[Revised]

Zara dressed up and was soon in the kitchen, combing her hair with a brush she had found in a cabinet. This really was the only time she could ever do so. It was a living hell attempting to do it while it was dry.

The smell of bacon filled her nostrils, and she practically floated to her seat behind the breakfast bar.

"So?" Saffron asked, without turning. The bacon was starting to buckle and curl in the pan. He pulled out a pair of tongs from one of the drawers and used it to turn each strip so that they could cook on the other side.

"So...what?" Zara stared at the back of his head confusedly, wincing when the comb caught a knot in her hair.

"Do they fit?" Saffron asked again, unashamedly. He walked over to one of the glass cupboards and pulled out two plates and cups, setting them down in front of Zara and rearranging them. He checked on the bacon, then trudged over to the fridge to pull out a carton of eggs.

"Yes, actually," Zara said, picking up the cup. "Where are your parents?" She looked around, expecting them to be the one cooking breakfast. They were both chefs and owned a restaurant not far from where they lived.

Their love for food prompted them to call their son Saffron while their two daughters were named Amarissa and Amandine. This not only explained Saffron's knack for cooking, but also the size of the kitchen, considered the most important part of the house.

"They've been under pressure a lot lately, so they decided to take the weekend off and leave Jeremy in charge of the restaurant. They left early this morning for Coney Island."

She nodded, watching Saffron intently as he broke the egg on the edge of another pan. She admired his parents—they had been married for twenty-five years, known each other since high school, and loved each other just as much as the first time they had laid eyes on one other.

It was truly something out of a fairytale. "How do you like your eggs? Sunny side up?"

"Yeah." she jumped off the stool she was sitting on and padded over to the refrigerator. "And who's taking care of your sisters, since, you know—"

"I am."

"You are?" Zara spun on her heel with a bottle of orange juice to look at him incredulously.

"Don't look so surprised. I gave each of them twenty dollars so I could be free from them the whole weekend. I'm basically broke now," he feigned annoyance and then smiled again, serving the food onto the plates.

Who knew? Those two girls had more to them than Zara thought.

She sat across from him and poured orange juice in both of their cups, immediately wolfing down on the food. The last time she had eaten was lunch the day before, so she was practically starving.

"Do you want a piece of cake?" Saffron asked, amusement dancing in his eyes. He stood to retrieve it.

"Yes please," Zara said around a mouthful of egg. When he placed the cake on the table, she immediately helping herself to a hefty slice. It was chocolate, her favourite.

The two munched in silence for a while, mulling over their own thoughts.

"Hey," Saffron spoke up, wiping his plate with a piece of bread. He stuck it in his mouth and looked at her.

Zara ignored him, helping herself to her third slice of cake.

"Wassup?" Zara didn't give herself a break between one piece of cake and the other; the moment one slice was gone, another took its place. She knew she would regret it later, when her acne flared, but she would cross that bridge when she reached it. It wasn't often she got to eat homemade confectionary. "Actually, I've been wanting to ask you something, that's been bothering me since last night," Zara said quickly, a finger in the air.

Saffron's eyes widened with concern. "Uh, sure."

"Why did you pick that house? Out of all the other ones out there, why that one?" She shovelled another forkful of cake into her mouth.

He gave her a small smile, looked away, then scratched his jaw. "Crap, I thought I could get away with that one."

"I thought you knew me better than that. I guess I was wrong," Zara said in falsetto, mimicking his words from the night before.

"Promise me that you won't tell the others," he said, leaning forwards onto the table. Zara nodded, her curiosity going through the roof. Who was the owner of that house?

"Alright." He took a deep breath, then clapped his hands together. "The house belonged to this guy my parents owed money to."

"That's it? That doesn't sound like the whole story, pretty boy."

His cheeks grew pink at her comment, but he didn't bring it up. Instead, he rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically. "Fine—this guy used to be my dad's best friend, since grade school, and even went to college together to study pharmaceutics...or biology, I can't remember. My dad hated the course. In fact, he only took it because my grandfather wanted him to get a 'real job', aka not become some a blue collar. But after a lot of convincing, Dad was eventually allowed to drop out and to go to culinary school with Mom.

"He remained good friends with the guy—Vincent, that's his name—and once Mom took over the family restaurant, Dad even invited him and his family to the grand opening."

Zara listened intently, taking tiny sips of her orange juice as to not miss a word of what he was saying. Since grade school. That's a pretty long time. Longer than us.

"But after 9/11, business started to go bad. My parents started to fall behind on the payments, so who did they turn to for help?"

"Vincent." The slimy bastard. If she hated him before as he shot at her, she hated him more now that she knew how bad a person he was.

"Exactly. After his Masters he got a good job as a researcher in a pharmaceutical company, so dishing out a couple grand was like handing your spare change to a homeless guy. My parents invested the money into the restaurant, and soon things got back to the way they were...even better.

