It was in the middle of kneading dough when Madeline called. Vicente's phone was blaring an ear-shredding pop song (he never figured out how to change the ringtone) so loudly that his apron couldn't muffle it, and across the kitchen, Yao dropped his bowl with a shriek. "Aiyah, Jia Lin, answer it before I go deaf!"

He brushed his hands clean of the sticky dough the best he could and grabbed his phone. "Hello?"

"Hi." Madeline's voice was muffled slightly by crackling static, and sounded flatter than it usually was in person. Vicente found himself wanting to hear her speak in person, not that getting the chance to talk to her wasn't already a nice thing.

"Oh, hi." He leaned against his bench, careful not to squash the half-kneaded dough. "Uh, how are you?"

"All right. Still working on that essay that's due this Friday, though." Francis — or was that Matthieu? — appeared to be saying something in the background. "Sorry for calling so suddenly. In hindsight, I should have just texted."

"It's all right," he said quickly. "Did you want to talk to me about something?"

"I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to come over to the Boulangerie tomorrow," Madeline said. "I promised I'd make you some crêpes, and I think I've practiced enough to show you."

Practice? Vicente thought. Knowing her, Madeline could probably throw anything together and give it to him and it would be good; she was just that talented. He replied, "sure. Am I allowed to ask what you made, or is it a secret?"

Madeline let out a breathy laugh, and the sound of it made him smile too. "You'll know tomorrow. It'll be a mystery until then."

"All right, I'll try to guess."

"Have fun," Madeline said. "See you tomorrow morning."

"See you."

She hung up and Vicente put his phone back in the pocket of his apron. At the stove, Yao tipped his wok over, pouring the fried rice inside it onto a plate. "What were you talking about?"

"Oh, she just wanted me to go over to the Boulangerie tomorrow." He went back to kneading the dough, sprinkling another pinch of flour over the countertop. "She made something special."

Leon popped his head into the kitchen from the window. "Maybe she'll surprise you with a candlelit dinner and a bottle of champagne, then after you're done with your romantic meal she'll bring you up to her apartment and the two of you can watch some hot steamy romance movie while squeezed on her couch."

"I'll be going during the afternoon, there's no way we'll be having dinner together." He began to separate the dough into pieces, rolling each one around the cold metal surface until it turned round. "And Madeline doesn't like watching movies."

His brother grabbed the plate of tea eggs from the countertop and asked, "why? Does she think they're cheesy or something?"

Vicente grabbed the bowl of custard filling and scooped up a handful of it, saying, "she says she starts spacing out after a while." He flattened a piece of snowy dough next, then dropped the custard filling onto it. "And the loud noises can get overwhelming for her at times, apparently."

"Oh. Then you two can listen to steamy romantic songs instead."

He shooed Leon away from the window. "Nothing romantic of any sort will happen tomorrow."

"That's what you say now," Leon said over his shoulder as he walked away. Vicente went back to his bench and began making another custard bun.

"Jia Long has clearly been reading too many romance novels," Yao said. He was shaking a dollop of salty, pungent shrimp paste into his wok as he spoke. "All those crazy love stories have made him forget that a boy and a girl can just be friends."

Placing another perfectly-round bun into the steamer, Vicente joked, "Heaven help his future partner if he ever gets one."

"Goodness, I don't want to even think about that." He shuddered. "The mental image is scarring. Anyways, what time are you coming home tomorrow?"

"Same as usual." Vicente closed the lid of the steamer and wiped his hands on his apron and said, "I might bring back some leftovers from the Boulangerie if Madeline makes too much."

…

The first thing Vicente noticed about Madeline when he met her outside the campus was that she'd tied her hair up from a braid into a bun, even though she didn't have any classes to teach that day. As he neared her, a particularly strong gust of wind sent loose strands of hair flying into her face.

"Hi," she greeted. Madeline had one hand pressing her skirt down and the other swiftly trying to brush her hair away from her face. That was strange, too — he'd never seen her wear a dress.

Vicente reached into his bag and fished around until he found a small plastic box, which rattled as he handed it to Madeline. "Maybe these will help."

She opened the box and nearly dropped some of the hairpins that were stored inside. "Why do you have these?"

"I honestly don't know," he admitted. "I carried them around when Ling was a kid to help her fix her ponytails, but now that she doesn't tie her hair up much they're pretty much useless. They'll be helpful if we find ourselves locked somewhere, I guess."

Madeline slid a few hairpins to secure her golden hair and handed the box back to Vicente. "I don't think either of us really know how to use hairpins to pick locks, but we can worry about that another day. Come on, let's go."

He followed her to the bus station, the path already as familiar as the back of his hand after the dozens of times he'd walked it. Once they'd gotten onto the bus and started on their way to Boulangerie Bonnefoy, he asked, "I suppose you still won't reveal what you're making?"

