As if this realisation wasn’t terrifying enough, it belatedly occurred to me that while getting a nice expensive bread was cool, it meant that it wasn’t sliced. And the phrase “the best thing since sliced bread” was a cliché for a reason. In the end I wound up cutting the loaf into roughly a dozen irregularly shaped chunks, none of which could in all honesty be called “slices.” There was the end piece, which had the approximate dimensions of a butt plug. Then the next piece was as thick as my thumb at the top and thinner than my bread knife at the bottom. Then there were two bits that were mostly crumbs; one halfway decent slice that somehow got fat in the middle and thin at each end; and the rest was a mixture of wedges, triangles, and lumps that I hoped, perhaps naively, would hold up fine in the pan.
When the requisite fridge-leaving time had passed, I fished out my batter and began soaking my bread. The recipe suggested that twenty to thirty seconds a side would be fine, but I gave it a bit longer because I wanted to be sure. Some of the thinner slices, or the thinner bits of the thicker slices, fell apart almost at once, but I figured I still had enough for an okay breakfast.
One by one, I transferred the slices of vanilla-and-cinnamon-infused bread to the pan and, as instructed, gave them three to four minutes on each side until golden brown. Or, more realistically, until ghost-white in some places and charred almost black in others. In the end I threw two pieces away, ate one myself to make certain I wasn’t feeding Oliver something actively poisonous, and piled the rest as attractively as I could on a plate.
It was at about this point that I realised I’d forgotten to buy any toppings, so I grabbed some more of the agave nectar and gave it an artful drizzle. Okay, not artful exactly but presentable. Then, waving my way through the billows of smoke that I’d mostly managed to confine to the kitchen area and hoping I didn’t smell too badly of charred almond milk, I went through to surprise Oliver with breakfast in bed.
He was where I’d left him, in a crumple of duvet, dozing a kind of doze I recognised: the doze of somebody who didn’t really want to be conscious but whose body was all unconsciousnessed out.
“I made French toast,” I told him plaintively.
He blinked in a disorientated way. “You did what?”
“Made French toast?” For some reason, it came out like an apology.
“Lucien, that’s very sweet of you but you realise it’s not vegan.”
“Obviously I realised it’s not vegan. It’s full of cow juice and chicken boxes. But I used substitutes. Because I’m amazing and you’re lucky to have me.”
“You are and I am, but”—he cast his bleary eyes over my quite literally burnt offering—“that looks ambiguous.”
I perched myself on the edge of the bed. “Well, you have to eat.
But I understand if you don’t want to eat this.”
Pushing himself into a sitting position, he selected the least awful piece of French toast and ate it valiantly. “Actually, out of everything you’ve made me, this is one of the least dreadful. Some bits of it are even quite nice.”
I’d take that. “There’s also coffee,” I said. “Which I’ve definitely not fucked up.”
And for a while we sat in silence, sharing my okay French toast and my genuinely decent coffee. Oliver was looking slightly better than he had last night, which meant he was looking kind of like the zombie version of himself, instead of the ghost version. He was propped against an artful construction of pillows, the duvet drawn to midchest height, picking at his late breakfast/early lunch with visibly increasing energy. At some point in the near future, he might even be standing upright.
“Soooo…” As ways to begin a conversation went, a long so was up there with Hi, have you considered changing your broadband provider? “Do you want to…talk? Or not talk? Or go for a walk? Or stay in bed? Or have me go away? Or—”
“At the moment, I think I’d mostly like you to stop listing things.”
I took a deep breath. “Sorry. How are you?”
“Not so great. My dad died.”
Okay, so that was either a good sign because he had the strength to be sarcastic. Or a bad sign because that’s the answer I would have given and I was a dick. “Stop channelling me, and be serious. You don’t have to confide in me, but this was a big deal and I’m worried about you.”
“I’m sorry to worry you, Lucien. And I will be… I’ll be…
Everything will be fine.”