I turned the phones face-down and slid them into the junk drawer with the rubber bands and takeout menus. The drawer thudded shut, the sound small but final. “House rule,” I said, palm flat on the wood. “If I open this, I have to wash the pan.”
“Deal,” Lyla said. She stood in socks on the honeycomb tile, toes mapping hexes like a game she’d invented as a kid. The unplugged ring lights leaned cold in the corner, cords looped tight like sleeping snakes. The room smelled like dish soap and lemon rind from last night’s scrub.
I set a skillet on the burner and let the metal warm until it whispered. Outside, the harbor wore its morning veil; fog funneled down the cliff line and pressed its cheek to our window. A gull laughed somewhere on the roofline. I cracked four eggs into a bowl and listened to the clicks settle into a quieter rhythm than notifications ever had.
“Salt?” she asked.
“Two pinches,” I said. “And that pepper you like.”
She ground pepper like rain beginning—steady, soft. “Do we need to…say anything today?” she asked, eyes not leaving the bowl.
“Not to the world,” I said. “Maybe to each other.”
She nodded, shoulders loosening one notch. I whisked until yolk and white stopped arguing. The burner’s blue licked the pan; oil fanned and flashed. I poured, and the egg sheet bloomed to the edges like a map unrolling.
“No cameras,” she said, and I heard a tremor under the joke.
“No audience,” I said. “Just us and a pan that’s older than the internet.”
She laughed once, small and honest. The kettle exhaled; steam rose and fogged the window further, layering cloud over fog until the outside dissolved into a watercolor. I liked not seeing the QR mural that changed weekly on the building across the way; its shifting promises had felt like a dare.
“I forgot windows do that,” she said, palm hovering near the glass without touching. “In the studio, the ring lights burned the fog off.”
“They always did like to make weather behave,” I said. I tipped the pan to check the underside. Too soon. “Give it a minute.”
She leaned against the counter where our mother had once set a cooling rack of pineapple buns. A honeycomb shelf above her held bowls, and the honey-drop jar sat squat on the counter, filled with tea bags rather than the sticky economy of our childhood fines. I turned the jar so the etched drop faced outward.
“You repurposed it,” she said.
“We did,” I said. “One day at a time.”
The edge of the omelet darkened faster than the middle. “Too hot,” I said, twisting the knob. The smell shifted to toasty, then past it to bitter. I hesitated, then tried the flip anyway. The fold broke; a soft yellow river escaped and pooled in a crescent that hissed like a sullen cat.
“Abort?” she asked.
“Commit,” I said, and wrecked it with a wooden spatula. The egg tore like tissue.
She covered her mouth to hide the grin and failed. “Chef,” she said, wobbling the vowel the way our aunt did when a pastry collapsed. “Content gold.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I said, and the threat died in a laugh I didn’t know I could make while ruining breakfast. I scraped the pan clean with a slice of toast and handed it to her. “Taste test.”
She bit, winced, and then reached for the tea jar. “We can edit the second take,” she said, deadpan joy floating on her voice. She dropped a chamomile bag into a mug and poured hot water. Steam curled up and fogged the window again like the room was practicing how to breathe.
I let the mess sit between us without rushing to fix it. I had trained my life to be a constant edit; this time, I let the blooper stay.
I rinsed the pan under a cold stream; metal sang, and a cloud rose that smelled like scorched hope and clean beginnings. “Round two,” I said. “Medium heat, no heroics.”
“Assisted living for eggs,” she said. “I can live with that.”
I poured again, slower. The egg settled without protest. She nudged a slice of butter along the rim so it melted in dotted lines, a Morse code I didn’t have to read to understand. We stood in that comfortable silence reserved for kitchens and long drives.
“I keep hearing nothing,” she said. “It’s loud.”
“That’s adrenaline walking out the door,” I said. “It will try to come back. We lock the deadbolt with ritual.”
“Breakfast as security system,” she said.
“And tea as an alarm,” I said. The kettle clicked off with a tidy conclusion. I slid the spatula under the edge and lifted a corner; it held, soft and steady. I folded once, then again, a neat letter to no one.
She clapped quietly like a neighborhood audience that respects the hour. “You did it,” she said.
“We did it,” I said. “No sponsors were harmed in the making of this omelet.”
The window had surrendered to steam entirely. The world outside could have been anything—neon cooling, salted caramel steam from the pier drifting up for the noon crowd, QR murals quietly rehearsing their next flip. Inside, the hex tile caught a spill of yolk and held it in the groove like a bee cup. I wiped the stain away with a folded cloth and felt the small satisfaction of ordinary maintenance.
“Do you want to talk about the filing?” she asked, eyes on the honey jar.
“Later,” I said. “After breakfast. The law is a slow pot. We don’t have to watch it boil.”
She breathed, not a sigh, not a brace—just oxygen, doing its job. “Okay.” She reached into the junk drawer and then stopped, fingers grazing the phones under the rubber bands.
I shook my head once. “Drawer tax.”
“Right,” she said, and closed it without touching glass.
