Work Text:
1. How to make Rice Krispies treats
Cereal
Marshmallows
Butter
A secret hiding place
Get sent to a new foster home. This one is number eight. If you didn’t have a perfect memory, you would’ve lost count by now.
Barely make a sound as you drag a chair to the kitchen counter. You’ve learned to be quiet, learned the hard way that being heard always leads to unwanted repercussions. Strain on your tiptoes and pluck a box of Rice Krispies cereal from the cupboard.
At least your foster parents here let you eat, even if they raise their fists against you.
Though after some time, heavy hands have lost their power to paralyze you. You think of your previous seven foster homes, of the people who starved you, who shoved you in dark closets as a way of punishment, who slapped you for talking back, who dragged you by your hair for not talking enough.
At this point, it’s all become the norm.
You’ve lost weight. The bones in your hands feel like bird bones, hollow. Your cheekbones stand out against skin—your clavicle, too. Maybe if you’re lucky, after a while, there won’t be enough of you to leave anything behind. You can simply… disappear.
No one would miss you anyway.
Free Toy Inside! is printed on the cereal box in chunky red letters, under a recipe for Rice Krispies Treats.
Melt butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Add marshmallows and mix until well combined. Stir in cereal.
Press the mixture evenly into a pan. Cut into squares when cool and share with friends and family!
A recipe made to share with friends and family. It seems nothing in this world is made for you, one of the forgotten boys with no one but yourself to rely on.
Hear the front door slam open. Run and hide in the tiny room you share with your foster siblings, the toy car you pilfered from the cereal box clutched tightly in your hands. It’s bright blue, and there are cereal crumbs stuck to the plastic wheels.
Hide your newfound prize. Tuck it into the tight space between your mattress and bed frame.
You’ve learned to hoard whatever good things you find, so that no one can discover them and take them away, ripping them from your hands as punishment—a dusty coat button you’d scooped up from the sidewalk, the new eraser your teacher passed out at school, a pretty marble you’d found under the couch in foster home number four. These things may not hold much value, but at least they’re yours.
The sheets on the bed are thin. They barely keep you warm, and the bed springs creak and dig into your back whenever you shift. But it’s a decent place to hide your few treasured possessions.
Sometimes you think this can’t be your life—this is just a dream, a very bad one.
But you stare at the purpling bruises on your arms, your legs. You remember the people who made you say please before laughing in your face for believing them, and you think that even in your wildest imagination, you couldn’t conjure up a more pitiful existence.
Fall asleep with the toy car safely hidden.
Dream of marshmallow-flavored treats and fast cars that can take you far, far away.
2. How to make chocolate chip cookies
All-purpose flour
Butter
Brown sugar
Chocolate chips
Mom (?)
Quiet shame
For the first time in your life, you have your own room. The sheets are clean and warm, and the best part is, Cass had let you pick them out yourself.
Cass is kind. She’s soft and patient, and she always smells like fresh-baked cookies.
You know by now, at the tender age of thirteen, that life has it out for you, that everything good always comes with a price. But never have you felt a love so wholehearted, so honest, so yours, even with its imperfections. Carry her in the depths of your heart, and she does the same with you.
Call her mom because you want to (you can’t remember wanting anything more) and she wants you to. Maybe this is it, you think—house thirteen. Lucky number thirteen. And maybe, just maybe, she loves you like a son.
Andrew Joseph Spear, she says, and you think it sounds right.
Oh, how wrong you are.
You’re unsuspecting when Drake returns, when Drake starts inviting himself into the darkness of your room, when he makes his way into your bed, when unwanted touches turn into harsh hands clamped over your mouth so you can’t scream.
You feel fear. You feel disgust. You feel shame, pulling at your skin like the claws of a nefarious creature.
Cass comments on how tired you look, eyes the dried tear stains on your cheeks. She knows something is wrong; you know she knows. She’s seen the blood on your sheets, the sheets you picked out on your own, seen the way you curl in on yourself when he’s in the room. But she doesn’t say anything.
