Rite of Submission - Rite 1

29: A Girl I Used to Know

                Once we were dressed, we made our way down for my daily blood draw before getting breakfast. In the kitchen, Sophie stood in the pantry searching for a long time, asking me to look behind things on the shelves she couldn't reach. After exhausting everywhere she could think to look she stomped her foot, "Ooooh, I'll get him for this! He must've found my cereal and had it thrown out." She pouted.

I just tilted my head, "Dmitri won't let you have cereal?"

"It was special cereal," she pouted, "it was sugar frosted with marshmallows. He thinks it makes me too hyper."

Looking around the pantry I saw plenty of basics, "Well," I started gathering some of the canisters and bags off the shelves, handing some for her to help carry, "he's not here, we could just have cookies for breakfast." I grinned, piling all the ingredients out on the counter. She followed me and dumped her armload on the counter as well.

"How are we going to make cookies?" she looked confused.

I started looking through the cupboards for bowls and spoons and cookie sheets. "I can't promise they'll be great, but I pretty much have the recipe memorized."

"You bake?" she stared at me.

Finding some measuring spoons and cups I started throwing ingredients into the bowl. "Well yeah," I checked the fridge and pulled out milk, butter and eggs. "My mom would always volunteer to make things for school bake sales and we'd spend all day making a huge mess and too much food. But her stuff always sold out and..." I pushed the memory away, it feeling bittersweet now. "Chocolate chip cookies are pretty basic."

Sophie watched in amazement as I mixed everything together and asked about everything I added to the bowl, wanting to know what it was, what it did and how it tasted by itself. The smell of fresh baked cookies filled the kitchen and some of the neighboring rooms too drawing the attention of the staff that were nearby.

I did my best not to laugh as Sophie burned her tongue when she tried to stuff her face too soon. I grabbed a banana from a bowl of fruit and sat on the counter to watch as the plate of cookies slowly turned into a plate of crumbs. "You didn't get any?" Sophie frowned as we watched the last two cookies walk out the door.

I just shrugged. "I don't really like sweets."

Her jaw dropped, "How does anyone not like sweets? Why bake if you don't like what you make?"

I smiled, wiping a smudge of chocolate off her lip. "I like what baking does, it brought all those other people into the room that we wouldn't have otherwise seen, and every one of them left with a smile, and something I made."

"You know, sometimes you're just weird," she giggled. "I think it makes me like having you around even more."

"Thanks? I think," I smiled at her, feeling unsure about how to take her comment.

Hopping off the counter I set to cleaning up, which got me another confused look. "Now what are you doing?"

"I'm not going to leave another cook's kitchen dirty, that's like walking on someone's bed with muddy shoes. I'd rather not be banned from the kitchen by an angry chief who got back from a day off just to find a big mess to clean."

She waved her hand around, "I mean it's technically your kitchen too, by default. I mean as long as you stay with us." I just shrugged off her sales pitch and finished cleaning up; it wasn't that many dishes anyway.