him leave me his address, I don't even know his last name. He's a needle in a haystackâGod knows how I'm meant to find him."
And for the hundredth time, unbeknownst to Eve as she wallows in her regrets, her problem is a skipped beat away from becoming theirs. Jahseh can't even pretend to care for the strange boy or his strange fate, one he's sure would've ended at the mouth of a gun or Thamesmead's HMP if not for an underserving stroke of luck and some faraway guardian angel. He does however care for the strange torrent of discomfort that tornadoes about his stomach and across the square of his shoulders. It's eery and unsettling and undoubtedly onset by Eve's gnawed lip and her tapping foot and the anxiety eclipsed in her eyes.
How sombre. How naive.
She tilts her head slightly, to ogle at Jahseh. He pretends not to notice. "He was awfully scared of you, come to think about it."
Jahseh blows a raspberry. "I tend to have that effect on people."
She stares on at him and goodness, a blind man could read all the harboured suspicions in her narrowed eyes. And yet, she sits upright, shrugs her bag up onto her shoulder and casts out a doubtful, "So I've heard."
The two of them make their silent way into Morgan's shop. One heart heavy, one heart torn, both arcanely harrowed by a stubborn little boy named Kamale.
I went so stupidly over the word-count. Writer's block is really having its way with me, I'm fighting for my life here! I can't believe I'm 19 chapters deep and still winging it, so much for a short story.
Sullivan and Morgan teasing Jah about his crush, aw. Their dysfunctional little trio.
Kamale never came back... Hm.
Jahseh don't give a rat's ass about Kamale, which is fair enough. Or not. Who knows? We'll see.
Thoughts and feels, let me know. It's too cold for me to beg. See you later, man.