Stay silent, too, because you don’t want to lose her.
Hoard her inside your chest, squirrel her away so no one, not even her son, her real son, can take her away from you. You’ll do anything to stay with her, even if it means disregarding your own safety. You’re willing to stay silent and endure if it means you get to love her.
Before bed, ask to make your favorite chocolate chip cookies together. It’ll take some time to bake, but staying up late means delaying the inevitable horrors that’ll find you in your bed.
Whisk together flour, melted butter, and brown sugar. Dust Cass’s nose with flour and feel victorious when it makes her smile. You love it when she smiles, when you’re the cause, when laugh lines spread all over her face and around her eyes.
Add a cup of chocolate chips to the mix after the wet and dry ingredients have been combined.
Add more chocolate chips, even though the mixing bowl is nearly overflowing, just like the shame you keep hidden away.
Stare at the ceiling later that night as a suffocating weight presses you into the mattress. Don’t cry; you’ve stopped crying a long time ago. Your suffering has always been silent. Even when you cried for help in the past, people never listened. You’ve learned that keeping your lips sealed tight, bleeding instead of telling, is your only option.
Think of chocolate chip cookies and Cass’s warmth when you first take a razor to your wrist.
It soothes the raging forest fire inside you, even if it’s just for a while.
3. How to make scrambled eggs
Eggs
Oil or butter
A long-lost twin
Trace the lettering etched on the paper over and over and over until the graphite smudges against your fingers, until you feel the scraggly penmanship engraved into your skin.
My name is Aaron Minyard. I am your twin brother.
Warm your excitement over medium-high heat, feel it bubble inside your chest, behind your ribcage. You can visualize Aaron in front of you. Your brother, your real brother, your twin, a mirror image of you. Someone who shares your face and your DNA, but not your suffering. Someone who might understand you, even just a little.
You are no longer a Doe, or even a Spear. You are a Minyard. You feel wishful, wondering.
Hopeful.
You should know better by now.
Listen, horrified, as Drake whispers into your ear about what he’ll do to you, to your brother—how he can imagine what the two of you would look like in bed together: picture perfect. Crack your heart clean into two, all your hopes, your fears, oozing through the jagged edges like the scrambled eggs mom Cass made you for breakfast.
Whisk your hopes and aching desire for a family, a real family, until it turns into dread. Let it simmer beneath the surface of your skin. Place a lid over your horror and panic, even though you feel the depths of it in your very core, solidifying in your stomach, bubbling through your veins, paralyzing your limbs.
No.
No.
Scrape this batch off the pan. Throw it away. Start over, because you can’t let Drake touch Aaron. You won’t.
Don’t let any tears fall as you pen your response, even though heartbreak and black anger crawl over every inch of your skin.
I don’t care. Don’t contact me again.
Endure and endure and endure a silent suffering that no one can see, until you can’t anymore. It’s a sudden burst of sanity, a realization that Aaron will never be truly safe if you’re still here, in the same house as that worthless piece of shit.
Stir up trouble and chaos and disorder until you are seen as a harm to society (but never to yourself, because when has the world ever cared about you?), sentenced to years in juvenile detention. At this moment, you are not wrathful, not fearful, not angry. You may be locked away, seen as nothing but dirt on the bottom of the world’s shoe, but at least you are safe from Drake.
More importantly, Aaron is safe.
There was a time when you thought this might be it, that you might have a home, a family.
Oh, you should’ve known better than to wish for anything. When have you ever gotten what you wanted without a drawback? Why would lucky number thirteen be the exception?
4. How to make s’mores
Chocolate bar
Graham crackers
Marshmallows
A flame
A fulfilled promise
Resentment
Form your first deal. Promise Aaron that you’ll protect him, protect him from everyone and everything that would ever hurt him.
