Nola sat at the dining table in the kitchen with her laptop in front. She scrolled through her college emails. She found out that her college results were going to be released next week. She was excited to see how high her results were going to be. She closed her email and switched back to a life simulation game she was playing. It was a sequel to an old computer game she had played in her youth. It brought back feelings of nostalgia.

She furiously clicked her mouse again, annoyed, ordering her avatar to go to work. Her character, which was created in her likeness, kept shaking her head. With a life of its own, her in-game self apparently had the audacity to refuse. It looked up above at the heavens and shook her fist.

"Ah! My character doesn't listen to me," she lamented to Allie.

"You have to do the recreation things," Allie said. He was sitting at the side of the table with colouring pencils spread in front of him. He was finishing off colouring a picture he did in the library's art club. "You can't force her to do things she doesn't want to do."

"I don't understand." She looked to him with pleading eyes.

Allie let out a moan. “Show me, son.” It was his new catchphrase. He had picked up some funny phrases over his time with Eleanor.

Nola shuffled over with her laptop.

"Your fun points are so low it's hitting double negative digits. Oh boy, you can die from unhappiness in the game." It was true, characters could enter into a spiralling depression that would eventually lead to a premature death.

"How high of a level are you in the occupation?"

"CEO."

"Whoa!" Allie's little eyebrows raised highly. "It takes twenty-four in-game years to grind to that level. Did you just skip out on building the social links?" The avatar's drooping expression said yes. All it cost was her happiness points. Allie didn't know if he had the gaming skills to reverse this. Lauren, the gaming god, might but she has moved out.

"Oh no, Allie. Look, her health bar is dropping by the second. She can't die now. I spent so much time manipulating and stepping on the other characters to max out my career points to become the CEO. The best part of the game is just about to start with all the cash I saved."

Allie got a idea. "What about your save files."

"I only use one save file," Nola said, "Just like real life, you only get one chance."

The avatar clutched its chest, the beginnings of the heart attack animation. Nola and Allie screamed hysterically. Then the doorbell rang.

"Silvie's here!" Allie face was exhilarated with excitement. "I'll get it!"

Nola opened the door with Allie piggyback riding.

"Silvie!"

"Allie!" Their second sister stood with open arms. The sunlight lit her long auburn hair. Below her eyes sat heavy eye bags due to jet lag. Nola and Allie had natural heavy eye bags unlike her.

Silvie hugged Allie through Nola.

Nola showed her the rooms with Allie on her back as they moved across the house.

"You can leave your luggage here. This is your room now. Our roommate just moved out. She's getting married soon. You have to tell me about the engagement with your boyfriend by the way."

Silvie threw down her luggage and threw her face onto the bed. She turned her head to Nola and smiled a sly smile. "Of course." Then she flipped over to face the ceiling, exhausted from her journey from France.

"Bigger than my old room at home. I hate to say it but I think this bungalow is better than our house. What do you think Allie? You like it?" Silvie asked.

"It's okay. I miss my stuff and my piano," he said while still piggybacking off Nola as she stood at the door of the bedroom.

"Ah yeah, he prefers it to the new digital one I got him. The location's really nice. We'll show you around outside later if you have the energy."

They went back to the sitting room where finally Nola dropped him off at the couch.

"I think it's time for some refreshments. Tea or coffee?"

"Orange juice."

"I'll have Tea."

Nola went into the kitchen. She took out some biscuits from the cupboard and then poured some orange juice into a glass. She could hear Allie's energetic chatter from the kitchen about the performance with Eleanor the night at the City Hall Theatre.

Nola came back into the room with the tray of refreshments. Allie laid exhausted on Silvie's lap. She gently stroked his silky, flaxen hair.

Nola looked at her with wide inquisitive eyes. “I’m dying to hear about your engagement. You sent me a picture of your boyfriend proposing to you in your Vienna holiday in front of a palace. How romantic!" she said dreamingly. "Tell me more."

"Alright, this is something I had to say in person." She took a deep breath with a hand holding her chest, "We sat there on the bench, I was sitting all clueless and disappointed. So the night before, he took me to the fanciest, most expensive restaurant in the city. We did everything a perfect date consists, we went through everything.

"We went to a café in a fancy area of Old Town. He told me he had to pre-book seats for the café. He had everything preplanned, literally planned it a year ago as you'll see with the restaurant he booked. Then we saw a romantic movie, it was in German and we couldn't understand a single thing. We went on this walk across this beautiful canal. I have more pictures I didn't send you. Here."

"Wow, it's beautiful," Nola said looking at her phone.

"Here's when we went to this open air museum. There were squirrels all over the little woods. Tim tried to catch one. It was hilarious. He's kind of like you."

