Like Winter

The smell of burning permeated the quiet air of the apartment like water soaking into the capillaries of a cotton pillowcase. Once the aroma of ash reached the end of the hallway, where his room was, John quickly lost focus of the chemistry notes in front of him and ran to the kitchen. There, he found David frantically grabbing something out of the oven while bits of butter, smears of dry, white flour, and rogue peels of red apple decorated several countertops around him. This was an all too common scene as of late, for David was now spending his days with no classes and no work entirely in the kitchen, trying feverishly over and over again to make —

John heard a clash.

David frantically dropped a cake tin onto the stove with hands partially covered by mismatching oven mitts, haphazardly worn as some sort of protection against the (visibly) smoking contents of the tin. John stepped closer to David (who had now thrown the mitts onto the floor and went to the sink to cool his hands) and examined the culprit: an unevenly beige cake (?) with multiple black spots that looked as solid as obsidian and pools of uncooked batter, liquid and bubbling with chunks of apple scattered throughout. It smelled like sulfur. He turned to David with a cringed nose.

David smiled meekly. “I suppose… I need to try again.”

John raised an eyebrow.

“... We are out of milk.”

John groaned and rolled his eyes and went to grab his coat and keys. Another all too common scene as of late in the apartment was the scene of John, the only one of the two with a driver’s license, begrudgingly accepting to take David on late-night trips to the grocery store for ingredients.

John turned to David when he got his things. “Do you only need milk?”

“... Maybe another bag of flour… and another dozen apples.”

John groaned and rolled his eyes again before opening the door and making his way to the parking deck.

—

David lugged the last plastic bag, a white, sheer one full of apples, into the trunk and slammed it shut. He quietly walked to the nearest cart return, rolling the empty metal shopping cart, listening intently to the rhythmic bumps of its partially broken left rear wheel that sputtered against the asphalt every so often. After pushing the cart in with the rest, he returned to John’s car and entered the passenger side. John handed him a loaf wrapped in paper, and David unwrapped it to find one of the sandwiches that were being sold at the deli.

David laughed in surprise. “I didn’t even notice you buying these! You didn’t need to get me one.”

John shrugged and went back to eating and scrolling on his phone. David followed suit, settling into his seat and taking his first bite. He took notice of a moth flying around one of the many street lights in the parking lot, and he viewed the moth’s fruitless orbits around the white light as his form of entertainment, as his eyes were too tired to look at his phone. 

“I thought your first attempt was really good,” John suddenly said, not looking up from his screen.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Apple cake is pretty weird on its own, but your first try was pretty good,” John finally turned to face David. “How come you’re still changing the recipe?”

David averted his eyes to make it easier to speak. “This recipe… apple cake was something my grandpa made. I remember him showing me how he made it a long time ago, a few years before he passed. I never wrote it down, but I know the ingredients and the general structure. I’m glad you liked my first try, but it wasn’t like I remembered. So, I’m just tweaking everything I remember to get it just right,” David paused to take a bite. “I might have added a bit more milk to the one today,” he said between chews.

“That sounds like so much work.”

“Yeah.”

“Too much work.”

“Yeah.”

“How many missing assignments do you have?”

David furrowed his eyebrows. “Hey! That’s not fair! I don’t turn in things on time anyway!”

John laughed dryly for a moment. Then, he asked what was on his mind ever since David made his first cake. “How come you’re working so hard to do this?”

After a few moments of silence, David, now facing away from John and staring intently at that moth instead, took a deep breath and began. “I had an… interesting conversation with my mom last month, a day before I decided to make my first cake.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. It was about grandpa. You see, I was never particularly close to him. My mom was, so were my uncles and aunts, just not me. I’ve thought about it a lot. It may have been due to how revered he was. He was almost a patriarch. Plus, he was really smart, a very science-minded person. I always knew he loved me and was proud of my interest in science, but I guess I was scared to get close to him, since he was such a respected person.”

“Mm.”

“When he passed, everyone was devastated, even my dad. For years, my mom could not talk about grandpa, couldn’t even tell a story involving him, without getting teary-eyed, if not fully crying… that day, my mom did not. I asked her, ‘How come you’re not crying?’”

John smirked. “That’s a bit of a weird question to ask.”

“Yeah, but I was genuinely shocked. So I asked. And she said that she feels like she has finally moved on, that she finally fully and completely accepted his passing.”

“That’s nice.”

“That’s unfair!”

“What?”

“It’s so unfair! Everyone finally passed the grieving stage. They are finally content! Yet, here I am, with the pieces of a relationship I could have had with my grandpa, attempting to form a connection with him and grieve all over again years after his death! And I don’t know why I do it. I’m not even sure if I’m studying STEM because I want to or because he was happy I wanted to! I have so much left to do! I have so much left to grieve! And those who were the closest to him are done!” David sat in silence for a moment. “I just want to get this apple cake right. I want this piece of him, this piece that I actually shared with him, and I want to cry over it. I want to be an absolute mess over this cake, and I want to move on. I’m tired of this limbo.”

John stared inquisitively at David’s face, illuminated by the white of the street lights. “Don’t you miss him?”

David smiled weakly. “I guess that’s why I’m doing all of this, isn’t it? Cause he’s not here whether I try to make the cake or not. Everything I do is miss him.”

And, with that, there was nothing else to say. They finished their sandwiches, they got out to throw the paper away, and then John drove out of the parking lot and onto the road back to the apartment. John thought long and hard about David’s words, and he thought it would be appropriate to take a moment at a red light and say a final phrase of encouragement.

“I hope you get this cake right.”

“... Thank you.”

—

John, once again sitting over his chemistry homework, noticed the strong smell of cinnamon coming from the kitchen. He was glad that the smell of char was now replaced by this more agreeable aroma over the course of the past month, but, nonetheless, he was raised from his work all the same by a now excited David, waving his haphazardly mitted hands joyously in the air. John was led to a beautiful Bundt cake with a smooth caramel color. David said it looked exactly as he remembered. Once John took a slice and tasted it, John felt excited, too. The cake was delicious and tasted like Christmas, like winter, like activities at an apple farm. John looked over at David with his fork in his mouth and found David with a wavering smile and wet eyes. John smiled, and they continued their dessert together, finally content.