Abby and Violet (Yuri Light Novel)

Despite the good nights of sleep, the abundance of water I’ve been drinking, no longer being on my period and having spent a lot of enjoyable time with my girlfriend, I still felt dog-tired mentally. It took some convincing, but I managed to make Abby agree with letting me stay at my place tonight, thank goodness. I was so tired of being stuck inside my own head all the time a moment of tranquillity came along, that being a more pervasive feeling when there. I needed to get away from her place.

Despite knowing Abby would likely feel some worry, I headed out to get some groceries. I had this idea on my way back home from doing homework at her place of baking something sweet for us. I only stopped at my place to check on Oliver and change out of my school uniform, put on my wide brim hat and a new layer of suncream just to play safe.

I opened my front door and heard the television playing before being turned off. Once I stepped inside, Oliver appeared from the living room to greet me at the door like he hadn’t seen me for days, let alone the thirty minutes or so that it took me to leave the house to go to the supermarket and come back.

“Hi again Oliver. Where you and dad watching telly?”

“Meow,” he answered me with arched back as I rub the base of his tail, his purrs as loud as ever.

Then, he jolted towards the back door, stopping to look back at me, wanting me to follow, the tip of his tail whipping about.

“Haah, ok, ok. Let me just set these on the kit… weird. I could swear I had heard the television playing.”

It had to have been my impression, because dad was nowhere to be seen and there was no way Oliver knew how to turn it on or off… right?

“…”

“…Meow?”

Yeah, no. The last thing we needed him learning was to do that. He could however learn how to dust things off. With his tiny paws, I bet he could reach those difficult corners easier than me or even Abby.

“Meow!”

“Yeah, yeah! I’m coming already!”

Such a spoiled, impatient boy we were raising. Hopefully, Abby and I would do a better job when…

Easy there, you’re still in high school.

And we still had to get married, get jobs and a place big enough for three before I should even start thinking about it. Still, a girl can dream, right? Although… there were far more important things to mind myself with right then.

“Will you want your hat too?” I asked crouched down by Oliver as he got in his tub of water, happy to be able to cool down.

“Meow!”

“Right, figures,” I grumbled as I did as he… asked? Anyway, he had his hat on now. “Anything else milord, or can I go take care of Abby’s cake?”

Since he wasn’t saying anything, I took it as a sign that I could go, so off I was.

“Still though… was the television on or not?” I asked myself out loud as I got inside the living room and turned it on as background noise. “Weird.”

I had gotten toasted cookies, mascarpone cheese, cream, strawberry jam and Porto wine, the tawny type, whatever that might mean. The wine was a tad expensive, but there were plenty of things I could use it on, so I think it was an ok investment. Baked pear with Porto wine and cinnamon was something I had at Mrs. Fletcher’s party and something I’ve been wanting to do for one of our family dinner’s dessert for example, but not what I was doing today. Today was… I guess some sort of pie? Cheesecake?

Well, for starters, I turned on the oven to pre-heat it and weighted the cookies until I had enough to make the crust. I placed them on top of a kitchen cloth, folded it in half and started crushing them into crumbs while I let some butter melt over a very weak fire before dumping the dust into a bowl. I didn’t reduce the cookies completely into dust, as I wanted to preserve some bigger pieces to have some extra crunch, and added the melted butter.

“…It needs a bit more butter.”

I didn’t feel like melting it had been necessary at all, so I just sliced a bit more to add and let the warmth of my hands do the melting. Two more slices and I had the consistency I wanted. It felt like gritty, wet sand on my fingers, and when pressed, if formed a clump that crumbled when applying some pressure.

“…Should I add some more?”

It was the first time I did this dough, so I was now second guessing myself. That irritated me, and I dumped the mixture into the pan I was going to use to bake the crust with a click of my tongue.

“I’m doing this to relax, but I’m getting annoyed at myself instead,” I grumbled as I pressed the dough into shape, making sure it was as uniform and compact as possible.

