Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73880 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Timeo kicks open the door. It flies back on its hinges, but behind it nothing at all moves. He holds his gun in front of him like he’s a detective in a movie, and I imagine I look every bit the part of his hot accomplice, not a hair out of place, my whole body taut as I hold my gun with both hands.
There isn’t a thing out of place. Nothing moves. No one’s been here.
I take a look around the kitchen, poking around in the fridge and finding bread rising. “Eden was planning on baking that today, wasn’t she?”
“Yep. She was on tonight, but we closed the club for obvious reasons.”
When Timeo puts his gun away, I follow suit. No one’s here.
“Looks like a picture in here, really. And it would be a shame to see that bread dough go to waste.”
Eden likes her workspace to be immaculate, and while Sergio has professional cleaners come in, Eden always gives it her own spin.
“You have a gas oven, don’t you?”
Half an hour later, the bread is rising for the second time, shaped into a loaf I’ll bake in a few hours. I’ve got eggs scrambling in a frying pan and plump sausages in another. My stomach churns with hunger.
“Coffee. We need coffee.” Timeo heads toward the coffee maker that looks like a miniature spaceship. He flicks the button on the side of the machine, but it doesn’t light up.
“What the fuck,” he mutters. That coffee machine is about to meet a very unfortunate demise.
“We’ll make campfire coffee,” I say with a shrug. “Easy. I’ll show you.”
I boil water on the stove, then pour it into a large bowl with coffee grounds, give it a stir, and let it sit. “Give it five minutes.”
“What sort of sorcery is this?” he mutters.
“Once the grounds settle, you just pour the coffee right off the top. The key is to make sure the grounds stay on the bottom, so you need a steady hand.”
He smirks. “I have a very steady hand.”
“And a very dirty imagination, clearly.”
“You love it.”
He eyes his cup with trepidation. But after he tastes it, he’s a clear fan.
“That’s fucking delicious. You learn that at the fellowship?”
“Oh yeah,” I say with a grimace. “That’s all I learned. How to prepare food for a potentially large family or the end times, whichever came first.”
“So you mean to tell me, all these years, we've been using fancy things to make coffee and filter it and all I needed was some coffee grounds, water, and a pot."
"Of course. I mean, most things are done for the sake of convenience, aren't they?"
He sits on a stool. Taking another sip of coffee, he cradles his cup and watches me curiously as I turn the sausages.
I decide to broach a difficult subject. “This is kind of… I mean I know you probably don't want to hear about it, but… this is like the whole, like, shtick of my content."
He tips his head to the side. “Yeah?” I hear that warning in his voice and feel it in my core. I remember what it felt like over his knee.
"It started with this whole thing of me saying, I was like an Amish girl in a city, and I explained I'd only really been kind of raised that way? And I started doing things like… well, things I learned how to do growing up.”
“Like what?”
“Cooking from scratch… canning.” I finish the eggs, turn the heat off under the sausages, and pile both of our plates high with food. “Baking… yeast bread and quick breads, cookies, biscuits. Quilting. Churning butter. Sewing a few things. I even showed them how to make their own soap and candles.”
When he doesn’t respond, I go on.
“You know, people think modern appliances make their lives easier, but… there are benefits to simple living, you know? There’s this whole press toward mindfulness, and a part of me sort of wonders, would we need to remind ourselves of that if we lived simply to begin with?”
Setting the plates on the table, I wipe the counter down and quickly tidy the space up. When I look up, Timeo’s staring at me as if he’s just seeing me for the first time. I squirm under the heat of his gaze.
I chatter on. “I mean, here I am with my ripped jeans, and my cropped tops and my dangly necklaces… standing on a step stool so that I can knead bread.” I shrug. “They eat it up. I think most people long for simplicity.”
When he doesn’t respond, I swallow and look up at him again. “What?”
“I can see why you have so many followers.”
A flush creeps along my neck and up into my cheeks.
“Can you, um, get us something to drink and I’ll grab the forks?”
“Of course,” he mutters, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. "You're gonna have to stop that, Starla."