Just as everyone was adjusting to life on the road, they were finished, and headed back toward New York City. They arrived back at their loft on a blazing hot August afternoon.

"Wow, funny how this place seems like home already, even though I've only lived here such a short time," Momoko marveled, looking around.

Everyone had congregated at the washing machine, dumping their dirty clothes into one pile on top of the state of the art washer and dryer. Momoko would've sold her soul to own such a beautiful washing machine and dryer. Her family in Japan still hung their clothes on a line to dry them.

"Oh my god, are you crazy?" Momoko asked. She looked at the pile of clothes, aghast. "You can't wash your clothes like that, just willy nilly, all mixed together! It's a crime to these beautiful appliances. Everything will end up this horrible gray color, like--" she looked around for a good example, "--like that shirt Jude's wearing!"

"Well, how'd you think it got this way, then?" Jude asked indignantly.

"That's why you can't wash them like that," Momoko explained patiently. "Now look, you have to divide them into at least three piles, see? Hot water whites, warm water brights, and cold water darks. Basically, you need to wash the clothes in the coldest water you can and still get them clean, that's what will make them last the longest, but they have to be with like colors--" While she was talking, her quick hands had been efficiently sorting the clothes into different piles, based on their colors and what they were made of.

"What about that?" Tommy asked, grabbing a shirt out of the "dark" pile. "It's yellow, shouldn't it be in the 'bright' pile?"

"You'd think so, but it's polyester, so it can go with the darks, warm water might make it ripple," Momoko said knowledgeably.

"And what about that?" Sully asked, pointing to a separate, smaller pile. "What temperature are those? They're all different colors."

"Those are dry clean only, but I can't afford the dry cleaner, so I just hand wash them in the sink," Momoko explained matter-of-factly.

"This is doing my head in," Jude said mournfully. "I just want a cup of tea."

"What do you do when your clothes get so gross you can't wear them anymore?" Momoko asked as she put the first load in.

The boys looked at each other.

"Buy new ones?" Dane answered as if should be obvious. "Every few months we just go to the store."

Momoko's head drew back as she stared at the boys. "My thrifty Japanese mother would lie down and die if she heard that," she declared. "Tell you what. I'm going to leave my laundry basket right here. Why don't you guys start leaving your dirty clothes in it, and I'll do the laundry for the whole loft, every day, and leave the clean, folded stuff right here on the counter whenever it's ready? Because honestly, your system? It blows."

The boys looked at each other. "You're volunteering to do our laundry?" Sullivan asked carefully. "Our dirty socks and underwear and everything?"

Momoko nodded. "They're my favorite. I love using hot water and bleach and getting dirty socks super white, like blue white, honest."

"I am so in," Tommy declared, leaning in to kiss Momoko on the mouth.

"Me too," the rest of the boys declared, leaning in to hug her and kiss her, taking turns.

"You realize that, just now, all by yourself, you've set the women's movement back, like, a hundred years?" Sully asked her.

Momoko shrugged. "I don't care, I like doing laundry and ironing and stuff, so I'm offering to do it, how's that setting anything back? I can't cook, I don't know how, so I'm not offering to do that all by myself, am I?"

"Yeah, leave her alone," Dane reprimanded, putting an arm around her. "Let her do what she likes." He kissed the top of her head. "I say that in exchange for laundry duties, Peaches is excused from bathroom cleaning duties, what do you think?" He looked around.

"Sounds good," Momoko agreed.

The boys agreed, saying she didn't really dirty the bathrooms up, anyway.

"All she really does in there is get ready for gigs sometimes, and she always cleans that stuff up when we get home," Tommy pointed out.

"So," Jude said, looking around, "now that the washing's all sorted, how about if we go out and grab some dinner, yeah?"

"You know, I've been thinking about this," Momoko said, walking over to the kitchen area and jumping up to sit on the counter so she was head height with the boys, or close to it, anyway. "Being on the road and having to save our receipts and everything? Plus just eating out every night made me more aware of it in general, you know?"

The boys just stared at her.

"More aware of what?" Tommy asked her.

In response, she asked a question. "Jude, what kind of oven do we have?"

"Erm, what?" he asked politely.

"What kind of oven do we have?" Momoko repeated patiently.

"The kind--the kind that heats things up?" he responded, completely at sea.

Momoko rolled her eyes at him. "Electric or gas?" she asked.

