Best Friends Forever

21

"Leila, stop looking at me like that," my mom frowned at me on a beautiful Sunday morning. "You look just like your father when you do that, and not in a good way."

My parents and I were in the kitchen, all working hard on preparing a family brunch. Ella and the kitchen staff had tried to convince us not to make it ourselves, undoubtedly to avoid the mess my mom would make, but it was no use. My parents thought this would be the perfect family bonding experience, but it turned out to be anything but.

The pancake batter was perfect and ready, and my dad and I were excited. Pancakes were my specialty, the one thing I could actually make well in the kitchen. So when I said we were ready for pancakes, I meant we were ready.

All of that changed when I poured the first bit of batter into the pan. It had a lot of brown chunks in it, and it didn't take me long to discover what had happened.

"Mom!" I gasped. "Did you add chocolate chips to the pancake batter?"

"No, Leila. I would never," she said, batting her eyes at me innocently.

"Oh. My. God. I can't believe you would betray me like that."

"Tal, did you actually?" my dad jumped in.

"It's so much better that way!" my mom defended herself.

"Stop trying to add chocolate into things secretly. Your theory that we will try it and love it is wrong!" I said, rolling my eyes at her but not being able to actually be mad.

"This has been my life since I married your mom, Robot," my dad said. "Can you believe what I've had to deal with?"

"Shut up, T-Bone," my mom said. "If you're system didn't have a defect that made you not like chocolate everything would be fine and I wouldn't have to do this."

"It's not a defect, Tal. My operating system has an antivirus software installed and it decided chocolate is a deadly, disgusting virus."

"I knew Mom had a virus!" I exclaimed. "We need to quarantine her before she tries to infect us again like she did today," I said, pointing at the chocolate-filled batter as evidence.

"Shit, you've finally figured it out," my mom said. "I've failed my mission and the chocolate lovers everywhere."

My dad raised his hand towards me for a high five. "Nice detective work, Robot. We've contained her for now. Now, Talia, you are going to go pick out the chocolate chips out of that pancake batter one by one."

My mom sighed but relented, walking over to the batter and carefully fishing out chocolate chip after chocolate chip with a spoon until the batter was no longer contaminated.

It was only then that I was able to finally cook the pancakes, and then we were all sat at the table with the heaps of food around us, ready to eat.

"I invited Addy and Lucas, but Lucas has a doctor's appointment so they couldn't make it today," my mom said.

"First of all, Mom," I said. "Stop texting my friends. Second of all, you can't invite Addy and Lucas to things and not invite Jason. It's rude."

"Addy and I text all the time, it's not weird."

"Everything you do is weird," I rolled my eyes. "What's Lucas's doctor's appointment for?"

"Addy didn't say, but she sounded kind of worried. I'm sure everything is fine, though."

"That's weird, I was talking to Lucas yesterday and he didn't mention anything about a doctor's appointment."

"Maybe it was a last minute thing," my dad suggested. "Or probably just a check up."

"Yeah, you're right," I said, shaking my head at the way my brain always jumped to the worst conclusions. People went to doctors all the time.

"Why is someone so worried?" my mom said suggestively, giving me a wink. "Does someone, hmm, I don't know, love Lucas?"

"He's my best friend," I said.

"So?" my mom responded.

"So you don't think it's weird to be into your best friend?"

"People fall in love with their best friends all the time, Leila," my mom responded, a faraway look in her eyes. "Some of the best relationships are with people who you started off as friends with."

"Why are you saying it like that?" I asked. "I know that's not how you and Dad started out."

Immediately my mom sobered up. "I wasn't talking about me and your dad, I was just saying in general. I personally think you and Lucas would be an amazing couple. You have to admit, you like him like that at least a little."

I rolled my eyes at her. "No, mom," I said. "I love him in a completely platonic, friendly way and I care about his health."

"Sureee," she said. "I'm still waiting for you two to get married, I have your wedding dress picked out already."

My dad laughed. "You may think she's joking, Robot, but she actually does have a dress picked."

"Toby made me promise never to tell anyone this, but he shed a tear looking at the dress because he wasn't ready to see his little girl all grown up."

"What the hell, Talia? You swore that would stay between us."

She shrugged. "Promises are made to be broken. What are you going to do about it now?"

"Get a divorce," my dad joked.

"Okay, bye," my mom said. "But if you leave now you're not invited to Leila and Lucas's wedding."

"Mom, that's not going to happen. Can you stop saying that?"

"It better happen, Robot," my dad said to me. "It's the only reason I'm staying in this family."

I laughed at them. My parents had always been funnier together, and the time we spent together was never boring. When it was the three of us, it made me yearn that it could be like this when it was just me and my mom, too.

There was no one in the entire world that I loved more than my parents. I didn't think I would ever meet two better people, and I wouldn't. With my dad, he made it so easy for me to show it. He was straightforward with me, and I knew exactly who he was. But sixteen years later and my mom was still a complete mystery to me.

But sitting here now with a huge grin stretched across my face, I swore to myself to always have my family enjoy each other's company like this. Of all the things that would inevitably go wrong in my life, my relationship with my family would not be one of them.

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