#thefics

Stephanie Lauter

Ruth Fleming

Grace Chasity

Richard Lipschitz

“I’m a little bit late, I get that,” Sean, Kinara’s ass-hat of an ex began, “But do you really think it’s called for to keep my food warm…in someone else’s mouth?”

            “Probably where you’ve been keeping your tongue warm, buster,” muttered Oncie.

            “What the hell did you just say?”

            “You heard me.”

            Sean sneered, “Never mind. Say, I see it was a good idea to set up my farm stand so close to the gazebo. Judging by how you look right now,” he indicated to Oncie, “It’s no wonder I’ve been selling so many tomatoes lately.”

            “Oh, so you grew these? No, I’m glad about it too. See, there was enough mold on those things to give an entire town food poisoning. I’m glad nobody’s been actually eating them.”

Oncie’s reluctance to give the man the light of day was inspiring. In fact, it was just the inspiration Kinara needed to make certain her untouched piece of cake wouldn’t go to waste.

“So!” She interjected, reluctantly breaking the deadly eye contact the two were making. Grinning at Oncie, she slid her hand under the plate in front of her. “Whaddya say, same time next week?”

“I dunno, Kinara,” Sean spat, “I don’t think you’ve done anything to deserve-“

SPLAT

Oncie stared guiltily at the food in front of him, “Well, now I feel kinda bad about ‘mooching’…” regardless, he didn’t hesitate a moment more and began to scarf it down.

            “Clearly not enough,” Kinara scoffed. Oncie swallowed a tennis ball-sized mouthful.

            “This is the first time I’ve eaten lunch in over a week. I don’t think any amount of guilt could keep me from this free dessert.”

            “A week? ‘You just get fired or something? Ah, pardon my asking.”

            “It’s alright, the answer’s no. I’m an entrepreneur, actually!” He declared, beaming with pride despite the crumbs that were stuck between his teeth, “And, well…my invention isn’t taking off as quickly as I’d like it to. I’m a little short on funds at the moment, and when you live in the forest, you tend to get tired of eating fruit.”

            “Why not try catching an animal? If you’re living in the woods, you must have some mean cooking skills.”

            Oncie dropped his fork, though it was clearly on purpose for dramatic effect, “Eat a Barbaloot!? Y-you can’t be serious!”

            “A barba…what? Alright, I’ll drop it. Say,” Kinara asked, “That out-of-season shawl thing wouldn’t happen to be your invention, would it?”

            “Yep!” he twirled the end in his fingers, “Pretty snazzy, huh? You see, this deceptively simple contraption-“

            Kinara stopped him right there, “I don’t think I’m in the mood to have something sold to me right now, Oncie.”

            “Heh, sorry…reflex.”

            “If you can’t afford lunch, what are you doing hanging out in an eating establishment?” She continued, “Were you just here for the napkins?”

            Oncie grinned nervously, “I’m hiding.”

            “From who?”

            “The angry mob that left me covered in tomato mash, that’s who!”

            Kinara winced. Yep, that about sounded like the citizens of Greenville for sure. They really showed no mercy to salesmen. She wasn’t altogether devoid of that attitude herself.

            “Pretty smart, huh? Who would go pelting someone with food in a restaurant? Wouldn't want to risk starting a food fight.”

            I could think of a few people Kinara thought. After all, both she and Oncie had considered throwing their dessert at the same double-crossing douche-wad not a few minutes ago.

            “Yo, Kinara!”

            “Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!” the man exclaimed upon spotting Kinara’s cheating ex-boyfriend. In a moment of anger almost identical to hers, he snatched up a plate of cake and took aim at the table he occupied.

            “Wha-wait a minute!” Kinara swiped it away, “I was planning on doing that myself, but in hindsight…I don’t know if it’s the best idea.”