With it tossed into the oven for the next half-an-hour or so, it was time for the jam I’d use to cover the finished product.

The same recipient I used to melt the butter, I used to poor some wine in, added a cinnamon stick and three star anise, two slices of lemon peel with as little as possible of the white stuff, and some black and Jamaican peppers.

“…”

Maybe I should have added some sugar to the crust.

“…Tsk!”

My mind was having three thoughts going at the same time. One third was trying to concentrate on what I was doing, another one was second-guessing itself over what I was doing, while the last third was still fixated on what happened this weekend and the following days leading to today. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to let the last two win my attention.

“Mmh, smells good,” I said, noticing the smell that was enveloping the kitchen.

“It sure does,” my dad said, seemingly materialising in front of me and making me jump.

He laughed at my reaction before leaning over the counter and looked at what I was doing, wondering if I was making tiramisu as he picked up one of the mascarpone containers.

“No, erm… I guess I might be using the same cream as tiramisu, but… I think this is more of a pie or cheesecake.”

“Hmm… I take it, there’s something in your mind bothering you?” he asked, giving me a side-eye and a smirk. “You’ve always started baking inventions when you are.”

“…Haah, yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it. Like, at all.”

He chuckled and told me that he was upstairs if I changed my mind about chatting.

As thankful as I was for that, I wouldn’t. Not today at least.

The wine was starting to boil, so I passed it through a sieve to remove what I had added, put it back in the metal cup and added twice the volume of it with the strawberry jam.

“Should I stir it to avoid burning the bottom?”

I still don’t know if it was needed, but I also didn’t have much else to do, so I grabbed a long spoon and got to it as I waited for it to become more syrup-y. I wanted it to be runny, but not so much that it went all over the place.

Don’t forget the water.

That reminder was for me, not what I was doing. It had become more or less a habit, but sometimes I still had to remind myself to drink some water. Right now, I could feel the back of my throat drying up and I was right next to a turned-on stove and oven at my boiling-hot house, so it was extra important.

To check the consistency, I was doing what grandma taught me: run the tip of my finger on the back of the spun I was using to stir. Once it held the clear strip I made, it should be good. Which was right about now.

“Hmm… sweet, but not too sweet… and I can taste the lemon zest, the fragrance from the anis and the velvety feeling of the cinnamon mixed with the fruitiness of the wine. Yeah, Abby will like this.”

Hopefully, she’d love it. I was trying to make it something the two of us could eat, but of course, my focus was mainly on her.

“And the crust?”

Still a bit longer to go. Maybe another fifteen minutes? Funny how half-an-hour went by. I did enjoy baking, and I was hyper-focused on it now, so no wonder time went by so fast.

The cheese went into a bowl and I grabbed the handheld mixer and whisks that had belonged to my grandma, once a pure white plastic, now, a dirty yellow, but they still worked just as good now as they did… forty years ago? No, maybe more like fifty.

No matter, what’s important is, they worked amazingly well despite their age. Wish I could say the same about the bedroom fan I had before the one Abby got me, that’s for sure.

Whisking the cheese was turning out as I had expected: despite the room temperature and being whisked for what felt like ten minutes, they weren’t going any softer past a certain point, so I had to add some cream after all, but before that, the crust.

“Yeah, now it’s ready.”

Ready, and on top of the oven to cool off as much as possible. It was still too soon to tell if it turned out like I wanted, but the pan as thin, so I’d know soon enough. One thing I was sure of was that it smelled amazing in the kitchen with its scent being added to the rest I was preparing. If Abby were there, she’d be floating by the nose like a cartoon.

“Pfft, fufu!”

Bit by bit, I started pouring the cream into the cheese with one hand while whisking with the other. Turns out, it had to be the whole packet, but the texture I got was exactly what I was looking for: consistent, fluffy and melting in the mouth. Not sweet at all though, so I began adding sugar—the brown kind— in small amounts and tasting in between.

