The Despisement Theorem

09 || s t i f f p e a k s

A/N:  LAST FOUR CHAPTERS ARE LONG, SO I WARN YOU NOW.

For ishaana - hella cool/rad gurl with hella cool/rad stories

N I N E || s t i f f p e a k s

stiff peaks (noun) - Egg whites beaten to the stage where the mixture will hold stiff, pointed peaks when the beaters are removed.

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I had never pegged Bryce as someone who could work in a bakery. But first-impressions were almost-always never right, just like how Bryce, as haughty and insufferable as he was, was almost-always never that.

Instead, I was surprised. For someone so boyish and foolish, he maneuvered his way across the bakery as if his body was carefully crafted to be in one. Every order I instructed him to do, he followed without a single complaint, and he was flawless at that leisure, did everything like he had been doing it for most of his life, and not just in two weeks since his mom had decided to use this job as her means of punishing him.

"You know," I said to him one day while we were checking the inventory, "You're pretty good at this."

I wasn't completely fine with Bryce. Even though he was sweet and utterly charming this past few days (something I needed getting used to), I, like the declared fool I was, still could not be put at ease when he was around me. But I was working my way towards it, difficult, but I tried my best. Fortunately, in appreciation to the guilt that stayed within me even after a few days had already come and go, I was warming up to Bryce,little by little, step by step.

He smiled at the clipboard, but as if fate had heard me praising him too much and wanted me not to, he slipped out a cocky remark, "Well it's me after all," he wiggled his eyebrows.

Funny how it felt a bit foreign now. I had not heard a single obnoxious retort from him in weeks, and although I still wasn't completely used to his "changed ways"-as Steph had put it, I was also no longer accustomed to him being arrogant. The normal in Bryce was now undefined, the definite descriptions as to who Bryce was-empty. He was nothing but a giant question mark.

I opened the freezer and counted in the tubs of vanilla ice cream, "10 tubs, and please, Bryce, don't go thinking that you being you is a compliment. That, in its overall sense, is an insult to all," I turned around and looked at him casually, as if my words weren't at all insulting.

It was though, so he feigned mock-hurt, placed his hand near his heart and let out a pout, "Cruel."

"Well," I shrugged, and then I walked to him and got the clipboard from his fingertips, "You did the checking correct. I don't think I need to train you anymore-"

"No," He suddenly objected, and that had me taken aback. He seemed frightened, terrified-his hands encircling my own in a vice-like grip. Bryce looked at me as if the thought itself was heartbreaking, like he was hanging on the verge of abandonment. I stared at his fingers before I looked back at him, a perplexed expression written all over my face. He saw it.

"I mean, no," Bryce let go of his grip and looked down. He rubbed the back of his neck and suddenly marveled at every single object in the stockroom, whistling while he did so. It was weird, he was weird, "Are you okay?" I questioned, eyes trying to capture his but they moved so fast, as if they didn't want me to meet his. "Bryce?"