            “Well, you know what they say,” the man grumbled, smacking his fist into his hand before tearing his gaze away from the table, “Hindsight is always 20/20. ‘Guess it wouldn’t do much good to cause a scene like that.” Motioning to the two plates of cake that still remained untouched, he added, “You’ll notice that I only picked up one plate. ‘Wouldn’t be so cruel as to leave you cakeless!”

            “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,” Kinara sat down and stabbed a fork into one of the cake slices, “I’ve long since lost my appetite at this point. In fact, you can have one of these pieces if you want. Seeing as though I wasted my money on them already.”

            “…Seriously?”

            “Sure, why not?”

            “Wowie! I guess it’s my lucky day!” The man pulled up a chair and tugged a paper napkin out of the dispenser, folding it neatly on his lap. “I know I’m covered in tomato mash, but this only seems polite, wouldn’t you agree?” he said in response to the confused look Kinara gave him.

            “I don’t recall inviting you to sit down,” she said under her breath. On the other hand, having a table buddy saved her the embarrassment of eating alone at a place setting for two. “Say, wanna give me your name before you start mooching?”

            The man lowered the forkful of cake he was about to put in his mouth, “O-of course! Sorry about that…you can call me Oncie,” he extended his free hand, and Kinara gave it a shake.

            “Pleasure,” she grinned, “Alright, go ahead and eat.”

            “…I don’t get your name?”

            “It’s Kinara.”

            “Wow! That’s quite the title!

Kinara had never fully grasped the phrase the straw that broke the camel’s back until this very moment. She’d blamed the lack of a lunch date on her boyfriend’s unreliability, but what she’d just seen earned him the new title of ex-boyfriend. Had he simply forgotten their plans together, she would have reluctantly forgiven him. Heck, even the fact that she had asked the waitress for two place settings so she couldn’t play it off like she was here alone in the first place didn’t really matter. But this jerk-wad had stooped to a new low, and now Kinara felt it appropriate to give him a piece of her mind, in the form of the piece of red-velvet cake, which, though he didn’t show up to claim it, he would still be getting in his face.

            Kinara picked up the two untouched plates on her table and stood up to leave when a hand touched her shoulder. Turning to see who had gotten her attention, she was blinded by a face full of squished tomato.

            “Yeeek! I’m so sorry ma’am!” a male voice yelped. Before she could do anything, the plates were snatched out of her hands.

            “Hey! Drop ‘em, cake-thief!” Her hands now free, Kinara threw a punch in the direction the voice was coming from, and ended up connecting with something abnormally soft and fluffy. Was she being stolen from by a giant Pillsbury doughboy or something? Her thoughts were interrupted when she felt the very same fluffiness against her face, gently wiping the tomato-paste away.

            When she finally regained her sight, Kinara found herself face to face with a nervous looking man kneeling in front of her, drenched in tomatoes and wearing some sort of out-of-season pink scarf. He’d since set the plates of cake back on the table, and had used the end of said scarf to remove the tomato from her face.

            Bracing himself for another blow now that his attacker had regained her sight, the man stammered, “P-please, I have absolutely no interest in those clearly-not-meant-for-me plates of cake. Or ruining your b-best dress with a tomato stain.” Standing up, he bowed his head and raised a hand above it, “It was purely accidental.”

            Kinara realized she might have overreacted a bit. For all she knew, he could have been a waiter who had spilled a plate of food on her on his way to asking if she wanted the cake reheated. Congregating all her effort into a smile, she reassured the man that anger was simply her follow-up reaction to surprise.

            “Whew! That’s certainly a relief…” the man grinned, “I, uh, actually came to this table to ask if I could borrow your napkin dispenser. ‘You using it?”

            “Nah,” Kinara passed it to him, “Your table doesn't have one?”

            The man flinched and looked in the direction of his table, “Well…it does, but…” Kinara followed his gaze to a table covered in tomato juice-soaked paper napkins.

            “My goodness!” she exclaimed, “You’d think they’d have a towel somewhere in the back for messes like that. Didn’t you ask?”