“Perfect! And the crust?”

Crumbly and with a delicious crunch. It might be hard to cut slices without it falling apart, but the flavour and texture more than made up for it! At least, I thought it did.

Everything that had been heated was now cool enough to store inside the fridge to cool down further, but I only did so with the base. I needed the jam I prepared to stay soft to be able to spread it around.

“…Should I take a shower in the meantime?”

It was better than not having anything else to occupy my mind now other than the troublesome thoughts I mentioned before. I was quite excited to see the finished product and send Abby a picture of it too, so standing still would be nigh impossible.

“Yeah… I’ll take care of the rest after cooling down myself.”

◊◊◊

Despite having told her that I was coming, Violet was still looking at me surprised.

“If you didn’t intend to summon me, then why did you send that picture?” I asked while taking my shoes off with her serving as my support. “You should have known better.”

“I figured you wouldn’t since it’s so close to dinner.”

“Pfft! Once in the stomach, it’s not like it matters in what order you eat what,” I playfully scoffed while latching onto her arm. “And I can tell you were excited about it just by the fact that you took a pic and even sent it!”

She looked away, slightly blushing, and offering no rebut whatsoever.

“Hehe! You smell so nice,” I hummed while burying my face against her armpit to further tease her. “You’re looking super sexy too.”

She had put on one of my shorts that practically only covered the underwear. Those were a navy-blue in colour with white rims around the legs and waist. She had also put on one of my tank tops, but since I was shorter than her, it hugged her figure more overall, and I could see the base of her bellybutton showing even though she hadn’t raised her arms. Like I said, super sexy, but there’s something special in seeing your better half wearing your clothes that’s also very heartwarming too.

“Well, it can’t be just you wearing my clothes around the house,” she said, flushing a little bit.

“You also look super cute in that attire.”

She let out another giggle followed by a sigh and said that if she knew I was coming, she’d have waited for me to arrive to take a shower so I could have helped her dry her hair.

It had been a while that she started complaining about it, but she had yet to do anything to fix her “problem” so I asked if she wasn’t going to take care of it soon.

“…Dunno,” she said with a distant voice, one that I knew meant that Violet had other worries taking up space in her mind and making her only remember how much her hair got in the way in inopportune times. It was the same tone she had been using sometimes in the past few days without realising.

“Mmh! It looks better in person!” I said once I saw her taking the plate with the sweet out of the fridge and placing it on the kitchen counter.

“I suck at taking pictures after all,” she told me while getting ready to cut a slice.

She was looking nervous holding the knife, and once she drove the knife in, she looked disappointed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I was hoping the crust didn’t get soggy,” she lamented as she moved the slice she cut onto a plate. “See?”

I asked her what was wrong with it having gotten soggy, to which she replied spiritless that she wanted it to be crunchy like it was around the rim.

“What? But it’s just like that!” I said, having just taken a bit.

“Haah, thanks but you don’t have to…”

I watched her face turn into surprise as she too took a bit. Then, she held a hand in front of her mouth before saying that it was good. She described how the crust had absorbed some of the cream while maintaining its bite and the toasted flavour helped enhance the creaminess of the cheese. She then described how the fat of the cheese turned the sweetness of the topping into a velvety feeling that coated the mouth with the flavour of strawberry and how the tanginess of the wine contrasted with it, the aromas of the cinnamon and pepper providing a final kick to round it all off.

For someone who doesn’t show any enjoyment in eating, she sure has a sensitive tongue, huh?

Or maybe it was because Violet had a sensitive tongue that she never showed much of a reaction?

“It’s really good,” she said again, still sounding incredulous.

I was in full agreement with her. Not even my favourite jelly-filled donuts could compare to this. I dare say, it’s the best dessert I ever ate.

“Now you’re exaggerating.”

