19 | Eating the Crust
“This is so stupid,” I said, looking across the kitchen island at the remains of what the men had named a half-party.
Half a pizza sat in an open box. Half a chocolate cake occupied a plate beside it, the cut down the middle uneven enough that one side was noticeably larger.
Four unopened beer cans waited near the sink.
A joint approximately half its normal length rested in an ashtray Kadir had brought inside for display purposes only.
The puzzle box at the end of the island concerned me most.
Wesley had removed half the pieces and sealed them inside a grocery bag so nobody could accidentally improve their odds.
The men wanted to celebrate finishing demos for the first half of the album by serving half of everything and attempting half of several normal activities.
It was the kind of idea that had probably started as a joke and gained momentum because nobody sensible had been present to kill it.
I had been upstairs working.
That was my mistake.
“It’s thematic,” Wesley said.
He stood over the sink pouring half the beer from each can down the drain.
I watched in horror as foam disappeared around the metal strainer.
“You could pour half into glasses.”
“That would be half a drink. This is half a beer.”
Leo sat on a bar stool with one elbow resting on the island. His nails were still black from the incident in his bedroom, though I had repaired the worst of the damage after Kadir returned with enough acetone to remove paint from industrial equipment.
The carpet had survived.
The towel had not.
Leo watched Wesley empty the third can. “I’m starting to have doubts about the theme.”
“You supported it ten minutes ago.”
“That was before he began wasting alcohol.”
Kadir stood beside me with his arms folded. His own nails had been finished properly, the clean black polish making his hands look even more distracting than usual.
He glanced at me.
I looked back.
Kadir and I had developed an entire language based on watching Leo and Wesley make preventable choices. Most of it involved silence, raised eyebrows, and accepting that intervention would only delay the inevitable.
Wesley handed each of us a half-full can.
Leo lifted his and looked at the pizza. “Dasha has a point. How are we supposed to get full if we only have half a pizza?”
“Eat the crust.” Wesley waved away the concern. “Make the most of it.”
Leo went still.
For one promising second, I thought the conversation had ended.
Then he sat straighter.
“That should be a saying.”
Wesley considered it. “Eating the crust?”
“No. Eat the crust.” Leo pointed his beer toward him. “It means appreciating the parts people usually leave behind.”
Kadir looked toward the pizza with deep philosophical intent. “It could mean accepting that the least desirable part still belongs to the whole.”
I swallowed another drink and tried not to choke. We hadn’t even smoked the half-joint yet, and the men were already pretending to be Shakespeare over leftover pizza.
“Are you using half your brain cells too?”
Kadir laughed.
Leo and Wesley looked genuinely disappointed in my lack of enthusiasm.
“It has meaning,” Leo said.
The party was ridiculous.
It was also the first celebration they had created entirely for themselves since we reached the lodge.
The label had approved several demos now, enough material to form the first half of the album once the songs were fully produced. The third track had come together without a major argument, emergency meeting, or Leo announcing that everyone else lacked vision.
Kadir had brought in a melodic variation before anyone asked. Wesley had rejected Leo’s first chorus suggestion without apologizing. Leo had listened, complained, and then changed it.
I had spent most of that session sitting on the studio floor with my laptop open, offering notes only when they asked.
The absence of crisis felt suspicious.
They still needed me. I knew that. I managed the deadlines, organized the files, communicated with the label, and kept Leo from sending voice memos recorded beside running water.
But they no longer required me to drag every useful idea into the room.
They were beginning to trust one another again.
The half-party was their way of acknowledging it without saying anything emotionally cognizant.
Wesley stood beside me at the kitchen island, stealing pepperoni from my slice whenever he thought I wasn’t looking.
Leo ate cake between bites of pizza and claimed the order didn’t matter because everything reached the same place.
Kadir took the smaller half of the final slice and pushed the larger half toward me.
I split it again and returned part to his plate.
He looked at it, then at me.
“You wanted it.”
“So did you.”
He accepted the piece without arguing.
The lodge had filled with moments like that. Coffee appeared beside my laptop before I requested it. Wesley made enough breakfast for four even when nobody knew who would be awake. Leo left lyric sheets in places I couldn’t avoid finding them.
My clothes had begun entering the same laundry loads as theirs.
I had stopped asking who moved them.
