Bake Your Way Into My Heart ✔️

Episode 5: Pastry week

21k words :)

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Liam is standing by his large marble topped kitchen island and there is flour and pastry everywhere. Literally. He has flour in his hair for goodness sake.

His poor muscles haven't been given much of a break as he's been rolling out pastry of some sort everyday for about five days. Puff pastry is the worst. It's just fold, roll, chill, fold, roll, chill over and over again.

Today he is making filo pastry for the first time ever, just in case it comes up in the technical challenge tomorrow. It probably won't but it's good to be prepared just in case. It's fiddly but he does sort of enjoy it. He likes making delicate fiddly things. He is patient and has long slender nimble fingers so this sort of work suits him. Most of the time he can concentrate well and is quite methodical in his working so as long as he can stay focused he's fine.

The trouble is something has been bothering him all week.

He's tried to ignore it. He's been challenging all his energy into baking and looking after Bear so it's mostly easy to just put it to one side but the thought is always there lingering in the back of his mind.

What has happened to Zayn?

He places the tea towel back over his layers of filo pastry and gets ready to roll out the final sheet with the remaining dough. Even though he knows there won't be anything, he can't resist getting his phone out of his pocket just to see if Harry has texted him back yet.

"Still checking your phone for lover boy?" Gillian calls out as she walks into the kitchen. She always walks in at precisely the wrong moment.

"I didn't hear you arrive." Liam comments.

"That's no surprise when the front door is so far away from your kitchen and I always let myself in." She shrugs and walks towards the counter. "Is Bear still asleep?"

Liam nods. "Yeah I'm letting him have a bit longer, he's tired today. He had an accident in the night."

"Bless him. Is that his first one since you decided to stop the night nappies?"

Gillian prods his remaining ball of filo dough but he bats her hand away. Then she goes to the massive fridge to get herself a mini treacle tart from yesterday's batch.

"Yeah it is." Liam replies absentmindedly, putting his phone back in his pocket. "He's doing well though so I think we'll just carry on with it."

Gillian walks back, eyes the very floury worktop carefully and then opts to carry on walking past the kitchen island to the dining table. She pulls out a chair, uses it to step up to the table, plonks her bottom down on the table and rests her feet on the chair before tucking into the tart.

"Why can't you just sit on the chair like a normal person?" Liam chastises as he starts to roll out his last bit of pastry.

Gilliam ignores his question and just asks one of her own.

"Loverboy texted you back yet?"

"No." Liam grumbles.

Gilliam eyes go wide with excitement.

"Ooooooh you didn't deny his existence this time. That's progress."

"Did you not hear me say no?" Liam moans. He sighs and puts down the rolling pin. Then he dramatically puts his head in his hands. "Why hasn't he messaged me back? Did I fuck it up?"

Gillian puts down the treacle tart. She must consider this an emergency as she loves those. It obviously is an emergency as Liam doesn't even bother telling her off for putting a half eaten tart straight on the real oak dining table without a plate or a napkin or anything.