The six-month housemate

Thirteen

THIRTEEN

"Alex, please, stop!" I said between laughs.

When we'd started cooking, I had given Alex easy tasks to do, like mixing the ingredients of the preparations we were making, or watching the chocolate that was melting in a saucepan to prevent it from burning. We'd finally agreed on making cupcakes and a chocolate cake, like we were supposed to, and financiers, which are almond flavoured cakes. We were making a lot of cupcakes so that we could have some for desert, or at least later.

Unfortunately, we hadn't gotten that far; while we were making the chocolate cake, I blew a little flour on Alex, who took that as an attack, so he started to pour the actual packet on me. From there, we had started to throw random ingredients at each other (fortunately, we had measured in pots exactly what we needed for the cakes, so we weren't using up any of what we'd need later). The kitchen, before our arrival, pretty much clean, was now in an awful state.

I know what you're going to be thinking here: this is so cliché. And I know that, it's so typical, right? But wait, you haven't even heard the best part. I was now lying on the floor, trying to protect myself with a chair, while Alex was half tickling me, half sprinkling me with flour. This was just ridiculous.

"Why should I stop?" Alex answered, stil sprinkling me.

"Because! I just washed my hair, you're making it dirty again." I tried to pout.

"Poor Emma!" He cooed, leaning towards me.

"Please?" I tried my best to imitate Puss in Boots, from Shreck, you know, when he looks so cute with his big pleading eyes? I thought I'd convinced him for a moment, because he looked inside the packet of flour and seemed to hesitate. He finally put the packet on the ground next to me. "Thank you, you're acting mature at--"

I didn't have the time to finish my sentence on his apparent maturity; he swiftly picked the flour packet and dumped the left content on me.

"What is wrong with you? I can't see anymore!" I had flour all over my face , and I could feel some on my eyes.

"Maybe, but you're still a pretty sight!" I heard him answer, chuckling. I finally managed to take off most of the flour off my face, and opened my eyes to a giddy-looking Alex, his face hovering just above mine, closer than I intended it to be. I did not however have the time to think about the weirdness of the situation, because he picked uptwo strands of my hair and agitated them, releasing some flour that was in my hair on my face.

"What is wrong with you?" I whined, again taking off the flour off my face.

He was poking fun at me, sniggering like Muttley in Wacky Races. Such a kid sometimes... I looked around me, taking in the dreadful sight of the kitchen; there was egg yoke on the floor and kitchen counters, sometimes spread out, sugar and flour all over the place, and water making all this stick in a gooey way. My eyes landed on the oven, then on the refregerator, and it was like in some movies, when you know, the character's eyes see something, continue wandering and come back because of something shocking or unusual; my eyes immediately snapped back to the oven. Not that the oven was a super high-tech oven with weapon hideaway in its functionalities, just that the time was writen on it.

"Hum, Alex?"

"Yes?" He answered, trying to stop laughing. I would kill him one day.

"You should look at the time."

First, he didn't seem to get what I was saying, he just looked at me, still laughing, but then something must have clicked in his head because he looked towards the oven and swore. It was 3pm, and Mrs Macdonald was expecting us at 5pm, and from what I'd understood, lateness was not an option.