Between You and Me

Chapter 34

It was her last few days of spending lazy days hanging with Tristan, and then he would be back at school. What would she do with herself without him at home?

Read more of her grandmother's diary. Write in her own diary?

Maybe get out of the house and drive around in the car her sister promised her. But when she asked her about it, she brushed her off.

"You said you were buying a new car and giving me your old one."

"Is that what I said?"

Tristan and she had spent all day making out and enjoying each other, and then he had to leave for a job. Now that Zee was home, she thought they would hang out or get another driving lesson in. She felt ready to take her driver's test soon.

"Will you even give me another lesson, I've been-" She stopped short of telling her that Tristan had been giving her lessons all simmer. No need to go there with her sister who would get overdramatic about it. Tristan was her friend first before he was her boyfriend.

"I said I would, I will, damn sis."

She kept quiet after that. Her sister was never home. She never sat and talked to her like when they lived at home with their mother and shared a small bedroom. Now that she was out and free from their strict mother, Zee did whatever she wanted, and she wanted to never be home.

She thought breaking up with ??? would have her home more, but she only found someone else to spend her time with that fast.

She stormed away from her sister in the living room and went upstairs. Even though her sister was home. it was like she was all alone. She wished she could go into Tristan's room and just lay there. Her sister would catch her there for sure.

So she went into the storage bedroom across from hers. There were still a lot of things to go through and she wasted the summer not finishing it. They would never be able to use the room as a spare bedroom with all the things. She did not want to give her grandmother's things away, but they did not have much space in the place.

She opened a box and found what she wanted to go through, her grandmother's book of recipes.

"I have hit the motherload!" She grabbed the book and went to her room to sit on the bed.

Her GiGi told her in the past she did not need to write recipes down, but here it was. A three-ring binder filled with pages. Some were handwritten pages. The handwriting was the same as her journals. A few pages looked like clippings from magazines. There were also a lot of printed-out pages from several websites.

They were worn, highlighted in places, and even marked up with notes. They were divided into sections. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, sides, desserts. And then there was the last section which had her name on it, Johanna.

"What?" She could not wait to go through those pages. Turning a few she saw they were vegetarian and vegan recipes. She remembered when she first went vegetarian, her grandmother did not scoff at her like her mother did. She fed her peanut butter sandwiches while her sister ate bologna. She made her a Boca veggie burger while she fed Zee beef burgers. She never told her to eat whatever she made, she always made her something she could eat.

When she started to become vegan, her grandmother then learned what she could and could not eat. She made her vegan mac n cheese, vegan bread, vegan fried chick'n, and basically anything she wanted veganized. These were all the recipes she either found online and tweaked or came up with herself.

A lot of the original recipes were from the vegetables her GiGi grew in her garden. Her mouth watered thinking of some of the good food her grandmother made.