Vanilla Iced Scones
Chapter thirteen
The flat in Waterloo was small, cluttered, and vibrantly alive. It smelled faintly of incense, old books, and the lingering aroma of whatever spices Liam had used for dinner the night before.
It was a stark contrast to the minimalist elegance of the South Kensington apartment Andre shared with Blake.
Here, scripts were piled precariously on every available surface, mismatched mugs sat abandoned on the coffee table, and the walls were covered in a chaotic mosaic of theater posters, photographs, and postcards.
It was a Tuesday evening in late January.
Blake was in Melbourne, preparing for his quarterfinal match at the Australian Open.
Andre had stayed behind in London, citing the pressure of the Paris commission, though the truth was he simply hadn't wanted to face the long flight and the inevitable questions from the press about his absence from the draw.
He was sitting on the floor of Liam and Talia's living room, his back against the worn velvet sofa, a glass of cheap red wine in his hand.
"So, the director looks at me," Liam was saying, pacing the small space between the coffee table and the television, "and he says, 'Liam, darling, I need more pathos.
I need you to feel the weight of transformation, the terror of losing one's humanity.
' And I'm standing there in a warehouse in Bermondsey, wearing a giant papier-maché donkey head, sweating through my costume, barely able to see through the eyeholes. "
Talia laughed, a rich, warm sound that filled the small room. She was sitting cross-legged on the rug, wearing an oversized sweater that kept slipping off one shoulder.
"What did you do?"
"I gave him pathos," Liam said, striking a dramatic pose, his green eyes flashing with amusement.
"I gave him the most heartbroken, existentially tortured Bottom in the history of immersive Shakespeare.
He wept. The audience wept. I couldn't see any of it because of the donkey head, but I could hear them weeping. "
Andre smiled, taking a sip of his wine. He loved these evenings.
He loved the easy, unpretentious warmth of their friendship, the way they welcomed him into their chaotic, creative world without asking anything in return.
With Blake away, the flat in South Kensington felt too large, too quiet.
Here, surrounded by the noise and the laughter, the silence was kept at bay.
"Right," Liam said, dropping the pose and clapping his hands together. "I have a surprise."
He walked over to the small bookshelf by the window, rummaged behind a stack of dog-eared paperbacks, and produced a small, clear plastic bag. He held it up triumphantly.
"What is that?" Talia asked, squinting at the bag.
"A gift," Liam said, returning to the center of the room. "From Theo, the guy playing Puck. He said it's a particularly excellent strain of cannabis. Grown in a greenhouse in Surrey, apparently."
Andre raised an eyebrow. "You want to smoke?"
"I don't want to smoke," Liam said, tossing the bag onto the coffee table. "Smoking is terrible for the vocal cords. I want to eat it."
Talia leaned forward, picking up the bag and examining the small, pungent green buds. "We could bake it into something." She looked up at Andre, her dark eyes bright with sudden inspiration. "Scones."
"Scones?" Andre repeated, amused.
"Yes! But not with blueberries this time. Let's top them with vanilla icing. Liam, look up how to make vanilla icing on your phone."
Andre hesitated. He hadn't touched any kind of drug since a brief, ill-advised experiment with hashish at a party in Paris when he was seventeen.
The strict, regimented life of a professional athlete had precluded any such indulgences.
But he wasn't an athlete anymore. He was a painter.
He was sitting on the floor of a flat in Waterloo with his friends, and Blake was ten thousand miles away.
"Why not?" Andre said, setting his wine glass down. The wine was already making him feel warm and loose, the sharp edges of his anxiety about the Paris commission softening. "Let us bake."
The kitchen was even smaller than the living room, the counter space barely large enough to accommodate a cutting board. They worked in a chaotic, laughing tandem.
Liam ground the cannabis, complaining loudly about the smell, and then turned to making the vanilla icing recipe he had found. Meanwhile, Talia measured flour and sugar, and Andre took charge of the butter, demonstrating the precise, delicate technique required to create the perfect flaky texture.
"Remember what Talia taught us," Andre said, his hands coated in flour as he worked the butter into the dry ingredients. "Gentle. If you overwork the dough, the gluten develops too much, and the scones become tough. It is about respect for the ingredients."
