Sunday Pancakes

The penthouse had a kitchen the size of Maya's entire old apartment, and Alexander Voss could not cook.

She discovered this on their first Sunday, when smoke drew her out of her wing at eight in the morning to find him standing over a pan of something blackened, wearing an expression of genuine betrayal.

"The instructions said medium heat," he said.

"That's a cremated pancake."

"It's an optimist's pancake. It believed in itself."

She took the pan from him. She didn't decide to; her hands just did it, the way her hands reached for pencils. "Sit down. Read the news. Let a professional work."

He sat. He did not read the news. He watched her crack eggs with one hand and said, "My mother used to make pancakes on Sundays. After my father left, she kept doing it. Just the two of us. I think it was her way of saying the house wasn't broken, just smaller."

Maya flipped a pancake and didn't turn around, because his voice had done something to the room and she didn't want him to see her notice.

"My grandmother taught me," she said. "She said a kitchen is the only room where you can fix things by hand. Bad day? Make soup. Broken heart? Bake bread. She had opinions about grief and carbohydrates."

"What would she make for a fake engagement?"

"Something very complicated, to keep her hands busy." Maya set a plate in front of him. "Eat."

He ate three pancakes and asked for a fourth, and somewhere between the second and the third, Maya realised she had stopped performing. There were no cameras in this kitchen. No mother on a video call. Just a man who couldn't cook and a woman who'd made breakfast anyway, and neither of them mentioned clause nine.

Later, washing up, Alexander said, "Same time next Sunday?" in a voice so carefully casual that Maya understood the question was not about pancakes.

"Same time next Sunday," she agreed, and spent the rest of the week pretending not to look forward to it.