Nola chuckled and she swiped Silvie's phone to see them standing beside a peacock. Silive's boyfriend was very tall and handsome. He had a neatly trimmed bread, always gelled up his hair and had a hyperactive look to him. He had a groovy demeanour and was the opposite to her sister whose resting facial expression was a cold, stern look. Opposite attracts, she thought.

"We went to Prater Park and timed it perfectly to see the sunset on the Ferris wheel. I was expecting it then but no. Instead, he told me that he booked a table at Amador. A three star Michelin restaurant. There's a waiting list for a year to get a table there. I was ecstatic about it and the food was fantastic. On level with my restaurant if I say so myself. So he snapped his fingers and called over a string quartet while we ate." Silvie laughed. "So at this moment, I'm fully expecting him to propose."

"Wait, how long have you guys been dating?"

"Three years. I was thinking it was about time as well. So the violinist was playing that violin piece, what was it? You know that really romantic one. Allie?"

Allie was half dozing on her lap, "Meditation from Thais by Massenet." Then he hummed the tune.

"Yes, that one! Then he got on his knees and everybody in the restaurant looked at him. Then he started shaking and I thought no, that absolute klutz. He ruffled through his pants' pockets then his shirt and jacket. He lost the engagement ring. The embarrassment! I covered my face in shame. I think the whole restaurant felt it. We all consecutively froze."

Nola cringed, they all cringed.

"We left the restaurant quietly. I don't even remember the rest." She sighed.

"What happened afterwards?"

She fanned out her fingers. On the ring finger sat a beautiful sapphire ring. "He proposed again the next day in front of Schönbrunn Palace." Nola and Silvie squealed like little girls and flailed their arms. Allie rolled his eyes.

"Bleh-" Allie stuck out his tongue. "Marriage."

"Con-gra-dua-lations!"

"I asked Tim where he found it and he said the restaurant called him when a waiter picked it up. I really doubt it. I saw him sneaking off in the morning. I bet he bought a new one."

Nola laughed. "What a klutz!"

"Look Allie, Is it pretty?"

"Too small. Give me a diamond this big." His hand formed a shape of a large bowl.

"It's not the size of the crystal that matters," she patted her handbag. "But the size of the wallet."

Nola slapped her on the shoulder, her sister had a cynical humour.

"It's the size of the heart, I meant," she corrected herself.

"When's the date?"

"Marriage date? Oh it's next year. By the time you graduated. You better have a boyfriend by that time. I wouldn't want my sister sitting all alone drinking on the happiest day of my life."

"Nola has me." Allie said in a tired, hazy voice.

"Exactly, Allie would be there beside me." She smiled looking at Allie.

The next day, they went around the neighbourhood and did the grocery shopping together. They came back from the supermarket with heavy bags of groceries. Nola did most of the heavy lifting while Silvie wheeled Allie in front. Silvie rolled up her sleeves. The ingredients they procured lay spread out on the countertop. Today she would show them what it means to be the head chef of a three star Michelin restaurant in the heart of Paris.

Nola sat looking at her phone on the kitchen stool. She scrolled though her contacts. She saw the updates from her friends and classmates. Her beta orbiters have flown back to their home countries, sharing happy pictures of themselves, some with girlfriends. The HDips who were graduating were asking for jobs on the group chat. Some were bragging about securing jobs and telling others of job vacancies around their area.

"Look."

"Look," Nola echoed her sister while rolling her eyes. Whenever her sister said look, it automatically invalidated whatever she was going to say. It was going so well.

"I found a doctor."

“In Belarus? Some mountain is it I guess? Where your mystic witch doctor resides,” Nola's eyes rolled back down having found a prepared retort. “Last time we went on that family holiday in Kazakhstan, we got off the bus and then you took us to an underpass where a homeless old Asian hag selling her shitty Chinese medicine, which was baskets of leaves and insect moults,” Nola said, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. “This witch, hag doctor was selling us, I don't know, eucalyptus leaves and cicada skins? That you need to boil it three hours and get Allie to chug a pint of it and he can walk again?!” She and her mother were the same. “Or that other time where that doctor felt his pulse and concluded that his iecur, whatever that is, was upside down and he prescribed some kind of goddamn concoction of celery and fennel stalks in a blender and forced him to drink a damn pint every morning. Remember how he ended in hospital with white boils all over his body. I haven't forgotten any of it.”

"This o-"

“He ended up in the hospital on an IV drip for over a fucking week! He still gets those boils showing up on his skin sometimes!” Nola had trouble containing her emotions. She gazed at her sister in anger. Her sister's back was turned preparing some dish. That's why he stays with me and not you, she thought.

"Anyway, didn't you say you wanted to invite your San Franciscan friend over?" Silvie changed the subject.

They were so frivolous, Nola thought, without any care or thought or responsibility. She could hear Allie's soothing piano playing in the other room and it calmed her down a little.