I plated the omelet and slid it between us with the toast. We ate standing up for a few bites and then, without discussing it, moved to the small table. The chairs creaked, honest wood refusing to be glamorous. Butter and yolk softened the toast’s corners; salt brightened the soft. Heat met tongue and didn’t ask to trend.
“It tastes like staying,” she said.
“It tastes like eggs,” I said, and the truth inside both statements stayed put without argument.
We had practiced de-escalation for strangers for weeks; now I learned how to de-escalate a pan. The skill translated. That felt like a gift.
“Do you think they’ll grant the injunction?” she asked, tearing toast into careful squares she didn’t need to measure anymore.
“I think the language is strong,” I said. “And I think you don’t have to carry the outcome to eat breakfast.”
She nodded and made herself chew. I watched her shoulders drop into her body like she was re-entering a house she had been renting to a character. I didn’t narrate it. The jar of tea bags caught the light; the etched honey drop looked like a punctuation mark at the end of a calmer sentence.
“Remember the hive jar fines?” she said, grinning. “Fifty cents for eye-rolling.”
“Two dollars for door-slams,” I said. “I funded a field trip with your adolescence.”
“You taught me to budget,” she said.
“You taught me that attention is a faucet,” I said. “You can turn it with one gesture.”
She lifted her mug and inhaled the chamomile. “I turned it too far.”
“We both did,” I said. “Now we install a regulator.”
A gull knocked its beak against the metal railing outside; the sound was absurd and perfect. She startled, then laughed at herself, hand to chest. The kind of laugh that evacuates ghosts.
“Do you want to try the stove?” I asked.
“I want to want to,” she said. “That counts?”
“Counts double,” I said. I pushed the pan toward her and stepped back like a coach who knows when to shut up.
She set butter in the pan with a ceremonial gravity that made me bite my mouth to keep from narrating. The butter slid, pooled, and spoke to the metal in small pops. She cracked two eggs one-handed—show-off muscle memory—then blinked at me, waiting for the old signal to tilt the camera.
I lifted my empty hands. “No lenses,” I said. “We are the only witnesses who matter.”
“We are unreliable narrators,” she said, smiling.
“We are hungry narrators,” I said. “Flip when the whites go from glossy to quiet.”
She watched the edges turn tender and then lifted, confident enough to be sloppy. The yolks stayed intact. The kitchen filled with the smell of clean heat and butter, not drama. Steam made the window a soft wall; the harbor could wait its turn.
She plated her eggs. “Taste of victory?” she asked.
“Taste of breakfast,” I said, and we both took careful bites and failed to hide our pleasure.
The thrill didn’t spike; it steadied. My body made a different kind of note and held it.
She reached for the honey jar, pulled out a ginger tea bag, and shook it like a tiny flag. “Repurposed,” she said. “I love that word.”
“I love that act,” I said. “We retired the jar from fines. Now it holds help.”
“We should name that,” she said, eyes bright without glass. “The practice. Not a campaign. A habit.”
“A recipe,” I said.
We ate the last forkfuls and let our forks rest. The kitchen clicked as the burners cooled; a quiet metronome nobody had to dance to. I washed the pan, honoring the drawer rule preemptively, just to keep the ritual clean. She dried, shoulders brushing mine in a choreography older than a script.
“I want to take a picture,” she said, looking at the fogged window and the honey jar, at the unplugged ring lights like idle moons.
“For us or for them?” I asked.
She considered, then reached for the dish towel instead of the drawer. “For us,” she said, but didn’t move toward the phones. She winked. “I can remember.”
“Memory is a better archive than the comments,” I said.
She leaned her head against my shoulder for a measured beat, hair carrying the faint clean of last night’s shower. “Thank you for breakfast,” she said.
“Thank you for staying,” I said.
The fog thinned at the edges, revealing the hint of a mural mid-flip—a faint geometric pour in progress. The city kept its stage ready even at ten in the morning. We kept our kitchen an audience of two.
“Town hall tomorrow,” she said finally, not flinching from the word.
“Nessa’s running a tight room,” I said. “Boundaries, slow mode, timed questions.”
“And us?” she asked. “What do we run?”
“The drawer,” I said, tapping the wood. “The tea jar. The burner on medium.”
She smiled into it. “Medium is underrated.”
“It keeps things from burning,” I said.
We stood there in the honeycomb of our morning—cells for heat, for breath, for tea and eggs and quiet. The ghost-click in my pocket stayed loyal to its silence. The harbor breathed, and the window held two versions of the day: outside’s changing mural and inside’s small steam. I let gratitude pool without posting it anywhere.
When she reached for the drawer again, I caught her wrist gently and let go. She left it closed.
“We can answer later,” I said. “Or not at all.”
“Right,” she said. “Recovery doesn’t owe content.”
We rinsed the mugs and set them on the rack. The hex tiles dried in patches; sunlight—thin but trying—pressed through steam and drew honeycomb shadows across the table. I traced one with my finger and didn’t take a picture.
“One question,” I said, feeling the day gather itself beyond the glass. “When the town hall lights up tomorrow and everyone brings love and grief and demands, can we carry this quiet into that room without turning it into a product?”