All you know is it means something, this promise, because before, no one ever kept their promises to you. And judging by the bruises littering Aaron’s body, some swelling, some fading yellow and green, no one ever kept their promises to him. But you are not like them. You are Aaron’s brother, but you are not Tilda’s son.
Now, you have something worth protecting, someone’s life that matters, even if yours doesn’t. Aaron’s safety is a priority; your own life, in comparison, is of less significance.
It’s an awful burden to be made bigger than you are, sooner than anyone should be. But you witness Tilda’s raised fists, see her prescription bottles scattered carelessly in the open, and you and Aaron have a deal. What else are you supposed to do, except carry out your end of the bargain?
So you do.
Grab onto the steering wheel. Feel your seatbelt dig painfully into your chest, hear the screeching of tires and the crunch of broken glass and crushed metal. Fulfill your promise and, in turn, become what you’ve always thought yourself to be: a villain, a monster.
Aaron doesn’t understand, and you are unable to explain. You would never mourn any single one of your abusers if they were killed. Why would Aaron mourn his?
You thought that your brother, your twin, would be the one person in the world who’d understand you. Because that’s what family means, right? Unconditional love, mutual understanding, and a sense of belonging.
But as a rule, the rules are always broken. There is nothing woven in the threads of the universe that dictates a family will always provide a sense of empathy and stability.
Tilda may be gone, but the damage done to Aaron remains.
Listen to Aaron’s desperate screams past the locked bathroom door. “I hate you,” Aaron shouts, voice hoarse, full of anger and bitterness. “I wish we had never met. I wish you weren’t my brother.”
Believe him. Believe him because you are made for nothing but pain and destruction. His resentment is like a flame, erupting into a roaring inferno, scorching the earth, smothering you and Nicky in smoke and fire.
Peel off your charred edges as Nicky tries to put out the flames. Let the idea, the hope, the dream that you and Aaron will ever be anything close to real brothers melt away, dripping slowly down your fingers.
“You two will be fine. We’ll be fine,” Nicky says, smile wobbly.
Don’t believe him.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but it is, and it’s your fault (isn’t it always?), because when have you ever heeded the consequences? You fulfilled your promise and took your drastic actions. Now you’re the family Aaron never wanted.
But you’re sandwiched together anyway, held together by Nicky’s crumbling optimism, because the three of you are all you have.
5. How to make café au lait
Brewed coffee
Steamed milk
Sweetener (optional)
Someone who believes in you
Meet Kevin Day.
He’s unpleasant, acrid and bitter, like a cup of black coffee, an acquired taste that your palate will never acclimate itself to.
If you weren’t high as a kite, floating somewhere above your body from the pills, you would find him more annoying than you already do. But your brain is not your own, so you simply grin and grin and grin, because Kevin says some pretty hysterical things, but he doesn’t find them as funny as you do.
He says things like: “You have so much potential, I can taste it.” Things like: “You’re squandering your talents.” Things like: “You could be court.”
Things like: “You could have everything.”
Things like: “You’re worth it.”
Stop your smile from splitting your cheeks apart for a single millisecond.
That’s when you know everything that comes out of Kevin’s mouth is a pile of mile-high bullshit. How ironic it is that Kevin demands the best version of you when he himself has resigned himself to second place.
Silly Kevin. Silly, stupid Kevin.
Then, lo and behold, Kevin comes crawling back to you, asking for your protection, his left hand battered and broken—the son of Exy, begging you, a lowly peon, for your help. It would be exceedingly amusing, if not for Kevin’s offer.
He promises you something to build your life around, once you’re off the godforsaken happy pills, once sobriety smashes you to the ground and grinds you face-first into the mud.
He promises you a sense of purpose.
Even when you were only a child, you knew this to be the truth: promises are made to be broken. You don’t believe Kevin will keep his word, but you do believe in equivalent exchanges. Accept the deal and keep your end of it the only way you know how: with your hands, balled into fists, gripping a knife.
