Serena looked at the sink. Why were there two bowls? She looked in the cupboards. Why did Alicia use two packets and two eggs? This all suggested that someone else ate noodles with her. But who? Kat? Didn’t she tell Alicia to avoid that bad kid?
Last night, she heard Alicia chatting with someone. Alicia’s phone also disappeared from her bag. Serena should confiscate it back and punish the girl for stealing. But she didn’t.
Instead, Serena left a cookie by her door, where it laid untouched.
Somehow, Kelly turned her half-baked doodles into a fully functioning website. Shades of pastel pink painted every background. Shades of red and yellow broke it up, and gave the eyes variation to feast at.
It was perfect.
Most tabs were empty, reserved to showcase the pastry menu Serena had yet to design. She challenged herself to place at least five items on it: a cookie, a cake, a muffin or cupcake, and… something else.
Flavours were like paint. They sat on a palette board, ready to make its mark on the blank canvas. Flavours could mix, blend, and complement in infinite ways. Only the artist’s skill limits the possibilities.
In Serena’s case. the mixing bowl was her canvas, and the paint swirled within it in the same hypnotic manner.
Her mouth watered.
“Serena!” Cheryl jerked her back to reality. “Follow me to throw out the cardboard!” She pointed to a pile of uncrushed cardboard boxes by the corner.
According to Serena, five minutes have passed. According to her phone, an hour has passed.
Cardboard boxes held cardboard boxes held cardboard boxes. It all sat on the edge of the trolley with a squeaky wheel. While Cheryl pushed, Serena guided the way and kept the boxes from falling off.
“So, how was Zack? Perfect, right?”
“Yeah.” Alicia gave no review of Zack’s tutoring. “Thanks again Cheryl, it means a lot.”
Cheryl swatted it away. No big deal.
She remembered the untouched cookie by Alicia’s door. “Can I ask you something? Are there ever times where Zack doesn’t open up or talk to you?”
“Uh… sure.”
“What do you do about that?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you get him to open up again?”
Cheryl blinked a few times. “He’s a good kid. He always listens to my word. If I needed him to talk to me for whatever reason, I’ll just ask him to. What’s going on?”
“I messed up, Cheryl.” The fear in Alicia’s eyes as she hid behind Dania came to mind. “I did something really wrong to Alicia… and now she’s not talking to me.”
Cheryl clicked her tongue and warned her of a slight ledge up ahead. The backdoor beside the toilet led to the basement car park. The smell of trash ambushed them.
“I’ve always told you this. You’re letting Alicia get out of control. You’re being too soft on her! Especially because you’re a single parent, which means Alicia only has one parent to argue with. Not two.”
“I don’t think that’s the problem, Cheryl.”
“Ah!” Cheryl threw her hands up. Disagreement was her biggest pet peeve. It sharpened her tongue. “Whatever. I shall not interfere with your family matters. Do what you think is best.”
Serena held her breath, reminding herself of Cheryl’s obtuse temperament. Tossing the cardboard always left her shoulders sore, and the garbage smell always made her gag. She approached the topic from a different angle. “How do you bond with Zack?”
Cheryl assessed if she was joking or not. Then, she stalled and threw the garbage away alone. They swapped roles guiding the trolley back to the store; Serena pushing, Cheryl guiding.
“He helps me cook dinner.”
“Oh, that’s nice…” Alicia never did that before.
Maybe that was the solution?
One last business update came right before she clocked off: Their first order. Serena insisted on delivering it.
She summoned the girl to the kitchen tonight and gave her the juicy business updates. Then she laid out the ingredients by the counter and guided Alicia through her workflow.
Serena divided the kitchen into three stations. Station one was where she made the batter. Station two was beside the oven, where she poured said batter onto the baking tray, and added toppings. Station three was the dining table, where she packed the final product into tupperware containers and into the fridge to chill overnight.
Alicia was deadpan.
Serena handled station one, explaining everything she did as she did them, and glancing to check Alicia was paying attention. Then, at station two, she let the girl add the toppings. Alicia did, still deadpan, as if her face stopped working.
Worse, Alicia didn’t sit to watch the cookies bake, nor did she eat any. She was just glad to be dismissed.
At least she bothered to help. Better than nothing.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Tomorrow, she drove to the customer’s address after a detour home. She tasked Alicia to cook instant noodles herself for dinner. The neighbourhood was the typical residential block in Singapore with a forest green palette.
As she closed the lift doors, a wheel jammed itself in, pushing the doors back open. That wheel belonged to a bicycle, which belonged to a cyclist. He apologised for the inconvenience caused.
After a minute of fumbling, he found the sweet spot that fit his entire bike. It cut the shaft in half down a diagonal and squeezed Serena to the corner. Apologising further, he helped pressed the button to her floor.
His polite smile revealed dimples; that was her type.
“Just came back from a 1km ride with some old friends.”
“What trail did you take?”
“Through the park connector, which is one long uninterrupted path that loops around the neighbourhood.”
Serena noticed no ring on the cyclist’s hands. She tamed her racing pulse, reminding herself that she wasn’t 20 anymore, and neither was he.
She only allowed herself to make a literal elevator pitch of her bakery and promoted its social media. The shameless promotion made her cringe a little. At least he was receptive to it.
The customer passed her a crisp fifty-dollar note. Green like the building they lived in. Its texture was halfway between paper and plastic, with an aroma that smelled good for reasons she couldn’t explain.
She didn’t need to live like this. What took her so long to stop?