"I heard a lot about this mysterious person. You've got me interested with all the things you told me. Is it another Eleanor-like person?"

She sat staring blankly at her phone with another anxiety now. She decided to call him. He picked it up within a few seconds.

"Hi."

"Hey."

She gave him the details and he said he'll come over right away.

"Is your San Franciscan friend a boy or a girl?" Silvie looked at her with great interest over the kitchen counter. Nola was smiling now.

"You'll see," Nola said unable to hold a grin.

Within ten minutes, the doorbell rang.

"That was fast! Does he live close?"

"Not really."

"What does he do for a living?"

"He cycles."

"I'll go get the door. Go get dressed. I'm running a fancy diner here, not McDonald's."

"How dare you. Eating McDonald's hamburgers saved his bank account in the US."

Silvie ignored her, not even going for a retort and went to open the front door. She was expecting her friend to be some sort of a hobo. The door swung open and there stood a handsome, upstanding gentleman, Ben the former stalker of Nola. He had one hand ruffling his golden brown hair.

Wow, he's good looking. "Hello!" Silvie's eyes glittered, scanning him top to bottom and bottom to top. She extended her hand out to him. "I'm Silvie."

"Hi, Ben. Nice to meet you." the ruffled good looking youth replied. Nola had texted him to beware of her sister whatever that meant. He had predicted that she would shake his hand so he had his cycling gloves in the large pockets of his khaki cargo pants already. He had anticipated well to not appear awkward. He looked at her hand only to realise his plans were foiled. She was wearing oven mittens yet she expected him to shake it.

He let out a sigh and shook her oven mittened hands. Silvie was mature looking compared to her sister. Her eyes carried a stern and hard expression. They were small while Nola's eyes were large. They looked like they would be the opposite of each other, he thought. He wondered what she was like as he grasped her oven mittened hands.

Ben was thinking this must be some kind of character test. Perhaps with this, she's determined I'm submissive and meek or that I'm an airhead. Ben was thinking of the ongoing psychological warfare while Silvie was simply taken aback by his handsome, youthful looks. She eyed him, finally finding out what her sister's type was.

“I heard so much about the trip but she wouldn't tell me much of her mysterious travel partner.”

So she didn't tell her anything. Maybe she was embarrassed of him.

Silvie leaned uncomfortably close, her chin above his shoulder. "Did you guys bang?"

In a silence that felt like an eternity, Ben thought back to the already answered question that had forcefully persisted in his mind since the trip. He had deduced that it was unlikely that anything happened at the motel after he blacked out drunk following the strip club incident. For one thing, Nola wasn't drunk since she was able to bring him to a motel. If they were both drunk with animal instinct taking over, it would have been a different story. But one of them was not.

"I'm joking," she finally said and patted him on the backside. He was sure that he had fallen victim to her character valuation. She stood back at a distance. "Come in, come in."

Silvie led the way to the kitchen. He had been here a few times but today the kitchen was different. It was very different, like a high class restaurant. The curtains were closed and the room was lit with candles. The dining table itself was covered with a thick, satin, white table cloth. In the middle was a large wrought iron candle holder decorated with floral scented candles.

"Wow."

"Take a seat. Make yourself at home. Nola would be here in a second."

"I'll help out with setting the ehm... table."

"Oh no no, I can't have the guest doing the serving. Take a seat." She walked around the kitchen counter and twisted a knob on the oven. She was also a guest but Ben didn't say it. "Nola tells me you're quite the gourmet."

Ben and Silvie were exchanging deep culinary knowledge on food when Nola entered the room pushing Allie in front. Suddenly the air was silent. She had caught the male gaze. His gaze.

She stopped and bent slightly to fix Allie's collar. She wore a black, low cut dress patterned with large diamond patterns that gleamed from the candle light. In her cold shoulder dress, he could see her powerful shoulders bulged out with the fridge-like body of hers. She brushed back her unnaturally smooth blonde hair as she got up. She was beautiful in a strong menacing way

"Hi," Ben couldn't help but smile.

“Hi Ben,” Allie replied energetically. Noticing he was wearing a t-shirt, he said, “You need to wear a shirt to eat here.” Allie didn’t look much different. He wore slacks and a white dress shirt with a bow tie, the same clothes he wore to his concert at the City Hall Theatre.

“Hmm… I’ll forgive you this time if Nola forgives you.”

“Sorry, my mistake actually,” Nola looked up to him with the usual intensity in her eyes. “I forgot to tell you.” She laughed. She was her usual self but with make-up.

She lifted Allie out of his wheelchair and placed him at the seat at the top of the table. Nola took the seat opposite to Ben.

