Dating : Muffins (July 2021) ft. an unfinished idea

The house, on the outside, is large, white, and plain, with a big brown door. Inside, it was blue and extravagant and expensive. I watch him standing in the doorway, hooking the ends of his bright silver necklace together. Beau looks satisfied as he shifts the chain around his neck so the pendant of Ganesha hangs down his chest, and then looks up at me with a grin spread across his face.

“Hey!”

“Hey.” I smile back at him and we both approach and sit down on a long stone step.

He doesn’t wait for me to say something or ask me about my day, knowing I don’t care any more than he does. Instead, he starts talking about flowers, and how he wants to press some in his copy of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths because it’s the biggest book he has. I tell him I’ve never heard of the book, and his eyes widen as he springs up and runs inside to find it.

When he emerges, he’s carrying a big, bright yellow book, the title large across the cover in the Papyrus font that everyone knows and no one likes. He plunks the book down in front of me and rejoins me on the step.

“I’m not bringing it to you because I want to read it. I just wanted to show you so you never have to say you’ve never heard of it before.” He says this very matter-of-factly, like it’s important for me to be aware. It’s such a him thing to say. I’ve never met another person who states the obvious and points things out so often, even when it’s polite not to.

I flip casually through the book, stopping to examine certain art or scan pages with names I recognized. He keeps talking, and I keep listening. Pokémon, Pearl Jam, Jimi Hendrix, guitar, antler velvet, baking.

“Baking!” he yells, half worry, half excitement in his eyes. “The muffins should be done!”

He stands and runs up the stairs and into the house, blowing the door wide open on the way in. I follow, a little slower, after him.

When I catch up to him in the kitchen, he’s pulling a baking tin out of the oven. He places it on the poppy seed strewn counter and grins.

“I might’ve made a little bit of a mess,” he admits. I laugh and smile back at him as he carefully pulls the muffins out of the tin and puts them on a plate. “It’s just I wanted to have them ready when you got here! Not that that turned out too well for me anyway…”

I watch him pick the plate up and carry it to the dining table, concentrated and careful not to drop it, and move to fill the space he left behind.

He sets the plate down and grabs the bowl of icing, drizzling (more like dousing) it on every muffin. When he sets it down, he picks one muffin up and bites halfway into it before immediately dropping it onto the table and breathing out like a dragon. I could’ve warned him it would burn, but he wouldn’t have listened anyway.

He groans about his burned tongue and I sigh and grab a paper towel from the dishwasher handle. I cup my hand at the edge of the counter and wipe the poppy seeds into it, careful not to spill any.

“What’re you doing that for?” he asks, nodding toward me.

“Cleaning?”

“Yeah!

“Well, you cooked, so I’m cleaning. Plus, I don’t mind it. Wiping the counters is kind of nice.”

His eyebrows furrow. “You’re so weird sometimes.”

I just shrug my shoulders.

There are cigarette butts, old and new, pushed carefully into the join of the counter and the wall. He didn’t care enough to stop, or at least throw them away, but he did care enough to shove them just out of view. How thoughtful (enough for Beau).

“Coco,” he whines. “Come sit with me!”

Sweeping the remaining poppy seeds and cigarette butts into my hand, I walk past the trash can and shake them . My hands press against the engraved wood table and I slide onto the bench next to Beau.

He meets my eyes and smiles. “Have a muffin!”

I grab one off the plate, as white as teeth and in the center of the table, and take a bite. It’s warm and steamy and the icing oozes off the top and into my mouth. Beau is really getting better at baking.

“This is amazing, Beau!”

“You think so?”

“Yeah! You’re getting so good at baking.”

He gives me a big grin. “Only ’cause of you!”

Suddenly I’m lost. “Whaddya mean?”

“I mean, I only bake ’cause of you! I want to see you try it and like it and take it home to your mom and little sister.”

My cheeks flush red and I smile sheepishly. “You’re my best friend, Beau.”

He grins — again. “You’re mine!”

Before I know it, he’s wrapped his arms around me and squeezing me tightly. I freeze for a second, and then relax and hug him back as best I can (he’s trapped my arms in his hug).

I’m thankful for his poppy seed muffins.

Hi! Thanks for reading my story this month. It’s short and not my favorite or my best, but that’s okay. I always have next month. Anyway, here’s the promised unfinished idea. I might try my hand at it again some other month. Enjoy!

It might’ve been easier to tolerate the Red Swamp if it weren’t for the bugs. So many fucking bugs — mosquitos that ate us alive and gnats that swarmed to our faces like we had food plastered all over us.

I was sorely reminded that the reeds and cattails were filled with them as a group of soldiers pushed past me, shoving me to the side of the boardwalk and well in the way of a bush.

Shit. Now they were going to be on me for another half an hour at least.

I tried pushing past the group, but I guess they weren’t in the mood for being decent human beings, ’cause they packed in even tighter. I waited for them to pass and stepped out of the bristly plants.

“Ohhhh, you got covered,” Ray said, approaching me with a grin and a laugh.

“Yeah, no shit,” I grumbled back.

“Aw, you know I don’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” I sighed and got to walking, Ray close behind me, down the boardwalk we built (not those arrogant fucks). To be fair, it wasn’t very good, but it worked.

“I can’t believe we’re gonna be soldiers like them,” he said and nodded at the group, fully uniformed and unidentifiable from one another.

“I know, right? What dicks.”

“Oh, come on,” he protested and rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a baby about it.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and pursed my lips. He was one to talk.

“We’re gonna shoot shit! We’re gonna fight in a war!”

“We’re gonna shoot people,” I corrected him.

“You know what I meant.”

I nodded, but wasn’t sure. It scared me that ‘shit’ and ‘people’ were the same to him. He scared me, everyone there did. But I guess that was the point — you gotta be tough and scary to fight.

“Let’s get to the dining hall, we’re gonna get chewed out if we’re late,” he said and started to run ahead of me. I followed after him, not ’cause I cared much if I’d get chewed out, but because I wanted to be out of reach of the bugs.