Fight Kevin every step of the way, because he’ll walk away eventually. Everyone does.
All you know is your future now hinges on a deal—all this power, trapped in Kevin Day’s Exy-racquet callused palms—and he doesn’t even understand the amount of leverage he holds.
Before, you were just a husk of a person, trudging on for the sake of your cousin, your brother.
You were only supposed to live long enough to ensure Nicky’s safe return to Germany, back into the arms of the man he so selflessly left to take care of his family.
You were only supposed to live long enough to get Aaron through college, to ensure that he has Doctor tacked on in front of his name. “I want to do that,” Aaron had said, pointing at the grainy medical drama on the television while Tilda laughed and laughed, dismissing her own son’s ambitions like dust in the wind. But you believed in him.
You were only supposed to live long enough to see both these things happen, before the drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol forced you six feet under before your thirtieth birthday.
But you keep hearing you’re worth it, and it awakens the deep, hidden part of you that yearns to be wanted, to be needed, that fears being forgotten, that hopes maybe one day, you won’t live from promise to promise, counting the days until your imminent death.
Somehow, Kevin Day has become the fulcrum for the lever you need to keep moving. He’s the balance you need to stay afloat.
You hope Kevin fails.
You hope Kevin succeeds.
6. How to make an ice cream sundae
Chocolate ice cream
Vanilla ice cream
Chocolate syrup
Maraschino cherry
Half-truths
A new deal
You have a scar.
Perhaps that is an understatement. You have many scars, covered and hidden from the world. They mask the undesirable truth about all you’ve been through, your resilience. Really, people should know better than to think you wear armbands for something as superficial as being set apart from your twin.
The new kid has scars, too.
On him, they’re everywhere, though he tries hard to hide them, a testament to a struggle for survival, perhaps one thing you both have in common.
Everything about Neil is a walking red flag: every adjustment of his duffel bag clutched tight against his body, every nervous shift of his faux chocolate brown eyes, every bite at his cherry red bottom lip. You wonder if he’d taste just as sweet, and oh, this might be a problem.
Don’t trust him.
Don’t trust him and his curious binder, the newspaper clippings, the money hidden in plastic slips. Don’t trust him not to mishandle your things.
Upend a packet of cracker dust into your mouth in an attempt to manage your withdrawal. Wash it down with scoops of ice cream without really tasting anything. You’d brought Neil to Eden’s, demanding answers. He’d gotten himself knocked out instead, but it wasn’t all for nothing.
He still refuses to yield, but he tells you enough of what you believe is mostly the truth—a shitty childhood lost to a shitty father who worked for the Moriyamas. Betrayals. Executions.
Maybe it’s a sign of how fucked up you both are that he didn’t run after that, that you didn’t carve a knife through his ribs, that you let him stay. The threats and the lies? They somehow helped you forge an alliance, form a deal.
It doesn’t hurt that he’s a feast for the eyes, the sprinkles on top of an otherwise bland sundae. You’ve always had a proclivity for sweets.
And as it turns out, Neil isn’t just a mouthy piece of eye-candy.
He has an attitude problem, he’s contradictory, he makes far too much noise for someone who wants to stay hidden. But somehow, he’s the first person to see through the haze of your drugs, through the murk of rumors and reputation. He’s the first person to accept your offer of protection at face value, to realize that everything you’ve ever done has been for a reason.
Above all, he’s the first person to see that you care so much that it overwhelms you. He sees how much you value the people close to you, and more than that, he tries to show you how to value yourself.
The Foxes think they understand Neil, think he’s a flighty little rabbit, terrified of the world. But somehow, he’s not terrified of you. The Foxes don’t understand him, and he doesn’t understand them, but you understand him, and for now, that is the protection you can offer.
Give him a key.
Tell yourself it means nothing. It’s just a means to get him to stay so you can uphold your end of the deal. It means nothing that it could kill you to let someone in again.