“My sister works as a head chef in Paris so we have to dress fancy to meet her standards. The restaurant itself is called-” Nola spoke up, “-La Aubergine.”

"It's L'Arpège, my god Nonna."

"Nonna is what they sometimes call me. Old Russian pronunciation. Parents were such dunces when they got here and wrote Nola instead," she explained.

"That's a big change," Ben said. He had accurately assumed that was the case before.

"You'll get used to anything. Especially when you're young." She leaned close to Ben, "Allie and I visited her in Paris once. Can you believe they wouldn't let a child under fifteen in the restaurant? French are such snobs," she whispered the last part so her sister didn't overhear at the kitchen counter. "She's the head chef of the restaurant now after the old guy got carpal tunnel syndrome from his gaming addiction. She's the best chef ever." she said the last part loudly so her sister would hear. "Ah, Allie. Tell Ben about Disneyland."

They chatted cheerfully over the appetizers of bread and olives about their Parisian holiday. It reminded Ben that he still needed to give Nola the holiday photos.

"-And they shot flames out of the castle with the fireworks, you could feel the heat from way over there. The fireworks were so loud. Eleanor covered my ears. She said she didn't me to damage them."

"The first dish has arrived."

"It smells so go-" Before Nola finished her sentence she looked down at the placed in front of her.

"This dish is called La Crème de chou de Bruxelles. You'll be surprised to know that all of the dishes from the three star Michelin restaurants are very simple. The secret is fresh ingredients." She looped around the dining table back to the kitchen to prepare the next set of dishes.

The dish was served in a plate that resembled an artistic dog bowl. A dollop of white creamy cream coloured cream dotted around the plate and in the centre of the plate, was a single Brussels sprout.

Ben, Allie and Nola traded confused glances with each other. They looked back at the plate. It was an aged looking Brussels sprout, meticulously placed in the most eye pleasing angle as possible. There was even a leaf growing out the top of the stud.

"Must be one of my sister's experimental dishes and we're her lab mice."

"I mean it looks... artistic to say the least. Subversive in fact."

"True, true," Allie added.

They forked the Brussels sprout, swirled it around the sauce and put it in their mouths.

"Wow! This is the best Brussels sprout I've ever eaten in my life!" Allie exclaimed.

"Incredible! The Brussels sprout's partially hallowed out. There's a broth injected into the centre. It's like heroin juice spurting out when you bite into it."

"It's good," Nola said with slight hesitation. The heavy drinking has not been kind to her taste buds. The full potential escaped her tongue.

The dishes piled on. Each one topping the next with the last meal containing illegal substance, black caviar. The meal finally finished four hours later with Allie dozing off halfway through eating.

Silvie left the kitchen with shaking legs after doing the work of a seven course meal without her line of chefs. Before she left the room, she gave Ben a pat on the back and they exchanged a glance of mutual understanding, as fellow gourmets. The producer and the consumer; the omega and alpha, and then wobbled to the sitting room to collapse face first into the couch.

They sat alone by themselves with a sleeping child beside them.

“Let me make you something too.” Nola got up and walked over to the kitchen table, hips swaying. She whipped out a bottle of white rum, pre-squeeze lime juice and a small bottle of simple syrup and poured them into a cocktail shaker. She shook it in a tango dance trying to draw a laugh from Ben and he did. She poured it into a martini glass and placed it gingerly in front of him.

"It's a daiquiri, it's really nice. Try it."

Ben tipped the drink to his lips.

"How is it?"

"It's great." Calms the nerves, is what he wanted to say. He had no more doubts with Nola, he was in love with her.

He looked at Allie, dozing on his chair. He was going to ask her out. If anything interrupted him, then so be it.

They sat staring at each other, locked in a mesmerised glance. The candles flickering.

In the end, Ben couldn't bring himself to ask the question he wanted to ask the most. He had never been in a relationship, never started a relationship with anybody, not even a friendship before he had met her.

"Looks like Allie's tired," she said, her eyes flicked over to the sleeping child.

"Yeah, I'm going to leave. It's late." He looked away as well, eyes dejected. "I'll come another day to give you the photos and videos."

"Come tomorrow. We'lI show it to Silvie and Allie together."

Nola led him to the door. He stepped outside and stood in the cold. A full moon stood above him, he turned around. Nola observed him, waiting; waiting for something, anything.

"I think you're beautiful by the way. Will you go out with me?" he said nonchalantly. He had pondered it enough over the weeks and was done with it, with getting nowhere. The scene called for it, he convinced himself.

After a long pause with another eternity passing under the moonlight.

"I can't," she said, "I'm in love with Allie."

"Huh?!" Emptiness washed over Ben. He was not expecting incestuous love if that was what she meant.

"But maybe next year," she paused mischievously, "I might bring you to the wedding."

"HUH?!"

 

 

 

 

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