Oh! Oh. I don't know," he admitted guiltily.

"Do any of you know?" Momoko looked around.

They all looked at each other, eyes wide.

"Gas," Sullivan answered confidently. "No, electric. No, gas," he decided firmly.

"You only know that because your uncle owns the place," Momoko guessed correctly.

"My point is that we have this beautiful kitchen, but I don't think any of you even knows how to turn on the stove," Momoko said. "No, let me rephrase--none of us knows how to turn on the stove. I have to include myself, right? I've been living here since the beginning of July, and I've never cooked, either.

"Well," she said, jumping off the counter, "I say that stops now. I think we should start cooking. I mean, there are five of us, for fuck's sake, and there's this beautiful kitchen, fully stocked by Sully's wonderful uncle, and we're all here, all the time, with nothing coming up except Battle of the Bands, and we're pretty much prepared, you know?" She looked around at the completely gobsmacked boys. "We can't rehearse all day, can we? We can surely take a couple of hours off a few times a week and cook ourselves a decent meal, can't we? In the name of being healthier and saving some money?" She looked around, finished talking for the moment.

The boys stared at each other.

"But, uh, Peaches," Tommy said gently, stating the obvious, "none of us knows how to cook. We'd burn the place down."

Momoko waved a hand in his face. "Come on, we're five sentient adults, with five college degrees between us! We can surely figure out something, right?" She looked around again. "Right?"

"Right," Dane said, stepping gamely into the breach. "Come on, guys, we can do this. Momoko's right, we have terrible eating habits."

"That's rich, coming from the dude who keeps a box of Snickers bars under his bed at all times," Tommy said, crossing his arms and smirking.

"Come on, Tommy, you're so fit, I'd think you especially would want to do this," Momoko said, putting a hand on his arm.

"Okay, I'm in," he said with a sigh, smiling at Momoko.

"What the hell, we can try it until the Battle," Sully, grinning. "I wouldn't mind knowing how to make more than protein smoothies, I suppose."

They all looked at Jude, who was eyeing everyone skeptically. "We live in New York City," he finally said. "You can get fucking cannabis delivered to your door if you so desire. What's the point in sodding cooking in a city like that?" He looked away, hands on his hips, then looked back at Momoko, eyes narrowed.

"Come and kiss me, you trouble maker," he said, relenting. "Fine, I'm in as well."

Momoko squealed and jumped into his arms.

"Great!" she said. "I thought we could start with something easy tonight, like spaghetti?"

"We're starting tonight?" Jude asked as he put her down. "I'm bloody starving!"

"You can nosh on something while we cook!" Momoko said, handing him a box of Cheez Its. "And you know we have to have wine while we cook, too!"

Her enthusiasm was charming, and all the guys smiled at her and each other.

"Okay, so I found a recipe, and made a list of ingredients that we need to buy. It's pretty long, because we don't have anything in our fridge or pantry, which I'm sure surprises no one," she went on. "Who wants to go to the store with me?"

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After Momoko and Dane came back from the store, the real fun began.

"When they say 'a clove' of garlic, do they mean one of these little guys, or do they mean this whole thing? They must mean the whole thing, right? This tiny thing couldn't flavor that whole pot of sauce, could it?"

"Does 'brown' mean light brown, or dark brown, or what?"

"How do you drain meat? They can't mean to pour it down the actual drain, can they? Can they?"

"Jesus, I nearly cut my sodding thumb off! How do fucking slice something that's fucking round?"

"Momoko, will tomato sauce come out of, uh, a linen shirt?"

"I can just taste this right out of the pot to see if the flavor's right, right? It's not too hot?"

"How do you get these spaghettis to boil if they don't fit in the boiling water? Most of them are still sticking out? Am I suppose to break them?"

But eventually, they all sat down to a meal that they'd made themselves, and Jude had even thought to photograph and record some of the funnier moments, so he had some wonderful tidbits to put up on their website for their fans. Since their appearance at Washington Square Park, since Kay had taken over management of their website, and especially since their short road trip, traffic on their website had grown significantly.

"Wow, has anything ever tasted so good?" Momoko moaned over her plate of food.

"I think it's because we're all starving," Jude noted drily.

"No, really, Momoko's right, we did a great job," Dane enthused as he lifted a forkful to his waiting mouth.

"Here, a toast, to us," Sullivan suggested, raising his glass of wine.

"To us," they all toasted.