Perhaps, you’re a bit of a liar as well.
Return to Eden’s, this time with a willing Neil.
“You aren’t going anywhere. You’re staying here.”
Upend a packet of cracker dust into your mouth in an attempt to manage your withdrawal. Wash it down with scoops of ice cream without really tasting anything.
Rinse. Repeat.
7. How to make cranberry sauce
Cranberries
Sugar
Blood
So much blood
A smile you can’t wipe off your face
There’s blood. There’s blood everywhere.
Not all of it is yours, you realize, but you’re too busy laughing, a harsh, jagged sound, raspy vibrations that rip your lungs apart with every wheeze pushed past your lips.
There’s a body on the ground, skull caved in, neck at an odd angle, looking so very dead, and oh, that must be where all the blood is coming from. Someone gurgles. It takes a second to realize that the sound is coming from your own throat.
Hold onto Aaron. Keep one hand fisted in his shirt, the other in his hair. You need to make sure he’s okay, that he’s whole, that he’s untouched, and at this very moment, Aaron has never looked more like you: blood splattered on both your faces, hands clutched in each other’s clothes, a haunted look in your matching hazel eyes.
Laugh. Laugh so uncontrollably that tears spring from your eyes, smudging everyone’s horrified faces, conglomerating them into one giant, fucked-up swirl, and somehow, that only makes things funnier—the fact that everyone who claims to care about you is blurring away when you need them most.
That doesn’t surprise you in the slightest.
Everything is inherently transactional, and the only value you hold is your reputation as a monster. The ability to scare off danger with just your presence, your role as a guard dog, a Dobermann, a German Shepherd in a five-foot body.
And if you aren’t that, if you aren’t the protector everyone expects you to be, then what use are you to them at all? The answer is nothing.
But Neil, beautiful, contradictory, proves this to be wrong.
Neil, runaway Neil, had sprinted headfirst into danger, put himself between you and your own personal monster without asking for anything in return.
He gives you a series of truths—the name Abram, the touch of his scars—and a promise. He gives you something real to hold onto when hell drags on during those weeks of December, when searing pain and the feeling of never-ending dread are the only things that drag you in and out of consciousness.
When you return, reality is much duller than you remember. Without the drugs oversaturating every hue, bringing you up up up, reality is bleak, greyscale.
Then Neil is there, battered and bruised, but alive, a tangible being. Neil, with his bright auburn hair and vivid blue eyes that rival the colors of the sun and the sky, his voice still the same, curling vowels, the same smooth quality you have seared into your memories.
You thought he was only a side effect of the drugs, a hallucination, a pipe dream. It’s impossible that someone like him could exist—someone who prioritizes you and your safety, someone who cares about you enough to throw himself into a past that he’s running away from.
Someone who cares about you enough to stay, even though running away has always been his first instinct.
“If it means losing you, then no.”
Reply the only way you know how: “I hate you.”
Your heartbeat used to thunder in your ears as the pills surged through your veins, used to pump you full of manic energy. Now, it’s Neil’s lips against yours that have your heart beating wildly against your ribcage.
A small part of you wants Neil to reject you, because that’s something you’re familiar with. But Neil makes an active effort to understand you, never crosses your boundaries, and you think maybe, for now, you’ll let yourself have this.
And even though what you’re doing with Neil is nothing (it has to be nothing), you realize with startling clarity that you care enough about Neil to hate him.
8. How to make crème brûlée
Heavy cream
Sugar
Egg yolks
A discarded duffel bag
Fear
“Ninety-two percent,” you hear yourself say. “Going on ninety-three.”
Hate Neil for ninety-three percent of the time.
Spend the remaining seven percent thinking about how breathtaking Neil looks under the dim glow of the rooftop’s lights, his profile cast into silhouette, accentuating the bridge of his nose, the sharp line of his jaw. You’re still getting used to his natural hair and eye color, but it’s something you can watch for as you peer up at the rooftop to see if he’s waiting for you, the flash of auburn and bright blue, like a beacon amidst the night sky.
