The Waffle House That Vix Built

They went to Waffle House at 11 p.m. because Tai had an idea.

"I've never been," she said in the car, bouncing in the passenger seat. Her messy red hair was still full of paint from earlier. Her ears were sticking out from it, pink at the tips from the cold. "I think it's going to be amazing. Like, actual houses. Made of waffles. You can go inside them."

Vix, driving, in her black hoodie and black chipped nail polish, said, "Tai."

"What?"

" Waffle House is just a restaurant that serves waffles. It's not an architecture firm."

Tai grinned, all canines. "You'll see. It's going to be three dimensional. It's going to have little waffle windows."

Vix had been a philosophy major long enough to know you cannot argue someone out of a deeply held, deeply stupid belief. So she parked.

Inside, it smelled like coffee and grease and syrup. A waitress brought them menus. Tai stared at the menu. Then stared at the plates going by. Flat. Round. Delicious, but flat.

Her face fell in real time.

"Oh," she said, very quietly.

Vix looked up from her coffee.

Tai was staring at a perfectly normal, perfectly flat waffle being delivered to the table next to them.

"They're... flat," she whispered. "They're just flat."

"Yeah," Vix said. "They're waffles."

"But it's called Waffle HOUSE," Tai said, and her chaotic cheer deflated like a balloon. Her ears drooped. "I thought they would be houses. Like little houses you could put syrup in. Like with a roof and a door. I wanted to live in one for a second."

She poked her own waffle when it arrived. It did not become a house.

Vix watched this happen. Vix watched Tai's whole night collapse over a flat breakfast food.

Something in Vix, which was already 90% angry about life on a good day, clicked over to 110%.

"No," Vix said.

Tai sniffed. "It's okay. It's still a waffle. It's just not a dream—"

"No. Absolutely not." Vix stood up. Her black hair swung. She was already walking.

" Vix? Where are you going?" Tai said.

Vix stormed straight past their table, past the counter, and right up to the little window to the kitchen.

"Excuse me!" she said, and she was not using her customer service voice. She was using her I-have-read-Nietzsche-and-I-am-angry-about-the-service-industry voice. "My roommate thought you served houses. Actual houses. Out of waffles. And you are serving her flat circles and crushing her spirit."

The cook, a tired man named Daryl according to his name tag, stared at her.

"Ma'am, you can't be back here," he said.

"Do you have Nutella?" Vix snapped.

"What?"

" Nutella. Chocolate hazelnut spread. Do you have it? And do you have more waffles? Because you are going to make her a house."

Tai had now appeared behind Vix, holding her plate, mortified and delighted. "Vix, it's okay, you don't have to—"

"She walked in here believing in something!" Vix said, pointing at Tai, who was 5'3" and trying to hide behind a plate. "She thought you were architects! The least you can do is be architects!"

Daryl looked at Tai. Tai looked at Daryl with big, disappointed, pointy-eared hope.

Daryl sighed the sigh of a man who has worked at Waffle House at 11 p.m. for many years.

"Do we have Nutella?" he shouted to the back.

"We got the little packets!" someone shouted back.

Five minutes later, their table had four fresh waffles, still steaming, and a pile of Nutella packets.

Daryl came out himself, wiping his hands on his apron, and with the focus of a very tired engineer, stood four waffles up like walls. They immediately fell over. He tried again. Tai held one wall. Vix held another. The waitress held the roof.

They glued the seams with Nutella. It was messy and structural and completely not food-safe and exactly what Tai wanted.

It stood for about six seconds. A crooked, chocolate-mortared, steaming waffle house, right there on their table.

Tai gasped. Her grin came back full force, canines and all.

"IT'S A HOUSE! VIX, IT'S A HOUSE! LOOK, IT HAS A DOOR!"

It was not a very good house. It was leaning hard to the left. Syrup was leaking out the window.

Vix stood back, arms crossed, still angry, but now angry on Tai's behalf in a satisfied way.

"There," she said to Daryl. "That is a house. See how happy she is? That's what you should be serving."

Daryl looked at the leaning Nutella house, at Tai who was already taking pictures of it from every angle, and at Vix, who looked like she might start quoting Camus at him.

"You know what," Daryl said. "That's actually kind of cute."

Tai clapped. "We can eat it now! We can be demolition crew!"

And they did.

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