            “Call me dirt dumb, but it didn’t actually occur to me…I’d still like this if you don’t mind,” he said, gesturing to the napkin dispenser, “Now, I’ll get out of your hair. Wouldn’t want your date to think they've been ditched for someone else.”

            “B-but just remember, Kuraku-chan…” Oncie cautiously laid a hand on Kashia’s shoulder, “No matter how this goes down-“

            “Oncie, I got this.”

            “I’m sure you do! I just… if you don’t end up-“

            “What did I just say?”

            “-You aren’t obligated to let me kiss you again! I-is what I’m saying…”

            Kashia nodded to herself, “I know. It’s my wager, and I get to decide whether or not you give it to me. Got that?”

            “Oh, thank goodness,” Oncie sighed, patting her on the back, “I was worried your determination to prove me wrong would end up getting you into something you weren’t exactly ok with.”

            “Wait a minute,” she brushed off Oncie’s hand, “Are you even listening to me?”

            “Excuse me?”

            “Since when does, ‘I got this’ mean anything other than what it sounds like? Look, it’s been a long day,” she paused to wipe a splotch of cake batter off her cheek, “I give up on proving you wrong. I just wanna enjoy some cake. In fact…why don’t you lend me a hand on this one? It’s your favorite, right? I’m sure you know this recipe inside out!”

            The two of them were suddenly covered in a fresh coat of flour. In anticipation of his contribution to the baking process, Oncie had decided to start “helping” by prematurely tearing open the sack with his bare hand. When the dust cleared, a powdered Oncie remained unphased, grinning like an idiot and giving a thumb’s up.

            Kashia did her best to clear the flour from her lungs, “Man,” she said in between coughs, “You must have been really itchin’ to get your hands dirty, huh?”

            “Oh, you have no idea!” Oncie was patting himself down and was once again nearly obscured by flour-clouds, “But I’ll try to contain myself. It’s you’re cake, after all.”

            “Hmm…nah. I think I’m calling this whole challenge off. Let’s just make a cake together, whaddya say?”

            “By, ALL THE MEANS!”

            “Yikes! I guess that’d be a yes…”

              .   .   .

  Two chairs sat next each other, facing the oven. Kashia and Oncie sat hunched over them, hand in sticky hand, as the oven clock silently ticked nearer and nearer to zero.

            “Only one more minute. You hungry, Kuraku-chan?”

            “Well, did skip lunch for this.”

            “If it doesn’t-“

            “We’ll just forget about it and make sandwiches.”

            “Alright, go it.”

            Beeep~

“HERE, LET ME!” both of them leapt up simultaneously and reached for the remaining pair of oven mitts. Oncie turned and raised an eyebrow, to which Kashia nodded, and they each grabbed one.

“It looks good from where I’m standing,” Oncie said, aggressively fanning the cake with his mitt from where it now sat on the table.

“It smells good from over here!” Kashia brandished a big knife in anticipation of slicing into it. Oncie motioned for her to put it down, and instead grabbed two forks from a nearby drawer. With a deep breath, they began hacking out chunks of the spongy cylinder and stuffing them into their consecutive mouths.

Kashia frowned as she swallowed her third bite, “Oncie…is it supposed to be this…”

“Sweet? Yep!” He was eating arguably twice as fast as she was. Well, it looked like she’d done it. The impossible: successfully baking.

“I can’t believe it!” She thought aloud.

“Neither can- er, I mean…”

“It’s alright. I can’t blame you, really. Heh…”

“Hey, really great job, Kashi- ah, Kuraku-chan!” He grinned, cheeks still stuffed like a chipmunk. Kashia couldn’t help but laugh. “You know…you certainly aren’t obligated to accept, but…do you think you might want that kiss? I’d be happy to offer it as a reward this time.”

“You know what? I’d love to!” she started to put her fork down, but after a moment of gazing at the partially devoured cake, decided against it, “Just a few more…or a lot more bites, first, ok?”