Page 63 of Poetry of Flowers

“I’ll pay you an extra twenty dollars if you wash the eggs for him” Kayden said, and the server’s fake smile finally returned.

“Alright, you want eggs and...?”

“Just eggs and a slice of bread toasted for one and a half minutes, please.”

“Alright.”

“Pancakes with butter for me,” I told him and put the menu down.

Kayden nodded next to me, “The same for me.”

The server nodded, but his smile fell as soon as he turned to walk away. He was definitely in the wrong job.

“Why was it not common to wash eggs?” Theo made a confused face while he glanced at a table with some other teenagers. The diner was full at this time, school started in an hour, and the breakfast menu here was cheap. A few years back, I wished I could eat in a café or diner each morning before school. I wasn’t good at cooking or baking, which didn’t make it any easier to raise my brother. Watching videos and tutorials on the internet didn’t help, the food always came out bland— on a good day. Remy once already threw a waffle at me when he was five years old because I accidentally put salt in it instead of sugar. It wasn’t my fault, though. This was the last weekend I let my father buy our groceries and pack them away. In one of his bourbon hazes, he had put it in our sugar container.

It was so dangerous with a young kid around, too. Once he’d even hidden whiskey in a box of apple juice. I was only nine when all of this had started, it was hard to convince dad to let me do the tasks he was supposed to do. He told me several times it was a mistake, and he would never do that again. I should give him some credit as a father for raising me all those years. After all, I was still alive. Just that Mom had still been alive then too, and he wasn’t drowning his loss in liquor.

Living in the past wouldn’t change anything nor do me any good. The only thing I could hope for was that him going to rehab would change things for the better. My father wasn’t a bad man, he was the man who told me bedtime stories in English when Mom told me them always in French so that I could learn faster. He was the one who adored watching Mickey Mouse or Winx with me every morning.

I missed the man that my father had once been with my whole heart, wishing he would come back to me. This time the chance seemed real.

Kayden was a remarkable cook and baker. Every other week I questioned myself where he got that from because it was not just amazing but splendid. Especially his cinnamon buns. He was so good at making them taste like heaven on Earth. They were truly mouth orgasms. I could call myself lucky to live right next to him, even though I believed he would bring me and Remy some if we lived on the other end of our small town.

The pancakes finally arrived, and they tasted so good, I gobbled them up in no time.

I’ve loved pancakes since I’m little, Mom used to draw smiley faces on them with chocolate before she served them to me and Dad.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked my cousin after swallowing the last bite. Yesterday’s weed had given her a headache.

My cousin nodded, “Yeah, waffles always help, but I won’t ever smoke a joint with strangers again.”

She sipped on her orange juice before she grinned at me. “Doyoufeel better now?”

Oh, you sneaky—

“Why should you feel better, is everything okay?”

I turned to Kayden, who looked down at me. He was blessed with a long torso and I with long legs, he seemed much taller than me when we sat down, and since this morning I knew that it was a beautiful long torso, I just wanted to write poems about all day long. Or place kisses on it.

“Tillie?”

Oh, right.

“Autumn asked because I had a stomachache this morning. It’s gone now,” I lied with a smile.

Yeah, I had a stomachache because I got nervous, and the butterflies tried to crawl their way out of me. I was glad the butterflies were just metaphorical; otherwise I would throw up now at the thought of them inside me.

“Was it because of me?” Kayden asked me, his voice a whisper so our friends who once again had an argument wouldn’t hear us.

He placed his hand on my knee.

He placed his hand on my knee.

Oh my God.

Once we could touch each other casual, but today his hand felt like glowing coal burning through my skin.

“No, no it was- yes, it was because of you but don’t you dare think too highly of yourself now,” I shot back with a small nervous laugh.

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