"Once our bank account was in the positives, my parents started paying Vincent back. Things were going well for a while until he started demanding the money back faster and with a high interest rate, just like that, from one day to the other. He made our lives hell until we paid back the full amount." Saffron looked down at his empty plate and ran a finger round its edge. Zara remembered those times very well, it happened back when they were in middle school.

She reached out to stroke his hand, which he turned palm-up to run a thumb over her knuckles. The gesture was soothing, a reminder that even though they had gone through dark times, they had come out stronger and more grounded. "So the heist was like a personal vendetta against him."

Saffron gaze hardened and his thumb froze. "Yeah. Exactly."

Zara's lips curled into a smile; she was so proud of him in that moment, for taking the situation into his own hands and making the asshole pay for what he did. "If you would've told me beforehand, I would've made sure to mess him up better!"

Saffron let go of her hand and picked up the plate. "Stealing his shit is good enough for me. Besides, if I would've told you guys, you most likely wouldn't have done it." He stood up, and after stacking her plates onto his own, went to place them in the sink.

Zara watched him with an eyebrow raised. "I'm always down for a nice dish of revenge—so are Orion and Aurora. Orion would've done the planning for you. That's how petty he is."

Saffron turned around and gave her a rather lopsided grin. "Shit, you're—" Talking could be heard in the corridor, indicating that the twins had woken up. The pair gave each other the look then quickly added the rest of the plates and cutlery into the sink. They were out of the kitchen and into his room in the wink of an eye.

"Now it's my turn to ask you something," he said, once the light switch was on and the window was a crack open.

Zara took a seat on the unmade bed and crossed her arms. "Alright, but make it quick—it's ten o'clock and we have to see Igor at midday."

"That's unfair. You can't rush me like that!"

Zara stuck out her tongue. "Better get crackin', time is ticking."

He pouted, then pulled the swivel chair from underneath his desk and rolled it towards her.

"I think you should move in with us." He said quickly and in one breath, collapsing in the chair as if the statement had sapped all the energy from him. When Zara remained quiet, his darted around her face. 

"You're joking."

"I'm serious."

Zara regretted allowing him to take the floor. Now she was morally obligated to listen to what he had to say, even though she didn't want to hear any of it. Maybe if she focused on how pristine the room was, then he would give up without trying to use every single argument possible to convince her.

"My parents absolutely adore you, my sisters—my sisters aren't exactly at that stage yet, but I'm sure that they like you, and if I rearrange my room then there will be enough space for both of us to sleep here and—"

"Saffron, please. You know that can't happen." Her voice sounded like it belonged on an answering-machine for how robotic it sounded. She didn't like where this conversation was heading; had he hinted to this request before? No, this was completely out of the blue.

"Why? I—we would take care of you. We would give you everything you wanted!"

"Goddamnit, out of all the times you could've chosen to have this conversation, it had to be now." Zara stood up, but before she could move any further, Saffron grabbed her forearms and forced her to sit down. "Let me go. I don't want to talk about this."

"No! I answered your question, now you have to answer mine. I won't let you leave until you give me a good enough reason as to why you won't accept my request."

Zara ripped her arms away from his grasp and crossed them over her chest. She threw daggers at him with her eyes, but internally, she was wary of his firmness. First the near-accident, now this—where was this all coming from?

"You know I can't just leave him behind."

"Who...Simon? He's not a fit parent for you! He's practically jobless, because being a janitor cannot be considered an actual job, he's lazy—"

Zara leapt up and shoved him in the chest, causing the chair to crawl backwards and a surprised grunt to escape his lips. "Don't you dare insult my grandfather like that, you hear me?" Her hands curled into fists; one false move on his part, and they would probably make contact with his face.

He gulped, but quickly recomposed himself and stood up as well, his demeanour more defensive than offensive. "I didn't mean it like that, I—"

Zara had heard this litany of excuse countless times before. He spoke his mind and now try to back-pedal, to erase the damage he'd inevitably caused. It was true what he said about her grandfather's minimum wage employment, but he had no right to use it as a weapon. Her problems weren't his problems, he wasn't the one that would go without eating for days when things were tough.

Saffron was speaking out of ignorance. It's easy to talk so openly about a subject you know nothing about, then play the part of the victim when you're called out for it. It was one of his biggest flaws—condemning people without knowing the full extent of their problems—and while at an other time Zara would've just brushed it off, this time it was enough. Now she definitely wasn't going to accept his offer; if he spoke this way about her grandfather in her presence, who knew what he said behind her back?

"I don't care." Zara gathered up her dirty clothing and elbowed past him to reach the door. He followed her into the corridor and all the way to the front entrance.

"Zara, please don't leave, I'm sorry." He attempted to grab her arm, but she moved it away before his fingers made contact with her skin. Zara dropped the pile of clothes onto the floor, grabbed her boots, and plopped down to force them on. The apartment was suffocating her with its hypocrisy; she needed to go out and get a breath of fresh air.

"Get the car keys, I'm getting my stuff and walking to Igor's. Alone."

-:-