She didn’t mind the chores today. It was almost enjoyable. Folding clothes gave her hands something to do whilst she watched TV, much like sewing in a rocking chair. Her mind drifted to the cyclist again: no ring, dimples, fit. She tamed her pulse again; she wasn’t twenty anymore.
Neither was the woman who delivered the cookies. A loveless life for two decades; she didn’t need to live like that. It took procrastination and a heated debate in her head to download a dating app. It took more hemming and hawing to fill out her profile. But the true test of willpower came from the profile photos. The app demanded six, which was six more than her face could handle.
Serena had a few tricks up her sleeve to avoid this, though. First was to search through her gallery. Every photo of her Alicia or her colleagues in it. A warm blanket of nostalgia wrapped around her, yet this was hardly the time.
She only found two, which cut her work down to four. One was of her showing off her make-up, and another of Alicia’s first trip to a fancy restaurant.
The remaining four came that weekend. First, they visited Wei Xiang’s. This trip killed two birds with one stone. One, with Wei Xiang’s professional opinion, Serena could stop worrying over Alicia’s sprained ankle. Two, it was time to introduce him to the bakery, and give credit where credit’s due.
Alicia went first. Wei Xiang assured them that the ankle had healed. The girl shot an I-told-you-so glare, stole some herbs from a nearby cupboard, and napped on the examination bed.
Maybe she should buy Alicia an air purifier, or better yet, give her’s to her?
Serena went next. She presented her experiment of strawberry cookies, and made him her test subject.
He took a bite, chewed for a while, and began nodding. His brows shifted left to right, searching for the right words to describe it. “It’s too sweet. I don’t like strawberry.”
She snatched the container back in mock outrage.
“I’m not done! I want to save one for Carrie!” Wei Xiang played along.
She gave it back, ending the childish play.
“You’re getting back into baking, huh? That’s nice.”
“Not only that…” She whipped out her phone with the website already on it, and shoved it in his face, “Ta-daa!”
He took a similar pause before nodding. “Wow! Since when could you do all this?”
“One of my colleagues from the pet store was a business student. She’s my business partner in this.”
“Cheryl studied business?”
“No! The young one! With the K-Drama husband!”
“She studied business, and she’s working in a pet store?”
“Not anymore if this takes off!”
Serena showed the social media accounts next and gushed about the pink palette. It was everything she imagined and more. Kelly was a godsend.
And credit where credit’s due: Wei Xiang inspired her. Wei Xiang’s I-told-you-so face made her want to rescind it.
“What does Alicia think about all this?”
This extinguished the joy. Alicia always extinguished the joy. “Things are hard between us right now. And I know, I know, ‘What did you do?’, I know. But can we just skip past that this time, please?”
Wei Xiang sighed, “I’m not interfering.”
“I’m not asking you to. I just want some advice, okay? And I’ll listen this time. I swear.”
"Do something you both like together.”
“I tried baking with her. That didn’t work!” She threw her hands up.
“Does Alicia like baking?”
“Of course she—” Does she? “Ok, I get your point. Thanks.”
She woke Alicia up and went on her way.
That night, Serena spent an hour prettying herself up. She kissed her money goodbye and placed a reservation for a restaurant by the beach. The fanciest clothes she owned was the Cheong-sam she only wore for Chinese new year, which did nicely. The crimson red had a magnetic field that attracted everyone’s eyes, and the shape of the dress helped bring out what curves she had left, whilst hiding the weight she gained. Feeling pretty helped combat the embarrassment that came from the selfie she took.
Alicia dressed per normal. The most she did for the occasion was wear covered shoes. The restaurant had a giant mascot of a crab, which blinked red and blue. Under that mascot was its real-life counterpart, crawling about in a tank.
“We’re going to be eating fancy tonight! Order whatever you like!” She patted Alicia’s head. This penetrated the deadpan face for a split second.
The waves crashing against the shore held a melodic quality to it, which paired excellently with the taste of Chinese tea. Its aroma lit up the silk thread which her ancestors sewed that ran through the generations. First her grandmother, then her mother, then her, then onto Alicia and beyond. Its something the kids these days won’t understand.
A waiter passed them both a menu. Alicia snatched her’s and flipped through it madly. With each page, it stirred the girl’s imagination. Chilli crab, steamed fish, cereal prawn, hotplate tofu… It annihalated the deadpan face. Wei Xiang was a genius
Alicia pointed to the hotplate tofu, bouncing up and down in her seat, flapping her hands and legs, and squealing. At least three pairs of eyes glared at Alicia in response. She also found her cheeks growing red.
“Alicia! Calm down!” She whispered, “We’re in a public place! Don’t be so—” She waved her hands about.
Alicia stopped.
The waiter came, Serena ordered, and thus began the waiting. Without the menu, Alicia went deadpan again. Not on her watch, though, as Serena struck while the iron was hot.
“Let’s take a photo together.”
Alicia obliged.
“Cheers!” She raised her teacup, waiting for Alicia to do the same.
“Alicia. Cheers!” She gestured to the cup.
“Cheers?” Alicia repeated her words and gesture.
“No, take your tea cup and clink it with mine. Like this.” Serena guided her through the motion for the photo. “How do you not know this? Didn’t you do this during the Chinese New Year?”
The iron cooled. Serena got on her phone to complete her profile, while Alicia played with toothpicks. The iron warmed back up when the food arrived; so did Alicia’s squealing.
Serena gave a second warning, informing her of the neighbouring glares.
The iron rusted once they reached home. Alicia refused the offer to watch TV together. If even Wei Xiang’s genius couldn’t fix this, nothing will.
At least she loved the food. Better than nothing.