The half-party had one full pizza box because Wesley had apparently ordered a normal pizza before removing half of it for presentation. When I asked where the other half had gone, he pointed to a container in the refrigerator and explained that we could eat it tomorrow.
“That defeats the entire idea,” Leo said.
“It preserves resources.”
“You poured beer down the sink.”
“That was ceremonial.”
Leo took another bite of cake and looked toward me as though requesting official judgment.
I refused to participate.
Kadir finished the crust from his slice and placed it neatly on the plate.
“Eat the crust,” he said.
The delivery was calm enough to sound wise.
Wesley’s eyes brightened.
He leaned into my shoulder. “I’ll eat your crust.”
The kitchen went silent.
I pushed him away.
“Ew. Please never say that again.”
He stumbled into the counter laughing. “I didn’t mean—”
“You did. You absolutely knew how that sounded.”
Leo set down his fork. “You killed the phrase.”
Kadir shook his head with quiet disappointment. “We had something for like five minutes.”
Wesley tried apologizing, but he was laughing too hard to form a convincing sentence.
I looked between the three of them and wondered how a successful recording retreat had become a kitchen full of grown men grieving the destruction of a slogan about pizza crust.
Then I started laughing too.
The beer disappeared faster than half-beers should have. Wesley insisted that was because our expectations had been lowered. Leo argued that the empty portion of the cans created psychological pressure to drink quickly.
Kadir said both theories were stupid.
I agreed with him.
We carried our drinks onto the covered patio after finishing the pizza. The enclosed hot-tub porch remained warm behind us, string lights glowing through the glass. We chose the smaller outdoor seating area off the side of the lodge.
The air was cold enough to require coats and blankets. Snow covered the railing in a smooth white line. The mountains disappeared into the darkness beyond the property, leaving the lodge lights reflected against the drifts.
Wesley had cut a normal joint in half with kitchen scissors.
The result looked badly assembled and very humiliating.
“You could’ve just rolled a smaller one,” I said.
“This is more on-theme.”
We passed it around beneath the patio heater. The men continued debating unfinished lyrics from the next demo, though none of them seemed interested in opening a notebook or recording the ideas.
The conversation moved without needing management.
Leo suggested one phrase. Kadir altered the rhythm verbally. Wesley tapped the beat against his knee. They disagreed, laughed, and moved on.
The half-joint barely survived one full rotation.
By the time it reached Leo again, only a tiny burning end remained between his fingers.
He inhaled.
Nothing happened.
He turned it, inspected the paper, and tried again with enough determination to suggest oxygen itself had become competitive.
Wesley watched for several seconds.
“Bro is eating the crust on that joint.”
The phrase hit all four of us at once.
I bent forward with my beer still in one hand, laughing so hard my stomach hurt. Wesley collapsed sideways against the outdoor couch. Kadir dropped his head, shoulders shaking as his usual restraint finally disappeared.
Leo continued holding the ruined joint.
“I’m maximizing it.”
“That’s the crust,” Wesley managed. “You’re appreciating the part everyone leaves behind.”
Kadir laughed harder.
Seeing him lose composure made the entire thing worse. He leaned one forearm against his knee and covered his mouth, but the sound escaped anyway.
Leo finally dropped the remains into the ashtray.
“You’re all very easily entertained.”
“You dropped a bowling ball behind yourself a few days ago,” I reminded him.
“That was equipment failure.”
We stayed outside until the cold pushed through the blankets and the half-beers ran out.
Back inside, Wesley carried the puzzle box into the living room with the solemnity of someone introducing the final event of an athletic competition.
The picture showed a peaceful mountain lake surrounded by pine trees.
A small red cabin sat near the shore. The image looked suspiciously similar to our current surroundings, though the people who lived in the puzzle cabin probably had fewer label deadlines and had never been banned from a bowling alley.
Wesley emptied the remaining pieces onto the coffee table.
The pile looked normal at first.
Then I opened the grocery bag containing the removed pieces and realized he had taken them out randomly.
We had no complete border. Several major sections were missing. The red cabin existed only as part of one wall and half a roof.
“This is impossible.”
“That’s negative,” Wesley said.
Leo sat on the rug and began sorting pieces by color. “Limitations create art.”
“You say that every time you don’t have what you need.”
“And I’m usually right.”