Spend the remaining seven percent thinking about how Neil is so beautiful that it must be another one of the universe’s cruel punishments, dangling something you so desperately want in front of you before it’s inevitably yanked away from your grasp.
Spend the remaining seven percent thinking about how you want to kiss Neil, again and again and again—want to kiss him just as badly as you did that night weeks ago, when Neil had taken the ice cream pint from your hands and let you crowd him against the dorm room floor.
Something inside you aches horribly, a fist closing around your aorta, squeezing.
You’ve built up a reputation of being soulless, of not feeling anything, a monster through and through. You hate Neil for proving it wrong.
Feel your hate dissolve away, away, away as you stir your feelings for Neil inside your chest.
Neil is stubborn. He’s an enigma, and you watch as he slowly coalesces into a real boy, into something steady and bright, lighting up the Exy court as well as your heart, something possibly within reach, perhaps no longer a pipe dream.
And just when you’ve gotten Neil back, lose him again.
Tear through the crowd, ignore your teammates’ frantic shouts. Take an elbow to the face that nearly leaves you blind, but you can’t stop searching, you won’t until you find more than a battered duffel bag and a cell phone with an ominous zero.
In a startling moment of ice-cold clarity, you think this might be it, you might’ve lost Neil forever. You’ve never felt this before, this fear, all-consuming, visceral. Your pulse leaps, a lump of dread blocking your windpipe, and your pulse only returns to its baseline when Neil is in front of you again.
What was once a smooth, sweet surface is now torched and broken, cracked.
Neil is never entirely still. He’s a bundle of restless kinetic energy. But in this moment, kneeling on the ground in front of you, face burned and skin sliced apart, Neil is still. His chest rises and falls minutely against his sagging shirt as he awaits your response. His bandaged arms rest on his lap.
And at this moment, you surrender. Surrender yourself to Neil, to your feelings for Neil. You’ve passed the point of no return, gone over the apex of the curve, and there’s nothing left to do but free fall.
“You aren’t going anywhere,” you say, and Neil’s eyes feel like a brand, scorching through every cell in your body.
Suddenly, you feel like a child again, clutching a plastic toy car from a cereal box, tucking it close to your chest, stowing it away to an unseen place so no one can find it and take it away from you.
This is how you feel about Neil.
You are not used to getting good things, at being able to keep them. And Neil—Neil is a very good thing, probably the best thing that’s come from your shitty life. And if you’re not careful, he’ll disappear.
You cannot lose him.
You will not lose him.
9. How to make a classic pot roast
Brisket
Beef broth
Carrots
Potatoes
Time
A future
You never wanted to feel it again, that bone-deep fear and panic when you thought you’d lost Neil.
It returns now as Riko raises his racquet. It screams all the way through your body, bright, sharp, and cruel, and it’s worse than anything you’ve felt before. You can barely breathe, you can barely lift your arms, let alone your legs, but you’re never letting Riko lay a single fucking finger on Neil again.
You will not lose Neil when he’s right in front of you. You will not let it happen before your very eyes.
Don’t think, just bolt. The only thing you can hear is your own frantic heartbeat in your ears, the phantom thud of Neil’s body dropping lifelessly on the ground if you’re too late.
You can’t be too late.
Normally, you’re better than this. Normally, you keep a careful catalogue of things that make your chest go tight and your mind spiral out of your control, bottle up what makes your brain actively betray you, so you can keep it hidden and keep moving. But you can’t get rid of this, the image of Neil, matted with blood, broken in a way you can never fix, in a way that means you’ll never get him back.
Throw yourself forward in front of Neil. Feel your racquet connect with bone. Hear a blood-curdling scream, but it doesn’t belong to Neil.
