Apathetic

Chapter 18

Lisa and I were sitting on the couch after a long day at school; Cooper was asleep in his bed next to the couch. I guess you could say we were spooning, but I wasn't a fan of the term. Spoons are cold, Lisa was warm and soft and...wonderful.

"How come you never talk about the future?" She asked when a commercial came on.

"What do you mean?" I asked, wondering where this could be going.

"I mean that every time the topic comes up, you go out of your way to avoid it and change the topic. I've noticed how everything comes back to Cooper when you don't want to talk about something." She trailed her fingers along the back of my hand, making me suppress a shiver from the heat her fingers left and the cold that followed shortly after.

"I don't know, I just don't really talk about that sort of thing."

"I'm not asking you to talk about us or where you want to be buried or anything, but just in general. I mean, you can't want to be a busser forever."

"It's not a bad job, I like the work."

"You're going to culinary school. You're probably the only student there who doesn't obsessively talk about what you want to do. TV chef, chef to the stars, pastry chef on a cruise ship, your own bakery, anything?"

"You don't talk about your culinary goals a lot."

"If I knew exactly what I wanted I would probably talk about it more. Come on, you have to have an idea, right?"

I just mumbled, "It's stupid, and I don't think it will happen. It's just something I came up with when I was a kid."

"What is it?"

"It doesn't matter. I like working at a restaurant."

"Please tell me?" She asked.

I sighed heavily, unable to tell her no. "My mom would read Alice in Wonderland to me and Hanbin when we were kids. I guess we really liked it, and she would help me make brownies and cookies for Santa and all that. I really liked baking, and one night she was reading the scene with the Mad Hatter and the Tea Party, and I told her I was going to have a bakery someday like Alice in Wonderland. The idea just kind of stuck I guess."

"Alice in Wonderland?"

"It was going to be called Down the Rabbit Hole." I said.

"I like it."

"I don't think I'll ever do anything with it."

"Why not?" I felt her foot move between mine.

"Your feet are cold." I complained as I reached to the back of the couch and pulled off the folded blanket and threw it over us before wrapping my arm around her waist again.

"Don't avoid the question." Pulled it up a little farther and pressed into me a little more.

"I just don't think I'll be able to open up my own bakery and do everything that needs to be done for it. I don't think I'll make it too far in that area. I'll be best off working as a baker in someone else's restaurant."

"That's not where you belong, you know. You're a great baker, a great chef overall really. You deserve more than working for someone else."

"Maybe, but it's a lot of money to open up a place like that."

"Just consider it. Don't think about it like it can never happen, okay? I think you'd really like having a place like that of your own. Your mom would like it too. And your adoptive parents."

"It's not going to happen; it's expensive to open a business. I'd need to get people to work for me, I'd need a place where people would actually go, which is really expensive, I'd need to buy furniture, and then I'd need to get equipment and ingredients, and then I'd have to hope people actually come."