Every Rose Has Its Thorn

Rose

We hadn't spoken in seven days.

A full week of avoiding creaky floorboards, waiting to hear the front door click before sneaking out of my room. I'd even started boiling the kettle and making instant noodles in my room just to avoid the possibility of running into him in the kitchen- he wouldn't go near a kettle anyway, god forbid he use anything but his mighty, fancy coffee machine. It was pathetic. We were pathetic.

Considering the day after our argument was a Monday, meaning we were both in work together, I thought he might try to talk to me. But no. Just an email.

Subject: Work
Message: You're relieved of PA duties this week. Don't come in. -T

No "hi," no "take care," no signature with the dumb little silver grucifix crest of the ministry like he usually tacked on to remind me who I worked for. Just a single, dry bullet to the chest. I had stared at it for five full minutes before slamming the lid of my laptop shut like it had insulted me personally and chose to forget about him until he decided to act like a mature adult.

But today was his birthday.

October 1st. I remembered because I'd circled the date in pink pen on his office calendar, which he obviously loathed. He muttered something about not celebrating anymore, he's not a kid. Blah blah blah. Terzo loathed his birthday with a strange kind of ferocity- as if it was a personal insult the universe insisted on repeating every year. Which was exactly why I was going to make a cake, decorate the apartment, and make it impossible for him to ignore the fact that, yes, he was still alive, and yes, someone still gave a damn. 

I couldn't pretend it didn't matter. I was tired. Tired of the silence, of the cold war tension crackling between us. Tired of pretending I didn't miss the way he hummed when he stirred pasta, or how he always sighed like an old man when he sat down beside me, even if he was barely thirty. The way he'd pin me against his mattress like an animal whilst he- no, we're not going there Rose.

I'd bribed the kitchen ghouls downstairs with l a bottle of very expensive merlot that I found in Terzo's wine rack and low and behold they'd given me the best stuff- flour that hadn't gone musty, fresh eggs, cream thick enough to stand a spoon upright in. I carried it back upstairs like a treasure chest.

The moment the door closed behind me, I threw on an old apron and opened the record player. Stevie Nicks crackled into the air as I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

Two sponge cakes. His favourite: vanilla and coffee. The recipe was in his mother's battered old cookbook- the one with cracked leather and spidery cursive, pages smeared with oil and jam. I found the page that Alessia had circled with a red heart in the corner, labelled "Terzo's favourite." There were little notes that she'd scribbled all over the page when she was still alive, 'he likes it with extra coffee' and 'make this when he's sad'.

So I made it.

I sifted the flour twice, just like Alessia's note insisted. Beat the eggs until my arm ached. Two fat sponge cakes rose like magic in the oven, golden and soft, the scent of vanilla and coffee curling through the apartment like a childhood memory- it smelt like every birthday spent at Terzo's mothers.

When they were cool, I layered them with buttercream, stacked them neatly on top of one another, then iced the whole thing in smooth black frosting- thick and dramatic, like it was wearing a velvet funeral coat. Then came the decorations:a little fondant raincloud with lightning bolts; a tiny, angry frown piped in white chocolate; sarcastic words across the front- 'Congratulations on still existing'...I laughed as I did it because it was so him. Melodramatic. Grumpy. Endlessly sad. It was the most depressing cake I'd ever seen- and it was perfect.