Another Two Months of Winter

The kitchen smelt of the sweet red onion and broccoli being chopped on
Rowan’s scrubby old chopping board. She’d made this recipe enough times that it had started appearing in her dreams. The cast-iron on the stove bubbled and sizzled with the glorious scent of butter and garlic, the air in the small room
dancing with the cloudy steam of a half-cooked meal. Despite the burning in her
eyes, Rowan would forever love the effect of light flickering through the haze
of sticky smells.
Delilah walked in, oversized Dobby t-shirt, frayed at the bottom, slipped over
her Hello Kitty pants. Rowan pitied her bare feet pattering along the hardwood
floor; the afternoon January chill infiltrated the cozier house through the
window Rowan had left open to ease the steam.
“Morning. I brought your tea.” Delilah didn’t look as she placed the mug onto
the chopping board.
“Thank you.” Whispered under the blanket of mist, Rowan took the mug off the
board.
A hearty glug of the thick chopped tomatoes into the cast iron, along with the
unevenly chopped broccoli and onions. The sound of sputtering market-fresh
veggies filled the kitchen, along with the aroma of suddenly heated sauce.
A mug of tea, brought from upstairs, placed onto a chopping board, moved onto the counter, still untouched since 9AM that morning.
Rowan stirred the pot, scraping her hand-me-down wooden spoon against the
edges of the pan to lick up all the tomato.
The patter of bare feet sounded behind her, toward the fridge, and then, just as
expected –
“Can we put sausages in there?” Delilah’s question permeated the soft blanket
of quiet that had settled over the kitchen.
“If you want.” Again, a voice barely above a murmur. Sausages appeared beside
the chopping board, the posh ones still attached at the end, and the hand which
delivered them glanced over Rowan’s waist. The fingertips were cold. The
chilled air that came from the patio lightened the heat of the pan ever so slightly,
and the Sun illuminated the dust specks hovering over the dining table like a
veil. Cooking sausages would soon fill the air with new smells and sounds, but
they would cook slower than the broccoli and red onions and tomatoes, and the
pasta water was already boiling, and if Rowan were to add them, she would
need to get out a new pan. Also, the placement of the packet pushed the tea nearer to Rowan.
“I don’t like tea.” Rowan’s confession was muffled by the cooking, and she
flicked each stovetop off in preparation for the coming conversation.

Delilah was easy to get along with. She used the same brand of pens as Rowan,
had the same itchy sense of humour, and liked to lie in on Sundays. Her hair
was the grainy colour of hay bales on a summer afternoon, her eyes the vibrant
green of freshly mowed grass. And Rowan adored the sound of her voice: a
twinkling, airy sound that never felt out of place, harmonizing with spring bird
song and evening crickets. It only made sense that Delilah would be
incongruous here on a January afternoon in Rowan’s tiny flat, as if a time
traveller had decided to jump back only a season, a borrowed piece of
summertime trapped here in the winter, a hot current in the icy waters Rowan
found herself used to swimming in.
“You don’t like tea?” Delilah sounded astonished. Rowan listened more closely
to the ticking of the kitchen clock. Each second was perfectly in time with the
dripping of the tap that hadn’t been properly turned off, and Rowan moved to do so. Of course, Delilah was surprised, she had made Rowan tea every morning
for practically a month. A month of choosing whose house to sleep that night,
after a previous month of daily walks in frosty parks and swapping gloves and
rosy noses, cheeks, and ear tips. Two months, in total, of easy.
“I can make you something else?”
The ease of Delilah’s July no longer seemed magnetic to the chill of Rowan’s
January.
“It’s…” A breath. “It’s not just the tea.” Rowan released along with a sigh. There
was no longer any bubbling chopped tomatoes, any crackling broccoli in butter
or hissing onions to hide the confession under. The steam had cleared, the dust
no longer visible as the Sun hid behind a cloud. The air was now filled with
something different, something stifling rather than welcoming. Rowan went to
her slab of chopping board and began roughly dicing the sausages.
“I’m just not sure if I can continue with this.”
The dish was delicious with sausages, Rowan didn’t know why she was so
opposed to them at this moment. She wasn’t sure how to portion them, how
finely to chop the chunks. She brought out another pan, added a dollop of oil,
and began heating it. She heard a sigh from the table.
“To think if I had just made you coffee you wouldn’t be breaking up with me
right now.”

Delilah didn’t sound heartbroken, nor disappointed, but maybe just accepting.
As if she expected this. When Rowan turned to look, she could see Delilah’s
breath fogging in the frigid air, she was sat too close to the open window. A cold
Delilah looked completely unnatural. Rowan began to realise that she might
have expected it herself as well.
“Will you stop cutting the sausages before you slice your finger off, please?” It
was said at the end of a huff, but not an impatient one, more of an almost-laugh,
the tail of humour.
Rowan placed the knife on the chopping board and looked away from Delilah.
The spot on her waist was still cold, but maybe it was a phantom cold rather
than Delilah’s fingers remaining. Delilah wasn’t meant to feel cold, she
belonged to July nights beside a crackling fire surrounded by fireflies and
hooting owls. The air filled with a different sort of heat, not artificially created
through cooking sausages no one would end up eating. No one end up eating
because-
“I should go, I guess.” Delilah’s chair scraped against the floor as she stood.
“I’m sorry.” Rowan’s voice was suddenly loud, her eyes suddenly wide and
pleading.
“Nothing to apologise for, my darling.” Delilah glided from the room, and up
the stairs.

Rowan put the pasta in the half-boiled water and turned the stove back on, along with the one under the broccoli and tomatoes.
She turned the one under the sausages off.
Delilah came back down, a lone flame, dressed and carrying the overnight bag
each kept at the other’s place.
“Will you take care of yourself when I’m gone? Turn the heating on every once
in a while? And of course I’ll remember your cooking tips.” Delilah chuckled
and winked.
“Of course.” Rowan blinked. There was a pause, the air frozen. “I’ll walk you
out.”

As the door shut behind Delilah, the room felt just a touch colder, just as it had
when Lucy left, and Marco, and Amara.
Rowan slid back into the kitchen, poured the cooked sausages into the broccoli
and tomato sauce, and chugged the tea.

Belial, 19, England.