Chapter 2: Waffles & Witty Retorts
The kitchen smelled of vanilla and scorched batter. David paused in the arched doorway, watching Milicent move with a jarringly normal efficiency between the stainless-steel fridge and the professional range. Sunlight caught the dust motes dancing above the sprawling quartz island. She didn’t look up as she slid a perfect, golden waffle onto a plate.
“Damn, Mel, you made me breakfast?” He tried for his usual grin, his voice rough from lack of sleep.
She finally glanced over, her amber eyes unreadable. “No, I made me breakfast.” She lifted the tongs and deposited a second, noticeably darker waffle onto another plate. “You can have the burnt ones. They match your attitude when you lose at basketball.”
He rounded the island, the memory of her skin under his hands a live wire in his chest. “I don’t lose.” He reached for a fork.
Thwack. The wooden spoon connected with his knuckles, sharp and swift. “Manners,” she said, her tone cool. “Coffee’s behind you.”
He retrieved the carafe, his body hyper-aware of her proximity. “You sleep okay?” The question felt stupid and enormous.
“Like a baby.” She drizzled syrup in a precise spiral on her perfect waffle. “You?”
“Not really.” He poured his coffee black, watching her. The silence stretched, filled only by the crunch of his first bite of charred waffle. It was bitter. He ate it anyway.
“So,” she said, not looking at him. “One-time dream.”
He stopped chewing. The sunlight felt suddenly too bright, too exposing. He swallowed, the bite like gravel. “Mel.”
“It’s fine, Davy.” She finally met his gaze, and her smile was all edges, a brilliant, brittle shield. “I’m a big girl. I’ll add it to my collection of questionable life choices.” She took a delicate bite, then pointed her fork at him. “But you’re doing the dishes.”
He stared at her, this beautiful, infuriating fortress. “Yeah,” he said, his voice low. “Okay.”
She nodded once, a business concluded, and turned to look out the window at the mountains, leaving him alone with the taste of ash and the devastating certainty that he’d already broken something he couldn’t name, and the face she burnt the waffle on purpose, but we digress.
The stillness she left in her wake was a physical thing, thick and humming. He stared at the back of her head, at the elegant line of her neck where his lips had been, and something raw cracked open in his ribs. Without breaking his gaze, his hand moved across the cool quartz.
His fingers closed around the edge of her pristine plate. He dragged it slowly toward him, the ceramic scraping a defiance into the quiet. He forked a perfect, syrup-soaked triangle from her waffle, his eyes locked on her profile.
He brought it to his mouth, never looking away. The flavor was sublime, sweet and light, a stark rebuke to the bitterness on his own plate. “You always were a better cook,” he said, his voice quiet.
She turned from the window, her movements deliberate. Her eyes dropped to her vandalized breakfast, then lifted to his. That cool, bratty mask was gone, utterly incinerated by the directness of his theft.
“What are you doing, David?” Her voice was a flat, dangerous plane.
“Testing a theory.” He ate another piece of her waffle, the gesture profoundly intimate. “You burnt mine on purpose. To punish me.”
A faint tremor touched her lower lip. She didn’t deny it. “You left. You made me cum and then said it was, like an asshole, a one time deal. So, yeah, you deserve that burnt waffle."
“I know I do,” he said, the admission quiet in the sunlit kitchen. He pushed her plate back toward her, the gesture an offering. “I had training. At six. That’s why I left.” The lie tasted worse than the burnt waffle. It was a half-truth, a coward’s alibi, and the silence that followed it was brutal.
Mel just stared at him, her spoon poised above her coffee. The hum of the smart fridge filled the space. “At six,” she repeated, her voice devoid of its usual bite. She glanced at the digital clock on the oven: 10:17 AM.
“It got moved,” he mumbled, looking into his mug. “Last minute.”
She let out a soft, breathy sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Right.” She took a slow sip, her eyes never leaving him. “So it was the schedule. Not the war inside your head. Not the breaking.” She put her cup down with a precise click. “Good to know it was just logistics, Davy.”
He flinched as if she’d thrown the coffee at him. The lie curdled between them, pathetic and transparent. “It’s not,” he said, the words tearing out of him. “It’s not logistics.”
He pushed away from the island, his chair scraping harshly against the hardwood. He walked to the window, his broad back to her, shoulders tense. The towering pines outside seemed to press in, witnesses to his unraveling.
“I’m falling for you, Mel.” The admission was a raw, quiet thing in the sunlit room. “Hard. And it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.”
She went very still, the air leaching from her lungs. He turned to face her, his expression ravaged. “But I can’t. I can’t drag you over with me. I can’t risk corrupting you, turning this family into some… fucked-up thing.”
“Corrupting me?” Her laugh was a sharp, disbelieving crack. She stood up, her palms flat on the cool quartz. “Who are you to decide what corrupts me? You think a few whispered secrets in the dark are going to spoil my soul? I make my own choices, David.”
“Jesus fuck, Mel.” He strode forward, stopping just short of her, his hands clenched at his sides. “I’m saying it for my own doing, not yours!” His voice broke. “I look at you and I want things that would turn me into someone I don’t recognize. Someone who could break his parents’ hearts for fucking on you."
The words hung in the air, crude and devastating. Milicent didn’t blink. “For fucking me?” She stepped into his space, her head tilting back to hold his gaze. “Is that all that was to you? Because it wasn’t just fucking to me.”
“You know it wasn’t,” he growled, his hands coming up to his face. “Don’t twist my words.”
“Then stop making it sound dirty!” she shot back, her voice rising. “You’re so scared of being the villain that you’re making me feel like a mistake!” A tear betrayed her, tracing a hot path down her cheek. She shook it off violently. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to worship me with your mouth and shame me with your guilt.
"You were never a fucking mistake, Mel." He said, stumbling back a step. The truth of it was a physical blow. “I’m not shaming you. I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what? Your feelings? Mine?” She threw her hands up. “You keep talking about breaking our family. But you’re breaking me right now with this back-and-forth shit.” She leaned in, her whisper a venomous lash. “Last night I called you Daddy. Now you won’t even look at me.”
A low sound escaped him, part agony, part fury. He did look at her then, really looked, his dark eyes blazing. “I see you, Mel. I see you so much it’s eating me alive.” He closed the distance again, his frame towering over hers, every muscle taut. “You want me to stop protecting you? You want me to be selfish?” His breath was hot on her face. “I can't do that. What we had was fucking special, stop comparing yourself to these other girls I fucked on. The reason I'm not trying this shit with you is because I want to take it slow. Jesus fuck, Mel."
He stood there, breathing like he’d just sprinted the court, the ghost of her taste still on his tongue. “What do you want, Mel? Tell me.”
The question hung there, stark and final. She didn’t hesitate, her amber eyes glistening. “I want to be treated like I am special. Something you don’t feel guilty or regret over. If you love me, you wouldn’t feel that way.”
“What the fuck, Mel.” He slammed a hand down on the counter, making the plates jump. “I never felt guilty or regretted anything. You are special. But I can’t rush this.” His voice dropped, fraying at the edges. “Rushing this ends with me fucking it up, and I can’t fuck you up.”
She absorbed his words, her expression shifting from defiance to something unbearably weary. “You already are.” She turned and walked out of the kitchen, her footsteps silent on the floor. The sunlight swallowed her whole.
David stared at the empty doorway, the echo of her exit louder than any door slam. He looked down at the two plates: one scarred and blackened, one ravaged and sweet. He picked up her fork, its metal still warm from her hand, and drove it straight through the center of his own burnt waffle. The tines shrieked against the ceramic beneath.