“Am not! I really mean it! This is more than good enough to sell at a high-end place! You could probably work as a pastry chef doing stuff like this!”

She looked up with the spoon she was using in her mouth, thinking about what I just said. I thought that maybe I had helped her find her calling, but she just shook her head saying that while she enjoyed baking, she couldn’t see finding it enjoyable to do it every day and for people she didn’t care about.

“I feel like I don’t want to share my cooking and baking with anyone that isn’t you. Or, well… anyone who isn’t someone I love at least.”

“Hmm… You really are a housewife at heart, huh?”

“S-shut up!”

“Pfft, ah-haha!”

Honestly, I think I preferred it that way too.

Violet’s cooking is something very precious to me so… yeah, having other people eating it, while it’d be nice if they enjoyed it, I still would rather keep it to myself and a select few. It’s that precious to me, and hearing her say that out loud made me want to pamper her a bit.

“Papa Stan?”

She was busy chewing, so she used the spoon to point up towards the ceiling. That was obstacle one out of the way.

“Oliver is outside having a dip,” she told me after swallowing, indivertibly letting me know that obstacle number two was also out of the way.

I got up and went to sit by her, our bodies touching, the skin of our bare legs immediately sticking together.

“You know that I love you to bits, right?” I asked sweetly, leaning closer to her with my hands supporting my torso on her thigh, Violet’s face turning a shade redder. She also didn’t seem all that happy to hear me say that.

“I love you too,” she told me, again sounding a bit distant.

“…Will you tell me what’s on your mind this time? I promise I won’t get mad or anything.”

“…”

“…Is it still about this weekend?”

“Not exactly… It’s… I’ve been having such ugly feelings…”

“About me?”

“No! No, not about you, it’s…”

“…My sister?”

She grew very quiet as she stared down to her half-eaten slice. I don’t think she realised it, but I knew full well—or at least, I felt like I did—what she had been thinking and feeling about my sister. I also knew that it was important that she voiced them out so she could hopefully move past them, and I told her that while taking her spoon away to feed her myself as she talked.

“I feel so disgusted at myself for still holding a grudge against her even after she took care of me when she had all the reasons in the world not to…” she began after slowly chewing and swallowing the piece I had served her. “She also said that I should stay at your place and looked heartbroken after my dad had his slipup… And I’m sorry, I love being with you more than anything else, but… I felt like I hated being at your place sometimes… I feel like… like… like I’m just getting in the way between you and your sister when I’m there… I’ve been such a bad girlfriend, and I’m really sorry for that…”

What she was admitting, I knew about it all. There was a lot that needed to be addressed and some of it, it had to be me admitting my own faults in dealing with all this. Most of these issues would have been avoided, or at least better managed, if we had better communicated from the start.

“Babe,” I told her, now moving to sit on her lap and setting my arms around the neck of my sobbing Violet. “It’s ok. I understand that you might not like my sister much due to how she hurt me and how protective you are. Her being nice to you once doesn’t mean that you need to get over those feelings all in one go. And in these past few days that you stayed at my place, you weren’t in the way. I don’t know if I can fix things with my sister, but I did know that I could help nurse you back to health. It was the least I could do since I’m at fault for not being brave enough to approach my sister so we can have a talk. If anything, having you around should have emboldened me into taking action… I’m just too afraid and making up excuses not to talk to her because of that. Because of my cowardice, I’ve been putting you in a tight spot while also doing nothing to solve that. I haven’t been that great of a girlfriend lately too, huh?”

She pulled me in a tight hug, telling me that it was ok because she knew that I was doing my best. I told her the exact same thing once she apologised for her own shortcomings as I joined her in sobbing. That was something we both needed as much as coming clean. Sometimes, a good cry did wonders to the soul, and this was a very good example of that, because, while feeling horrible physically from crying, I felt a lot lighter emotionally.