"Listen to him," Liam teased, leaning against the refrigerator. "The Picasso of pastry."
They folded the finely ground cannabis into the dough and then shaped it into perfect scones before placing them in the oven. The flat quickly filled with the warm, comforting smell of baking bread, underscored by a sharp, unmistakable herbal scent.
When the scones were done and slightly cooled, Liam slathered them with his vanilla icing. And then they waited for the icing to set. As soon as the icing crusted over, they began to eat the scones.
"Even with the icing, they taste… earthy," Talia observed, chewing thoughtfully.
"They taste like sugar-covered dirt," Liam corrected, taking another bite. "But the texture is magnificent, Andre. Your father would be proud."
They waited. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
"I don't feel anything," Liam announced, lying flat on his back on the rug, staring at the ceiling. "Theo is a liar. Puck cannot be trusted."
"Maybe we didn't eat enough," Talia suggested. She reached for the plate and took another scone, breaking it in half and offering a piece to Andre.
Andre took it. He didn't feel anything either, just the pleasant, heavy warmth of the wine and the comfortable fullness of the food. He ate the second half of the scone, washing it down with the last of his wine.
Another twenty minutes passed.
And then, slowly, the world shifted.
It didn't happen all at once. It started as a slow, creeping heaviness in Andre's limbs, a feeling that gravity had suddenly doubled its pull. The colors in the room — the faded red of the sofa, the bright yellow of a poster on the wall — seemed to vibrate with an intense, unnatural saturation.
He looked at Liam, who was still lying on the floor, but Liam seemed very far away, as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.
"Oh," Talia said softly.
Andre turned his head. The movement felt incredibly slow, as if he were moving underwater. Talia was sitting next to him on the sofa. Her dark hair was falling across her face, and her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated.
"Are you…" Andre started to speak, but his voice sounded strange to his own ears, thick and resonant.
"I feel like I'm floating," Talia whispered.
Liam let out a sudden, loud bark of laughter from the floor. "Puck," he gasped, dissolving into a fit of giggles. "Puck speaks the truth after all."
Andre tried to laugh, but the sound caught in his throat.
The heaviness in his limbs was being replaced by a strange, buzzing energy, a tingling sensation that started at the base of his spine and radiated outward.
The room felt too warm. The air felt thick, heavy with the smell of the cannabis and the lingering scent of the baking.
He looked at Talia again.
She was looking at him. Her olive skin looked flawless in the dim light of the living room lamps. He could see the pulse beating at the base of her throat, a rapid, fluttering rhythm.
The cannabis was stripping away the layers of his consciousness, dismantling the carefully constructed architecture of his self-control.
The rational, logical part of his brain — the part that knew he was in a relationship, the part that knew this was his friend — was being drowned out by a wave of sensory overload.
Talia shifted closer. The oversized sweater slipped further down her arm, exposing the smooth, bare curve of her shoulder.
"Andre," she murmured, her voice a low, husky vibration that seemed to travel directly into his bloodstream.
She leaned in.
When her lips touched his, Andre didn't pull away. He was stunned, his mind struggling to process the sudden, shocking reality of the contact. His body simply reacted as if not requiring conscious thought on his part.
Her mouth was soft, tasting of icing and wine. She kissed him deeply, her hands coming up to frame his face, her fingers tangling in his dark curls.
Andre's breathing stuttered. He hadn't been with a woman in years. The cannabis was distorting everything, but Andre knew that the sensation was entirely different — softer, rounder, lacking the hard, muscular angles he was used to with Blake.
Talia's hand moved down his chest, tracing the line of his stomach, before dropping lower. She pressed her palm against the front of his jeans. When her fingers found the hard, heavy ridge of his erection, Andre wasn't sure if this was real or just a figment of his imagination.
Without thought, he was kissing her, his hands dropping to her waist, pulling her closer. She was beautiful, the dim light casting shadows across her cheekbones and the soft curve of her mouth.
Talia pulled back slightly, her eyes dark and heavy with desire. She reached down, her fingers clumsy in her haste, and unbuttoned her jeans, pushing them down her hips.
She wasn't wearing underwear.
She took Andre's hand and guided it downward.
When his fingers brushed against her, the last fragile thread of resolve in his mind snapped.