Today was Thursday, 22nd of September, which meant the tomorrow, the 23rd, was a national holiday. I would not have been aware of that fact, had the built-in newsletter on my phone not informed me of that fact. Each year, the last Friday of September was dedicated to celebrating ‘La confession celeste’ which symbolically commemorated the first time a Wild Land had formed.

Of course, it happened so long ago that calendars had switched several times since, and the current date was chosen somewhat arbitrarily to fill in the gap in national holidays that occurred in the early Autumn (I only knew there was a ‘gap’ since I had a different point of reference than people in this world).

All this went to say that I did not have work tomorrow and that Etienne was going to come over to my place to hang out.

I had originally suggested we both go see the parade that was going to walk down the Champs Elysés, but it turned out that Etienne did not like crowded places. And since he still lived with his parents (which I had not been aware of), my place was the obvious choice.

Thus, I was currently busy cleaning and tidying everything up. As I was wiping down the stove, I suddenly remembered something that I had wanted to do a few months back. I had promised myself that I would get something for Etienne as a thank you for defending me during that attack at the store. With everything else going on, I had kinda forgotten about it, but now that he was coming over, it was the perfect opportunity to get him something.

Issue was, I didn’t know enough about him to know what he’d like. Ever since we had started dating, we did hang out more and more, but we never talked about our own lives all that much, as most of our conversations covered movies that he’d watched, stuff I’ve seen on the news, but never anything too personal.

Well, after working with him for almost four months, I did know at least that he liked sweet food. Hence, I decided to bake my signature lemon cake.

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“Welcome to my humble home.” I greeted Etienne as I opened my door. “I hope the journey up the stairs wasn’t too exhausting.”

“Five flights of stairs is more than I’m used to at work,” he nodded, sorely, as if he’d actually had to put effort into getting upstairs. “Although next time I would appreciate if you’d come downstairs instead of throwing your keys through the window.”

“I would have, have you warned me 5 minutes before arriving.” I replied, inviting him in.

I showed him where to put his coat, shoes, and bag of snacks that he’d brought.

“This is the kitchen/ living room. That there is my bedroom, and the bathroom is just around the corner. Make yourself at home.”

Etienne walked to the small couch that I had dragged out of the storage room, where Cain used to stay, and after examining it for a bit, said:

“So, is the minimalistic look intentional?”

His tone didn’t come off as rude, not curious, so I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“How so?” I asked, taking my attention away from the cake in the oven for a second.

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” He promptly apologised, his face turning slightly red, “It’s just that, you know, you always give so much attention to your looks, I mean, you look pretty, but I thought,”

“Well, you know,” I cut him off and turned back towards the oven, so he couldn’t see that my face was about to get as red as his, “I never have anyone over, whereas at work I’m I have someone to whom I want to look nice for.” Not wanting for the atmosphere to get awkward, I quickly added “What do you want to watch, and when do you want to get lunch? I have a weird thing with my TV, so we have to plan this out.”

“By weird thing do you mean that your TV is actually a computer monitor?” Etienne asked, gesturing towards the appliance in question which stood over a mostly empty set of open drawers.

“Yeah, well, when I first moved in, I didn’t have any Wi-Fi, so I had to do some fiddling, long story short, the downstairs neighbour has a data package that includes all the big TV channels. But if you want to watch anything else, I gotta connect my laptop to it.”

“So you’re stealing Wifi from your neighbour.”Etienne said with an amused smile. “I never thought you of all people will be breaking the law like that.”

“Yeah…” I trailed off as I looked away, thinking back to all the instances where I had broken the law. “If it makes you feel any better, I do have my own wifi now.”

“Cool, so we can download something. How about that fantasy movie I told you about?” He asked.

“The one with the ants?” I asked in return, trying to figure out what exactly he meant.

“Yeah, Summer Keep. It has a lot of politics in it, I’m sure you’ll like it.”

I saw no reason to disagree, so I handed him my laptop so he could search for it. We discussed what to get for lunch, and settled on pizza. According to Etienne, there was a place not far from here that used exotic toppings, like basilisk meat and blight roots. I did not trust anything that came from a monster, but I trusted Etienne, so we decided to go there after watching the first of the three ‘Summer Keep’ movies.

“I also made cake. Do you want some now, or later?” I offered, as we were getting settled down on the couch.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll have a slice.” He accepted with a smile.

While we were talking, the lemon tart had had the time to finish baking and cool off enough to be cut with ease. I handed him a slice and waited expectantly.

“Muuuuum.” He said as he slowly chewed on it. His expression was one that he was very clearly trying to keep neutral.

Part of me suddenly felt bad for making something that he didn’t like, while another part wanted to see how far him pretending to be okay with my tart would go. I decided to tease him at least a little bit before apologising for the whole ordeal.

“I’m glad you like it.” I said. “I’ll make sure to bake these tarts more often and bring them to work, so you could have a snack during your lunch break.”

The expression he gave me was priceless, and I had to look away to contain my laughter.

“You did this on our purpose.” He said, putting the plate down.

When I looked back at him, still with that amused smile painted over my face, I noticed that he looked not dissimilar to a sad puppy.

“No.” I honestly replied, although my expression might have made it seem less so. “It’s a family recipe, I genuinely thought that you’d like it.”

“I mean, it’s not bad. You just went really easy on the sugar.” He shrugged, trying to make his criticism sound nice.

“Oh my god.” I exclaimed, having suddenly come to a realisation. “You actually like all those diabetes cakes from Manon. I thought you were joking all this time!”

“I think it’s you who has poor taste.” He shrugged, looking away, perhaps in embarrassment.

“I’m not saying you have poor taste.” I said, with an apologetic tone. “I just – never mind. I’ll make something sweet next time you come over. What’s your favourite dessert?”

“White chocolate moelleux with strawberries.” He replied. “But you really shouldn’t try making one for me.”

I nodded. My cooking skills were not that good anyway.

“I’ll make you something else with plenty of sugar. Deal?” I asked, extending my hand for him to shake.

“Deal.” He replied.

He shook my hand, and it seemed everything was just fine again. I pressed play on my laptop, and nudged against Etienne as a series of company logos rolled on.

“I’ve been meaning to ask.” Etienne suddenly turned towards me.

“Yes?” I replied, suddenly becoming very conscious of how close our faces were. If I leaned in just a little bit, I could easily touch his lips with mine.

“Who is this god that you keep bringing up? Are you part of one of those Heavenly cults?”

I blinked. That was one hell of a way to ruin a romantic moment.

“If it’s too intrusive, you don’t have to answer.” Etienne quickly added.

“No.” I replied, turning my eyes back to the ‘TV’. “It’s just an expression where I come from. I guess many people are, or were religious there, and it stuck.”

“Ah.” Etienne said.

Perhaps thee was more that he wanted to ask me, and there was definitely more that I wanted to ask him, but the title screen of the movie changed to a landscape with floating islands, and I decided to enjoy this moment with Etienne, and ask questions later.