Madeline's eyes twinkled; she nearly smiled. "Not yet. You'll have to guess a bit more before you find out."

"I made you a sweet crêpe, so are you going to be making one of those savoury ones they fill with cheese and ham?"

"You mean galettes?"

"Yes, those."

This time she actually smiled, shaking her head. "Good guess, but no. I've never been good at making savoury food."

"Hmm…" Vicente moved his bag out of the way to let Madeline lean on his arm. "Are you going to fill the crêpe with sugar?"

"That's boring," she said flippantly.

"With caramel, then."

"Still too boring."

He thought for a moment. "Are you going to put fruits in it?"

"Mmhmm." Madeline fiddled with the charm on her bracelet. "Now the question is which one I'll be using."

"Strawberries?"

"No."

"Raspberries?"

"Nope."

"Bananas, apples or kiwi?"

"No, no and no." She straightened up, brushing off his shoulder absent-mindedly and stood. "You'll know the answer soon enough."

Matthieu, who was manning the counter, barely glanced up when the two of them walked in. He stepped aside, preoccupied with slicing up a thick loaf of brioche, and waved his twin into the kitchen. Vicente sat down at one of the tables and began to wait.

A few minutes later, Madeline emerged from the kitchen holding a wineglass and a blowtorch. She set those down before running back to retrieve an elegant porcelain dish, on which were four crêpes soaked in some sort of dark-orange sauce. He could smell the aroma of oranges and vanilla wafting from the plate.

She picked up the wineglass, swirling the liquid inside. "You might want to move away."

Shifting away from the table, Vicente kept his eyes on Madeline as she took the blowtorch, turned it on and placed the wineglass over the flame.

Inside the glass, the liquid lit up in bright-blue fire.

"This is Grand Marnier," Madeline explained, slowly turning the blowtorch off. She pulled the plate of crêpes towards her and poured the still-burning liqueur over them. The flames flickered softly among the dark sauce, setting the entire plate ablaze before finally dying down. "It's commonly use to flambé desserts like this one." She sat down across Vicente, cheeks slightly flushed from being so close to the flame. "And this is called Crêpes Suzette."

He was still stunned from her act, the fire that had blazed on the plate just seconds ago alight in his memory. "That was amazing," he said. "The Grand Marnier let off such an amazing smell, and it looked so pretty when you heated it up. I… wow."

Madeline seemed to flush a little bit more. "Go on, try it. I can only hope it tastes as good as it looks."

The crêpe was so soft amidst the sauce that Vicente didn't even need a knife to cut through it. He took a bite of a corner of it and nearly gasped; the mixture of rich Grand Marnier, bittersweet syrup, perfume-like Cointreau and tart orange juice created a combination of flavours that tasted almost surreal. The crêpe itself had flavour that shone through, he hadn't expected it to taste of vanilla.

"What do you think?"

He looked up at Madeline. "It's really, really good. It's so good I literally can't think of any other way to describe it."

Those sapphire-blue eyes grew brighter, and he could not stop himself from looking into them. "You know," Madeline said, "there's actually a story behind how Crêpes Suzette were made."

"What's the story?"

"You see," she began, "some people say that it was created in 1895 by the fourteen-year-old waiter Henri Charpentier, who worked at the Cafe de Paris in Monaco. He was to serve the Prince of Wales, who would later become King Edward the seventh in the United Kingdom, and he brought this plate of crêpes to the Prince's table. He hadn't lit it up, though." Madeline spoke quickly, excitement bubbling in her voice as she relayed the tale. "They say that the plate caught on fire while Charpentier was trying to serve it to the Prince and, as he tasted the crêpes after the accident, he realised that it became even better. The Prince, who adored it too, decided to name the dish Crêpes Suzette, after a young girl who was at the table with him."

Vicente had barely heard the end of Madeline's story. Her words had faded away somehow, and all he could focus on was her passionate smile, the way she tripped over her words to talk to him, her hands, sometimes idle and sometimes moving, gesticulating with every sentence she said. I'd listen to her talk for hours on end, he thought. I'd want nothing more than to listen to her talk and laugh and see her smile.

The realisation was nothing like how the movies described it. There was no pink-tinged vision or suggestive music or anything at all. He didn't feel butterflies inside. His only thought was a short, simple oh.

I like her.

Was it liking someone if you wanted to talk to them every day, laugh with them and try to make them smile? Was it liking someone if you wanted to pull them close and hold their hand?

It had to be. Vicente's heart raced as he looked back up at Madeline, and discovered that he was falling.

...

A/N: The dish that Leon takes out to serve is a plate of tea eggs, a popular food in Taiwan. They are made by marinating hard-boiled eggs in a mixture of tea, soy sauce and different spices, and way the shells are cracked before being soaked leaves a dark web of the marinade across the egg white. They're so common that even convenience stores sell them.