The Eccedentesiast

Chapter Twenty-eight

—
Chapter Twenty-eight
—

It's been weeks, weeks since the wedding, weeks since the honeymoon ended, and weeks since Emma and Daniel caused trouble at that pub in London.

After Isabella and Andy were charged with the damage to the bathrooms where some people clogged them and wasted all the toilet paper, they somehow knew it was Emma and them. Something in their gut told them it's the kind of thing they would do, and if it wasn't them—they had their unlimited bets on Cristina.

"Can I please help you?" Cristina sat on the kitchen island as Emiliano and Daniel were attending a small lesson on baking.

"No." Emiliano ignored Cristina completely after his short answer and then scolded Daniel for eating raw dough.

"What?" Daniel tried to pull his hand away from Emiliano's grip as it was still filled with dough, and his mouth was stuffed with loads of it.

"It's bad for you. You're eating raw egg, you egg."

Daniel laughed, causing bits of raw dough to fly out of his mouth. "What an insult, Mr. Bug."

Emiliano stopped his movement of turning around to wash the plates and looked at him with furrowed eyebrows and open-mouthed.

"I'm a bug now? What happened to, 'Mr. Giant'?"

Daniel looked suggestive as he puckered his lips and looked to the corners of his eyes. "It all stopped once we saw that extra small condom."

He raised his hands in surrender and walked out of the kitchen without washing his sticky hands.

Emiliano looked at Cristina. "It was Joshua."

Cristina held in her laugh. "Sure."

𖨆

Daniel slipped a cigarette in between his pink lips, the air, and the smell of wet grass in the backyard made him feel melancholic. It was all so surreal—felt almost not real in any beautiful form or way.

"Hey." Connor joined them in the darkness of the balcony in Daniel's bedroom. "Tara and Isabella are currently doing something, I don't know."

Brian chuckled and tipped his head back as he, too, took a long drag of his cigarette. "She's like a granny."

Connor punched him in the shoulder. "She's my granny." They looked at him with eyebrows raised. "Yeah, just ignore that." He rubbed the back of his neck.

Brian grabbed his packet of cigarettes from the small table beside him and opened it to offer Connor one. He waved it off and stuffed his front pockets with his freezing hands.

"I'm quitting."

They looked at him—no judgment or surprise. They all knew that they should start decreasing their nicotine intake every day. It can result in fatal extremities if they didn't do something about it, but it wasn't like they cared about themselves more than each other.

They all nodded and looked back at the pitch-black backyard. "That's nice." Emma smiled at him and looked back down.

"You guys should, too." Connor leaned against the railing beside Brian and Gabriel.

Gabriel chuckled. "In what world would I not be smoking at least a cigarette a day?"

Nobody answered, it stayed quiet—almost as if that's the way it should have always been. They dreaded these moments and loathed them with passion because it was the most intimate thing best friends can do. Get into their thoughts and share whatever stupid things they've accidentally summed up in their heads.