“I wouldn’t call thisunder control!” Poppy exclaimed, running to the stove and taking the entirely reasonable step of turning off the gas… which, Max could see now, really should’ve been his first step.
Well, really, his first step should’ve been serving up some of the pre-made food, rather than trying to cook something from scratch. Because, well… he was a shitty cook.
And heknewthis. But he’d wanted to make the effort for Poppy. He’d been sure that he could do it.
But his sense of timing really just wasn’t very good at all. He’d never been able to master it. Any meal that required juggling multiple tasks had a tendency to end up a complete disaster.
Case in point: the bacon wasn’ttechnicallyon fire, but it was a pretty fine line that was likely to be crossed any second now.
Poppy expertly flipped the bacon onto the plates that Max had already gotten out, before whirling around and popping the toaster just as the first wisps of smoke started to rise from its innards. Two pieces of toast sprang forth, just a little beyond his preferred level of toastedness – but, he hoped, not irretrievable.
The smoke alarm, however, continued its howling, no matter how hard he waved the tea towel at it.
A sudden banging at the front door completed the chaos, and he looked back and forth in bewilderment between the smoke alarm and the door, assaulted by the incessant beeping in one ear and Kieran’s voice calling through Poppy’s apartment door on the other.
“Here, I’ll do it,” Poppy said, grabbing the tea towel. She had not, Max noted, fetched any clothes yet, and her naked body was doing some very enticing little jiggles as she stretched up on her tiptoes and waved the towel wildly.
It was with no small regret that he went into Poppy’s apartment, his eyes firmly fixed on Poppy’s nude gyrations until he could no longer keep her in view.
“Sorry!” he called out, leaning against the front door just in case Kieran decided to burst in and see what was going on for himself. The door was locked, but he knew that Kieran had a key, and he wouldn’t entirely blame him for using it. “Just left the toast in a little too long. I’m dealing with it now.”
“Are you sure?” Kieran called back.
“Positive,” Max assured him.
“I’m sorry,” Kieran went on. “The smoke alarms we put in these apartments are different to the other ones we’ve used in the past, so they might be more sensitive. I’ll have to inspect them later.”
I don’t care!Max yelled inside his head. Out loud, he said, “It’s fine, really! Just me not being a good cook.”
“I’m sure you’re great,” Kieran said enthusiastically, and Max got the feeling he actually meant it, too. The guy was absurdly friendly.
“I’m really not,” Max said – and at that moment, the beeping finally, blessedly stopped. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“All under control,” he said, mentally begging Kieran to take the hint… and maybe his powers weren’t completely messed up at the moment, because Kieran actually seemed to finally decide that he could leave.
“Just call out if you need us,” he said cheerily, and Max barely mustered anUh-huhin reply before he ran back into the kitchen… where he was greeted with the sight of Poppy nakedly leaning over the kitchen sink to push the window open and let the smoke out. It was a very,verynice view, and he simply stopped and stared, unable to formulate words, or even syllables.
“Oh, there you are,” she said, turning around, egg flip in hand – and his brief disappointment at realizing that she’d put an apron on was quickly assuaged by the fact that the apron was bothextremely shortandextremely low-cut. Her astonishingly messy bedhead and sparkling eyes just completed the picture.
“Uh…” he said.
“I took the liberty of putting the eggs on for you,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind fried? I can do over easy, if you prefer.”
“Over easy is good,” he murmured. The phrase conjured up all sorts of images… but he supposed that it could work for eggs as well.
But then his brain finally rebooted itself, and he snapped out of his fugue state fast.
“Wait!” he protested. “I’m supposed to be making you breakfast! Go back to bed!”
“And we saw how that turned out, didn’t we?” she said with a laugh, flipping the eggs. “It’s fine – I wanted to get up and stretch my legs, anyway.”
Liar, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it to her, even in jest.
“Anyway,” she went on, “it looks like I got here just in time. You’re lucky I like my bacon crisp.”
He dared a look at the bacon – and she was right. More or less. It wasn’tcompletelyruined, anyway. It was a little crispier than he would’ve personally liked, but it was still within the realm of edibility. Even the toast was only slightly dark around the edges. Maybe Kieran had been right when he said that the smoke detector might’ve been too sensitive.
That’s what I choose to believe, anyway.