For the first time, your desperation yields positive results. For the first time, you finally stop saying, “This is nothing,” because it is something.
You’ve spent so much time pulling Neil closer with rough hands and pushing him away with scathing words until—until you don’t. Until you stop letting your put-upon apathy and fear of vulnerability control you and lean into acceptance.
“Survival tip: no one likes a smart mouth,” you hear yourself murmur, but it’s weak to your own ears.
“Except you,” Neil says, eyes bright. You don’t deny it, and your silence feels like so much more than it is.
It’s a confession, and Neil’s answering smile makes your blood simmer in your veins, a slow boil. You think you’ll probably never be laid open to another person this way again. This is how you feel when you’re with Neil—spread open, bare, vulnerable. Alive.
And suddenly, you find that you don’t mind it, being alive.
Maybe there is more to your life beyond making deals and brandishing your knives, beyond bottles of whiskey and cheap cigarettes on the roof, thinking about what it might be like if you simply…stepped over the edge. Maybe you do have something else to live for, even after Nicky returns to Germany, after Aaron earns a prefix in front of his name, because not only has Neil given you his understanding, he’s also given you your brother back.
Your relationship with Aaron isn’t easy. It’s still harsh words, barbed insults, and squinted-eyed suspicion, but nothing worth having ever is. Aaron is no longer just another deal, no longer just another person you’re employed to play guard dog for. He is your brother. Your family.
And Neil is no longer nothing.
You know, now, that what you have with Neil is a kind of devotion—how you could never withdraw from him, how you circled around each other from the beginning, even in hatred (though now that you think about it, you never hated him, not really). He has always meant something to you.
Maybe now, you’ll have the time to figure out exactly what.
Here is your new equivalent exchange: You will fight for Neil, just as Neil fights for you.
10. How to make devil’s food cake
All-purpose flour
Butter
Milk
Cocoa powder
Sugar
Eggs
Vanilla Extract
Chocolate frosting
Neil
Turn thirty with little fanfare.
Combine butter, milk, and cocoa powder in a saucepan. Heat until the butter is melted, then bring the mixture to a boil. Once boiling, remove the chocolate mixture from the stove and let it cool.
Stop a curious Neil from sticking his finger into the pan for a taste. Roll your eyes as he sticks his tongue out at you. Listen to him laugh, carefree, as you flick flour onto his nose.
As you whisk the dry ingredients together, think about the first time you and Neil cooked a meal together in this very house—this house that you both call your own, with two spoiled cats and a wraparound porch, with pictures of friends, family, and teammates in frames scattered on the walls.
The meal hadn’t been anything special. It had been boring and bland, a team-nutritionist-approved recipe that had you rummaging in the fridge for a pint of ice cream immediately after. But the kisses Neil had pressed against your neck as you sautéed vegetables were anything but.
Pause.
Remember how nearly ten years ago, you thought you wouldn’t live to see your thirties. But here you are now, baking your own birthday cake with a man you once swore meant nothing, in a home you own together.
Add the chocolate mixture to your dry ingredients. Add in the eggs, one yolk at a time, beating well after each addition. Use the whisk in your hands to stir the mixture until it’s smooth and combined—your hands, which you thought were only useful for gripping a knife, for bringing disappointment and destruction.
You always thought you were only worthy to others around you as a protector, that you were only as important as your deals. But there’s always been a part of you that wants your life to be worth something, that carries the lingering fear of being abandoned and forgotten, the part of you that is reprehensibly weak and painfully human.
You’ve lived with it for so long, hoping, desperately, that you’re good for something other than devastation. To be clear, you are. You are so much more than your knives. You are Andrew Joseph Minyard.
You are whatever you want to be.
And with Neil, you are loved.
“Happy birthday, Andrew,” Neil murmurs, brushing his lips against the side of your cheek.
When you kiss Neil, he tastes sweet, like chocolate and a home, a recipe you’ll treasure until the end of time.