“Humph, speak for yourself!” Violet huffed as she did her best to hide her face. “I still feel ugly and disgusting.”

“Hehe, then there might be something wrong with me, because the only thing I see is a cute girl that is pretty like a flower.”

She glared at me with puffy eyes that, yeah, while not attractive, didn’t do much to detract from her beauty.

There was a last bit of cake that I served her with a smile, her glare melting away like the cream of what she was eating.

She called me a pest and told me to get off her because it was far too hot for us to be sitting like that.

We both let out a whimper as our legs unglued from one another with an audible tearing sound, a slightly red mark quickly appearing where we had been connected.

“Look on the bright side,” I told her while patting myself where it hurt. “At least we won’t have to wax that spot.”

“We waxed yesterday!” she pointed out. “we did that together, remember?”

How could I forget it when we also applied the calming lotion to one another afterwards?

“Are we good now babe?”

“…Yeah… I think we are good now.”

What followed next? Well, it was me going to her and tiptoe with my hands on her shoulders, ready to be kissed and squeezed, something Violet delivered on and with some extras thrown in, namely a few tickles and a nibble to my neck.

With her hugging me from behind and rubbing my belly, I asked if she was going to sleep well tonight. After having cried and aired-out her dark thoughts, she told me, she’d likely appear to be dead until I came to pick her up next morning.

“Abby? You know that I really mean it when I tell you that I love you more than anything, right?”

“Hehe, of course!” I told her while turning around to tiptoe while hanging from her again. “It’s the same thing as when I say that I love you to bits you silly goof.”

She bent her knees to kiss and lift me up, my feet dangling in the air while I was happily being osculated, and once I was put back on the ground and opened my eyes, I saw a familiar face on Violet.

“Wanna take this to the bedroom?”

Before answering, she looked at the living room clock, and I followed her gaze. Unfortunately, that would have to wait for another time because I should be getting ready to go back, not to frolic in bed. Besides, even if we had time for a little bit of love-making, I’d have to shower next, and back at home it would be obvious that something had happened since dad and I talked before I came to Violet’s and he also knew that I showered after Violet left because I told him that so he wouldn’t barge in inadvertently.

“Can we at least exchange shirts?” I asked while twirling her top’s fabric.

“Won’t that make them wonder if we made love or not?”

True, that could happen, so I thought about asking for an underwear exchange instead, but thankfully, I didn’t get to voice that because I don’t think even Violet would comply or even not judge. Maybe if we could share bras, but that’s not something we can do, and what we can… yeah, there’s no way Violet would play along.

…I kinda really wanna ask her that though…

Maybe I could pass that out as a joke? Just to see her reaction?

“…I suppose I should be going then,” I ended up saying instead, putting up some distance between our bodies.

“Yeah… Ah! Wait! Take two slices of the pie with you!”

“Two?”

“Yeah… give one to your sister… as a thanks for taking care of me the other day…”

Now, that was a wonderful idea, especially coming from her. A very good attempt at burying the axe between the two of them, and giving me a pretext to go talk with my sister.

“You know, I really, really, love that side of you,” I told her, ready to go for another kiss, but she pushed me away while scolding me about hurrying up otherwise my dad would be having dinner alone tonight. A super annoying thing, but also, another side that I loved about her.

She stepped back into the kitchen and I watched her put three slices in a plastic box and dump a bunch of ice in a plastic back.

“If I fail giving this to her,” I said while watching her putting a bit more ice over the plastic box once it was in the bag. “Promise me that you’ll get mad at me.”

“…”

She stepped out of the kitchen area, handed me the bag and a tap to my forehead.

“I might get mad, but I’m not scolding you, so don’t even think about it,” she huffed. “And save the extra slice for tomorrow or something.”

“Hehe! Okie-doke. Well then, I’m off. But first, a goodbye kissie?”

What I was carrying in the bag was sweet, but the girl who prepared it and was now hunching over me was far sweeter, and so was our love.