And I don’t know if Lilia’s mum meant for it to look like that or if it was purely accidental, but the effect is the same. Something folds up quietly in my chest, and I sit there, spoon untouched, feeling like a fraud in someone else’s morning.
The table is messy, the room smells like toast and cinnamon and overripe bananas, and everyone is smiling.
For a split second, I find myself envying Lilia. And I hate it. Because what kind of person looks at their friend—kind, smiley, generous Lilia—and thinks,Why do you get this and I don’t?What kind of person feels envy over something sobasic, so ordinary, like a seat at the breakfast table and a mum who smiles and means it.
I’m sitting here in her home, under her roof, being given food and kindness and a place to sleep—and all I can think about is how unfair it feels.
And itisn’tunfair. Lilia deserves all of this. Every messy, loud, loving inch of it. She deserves the laughter and the family inside-jokes and the burned toast and the blueberry smiley faces.
But a small part of me—a part I don’t like, a part I wish I could bury and never touch again—wants it forme, too.
Stop it, Adeline.What did youjustsay? Perfect doesn’t exist. Don’t be so envious of something you don’t know a thing about.
Nothing real ever looks perfect up close.
I glance at Lilia. She’s laughing now, syrup dribbling down her plate, and I think—god, I’m awful.
I force myself to breathe. To blink the burning away from behind my eyes.
I will not cry at a pancake. I won’t be that person.
But there’s this small, ridiculous moment where I feel like I might.
“Are you alright, darling?” her mum asks me gently, looking at me like she feels…sorryfor me.
And I want to tell her she shouldn’t. I want to tell her that I don’t belong here at this table, not really. That the warmth she’s offering, the help she’s giving—I haven’t earned it.
That I don’t know what to do with someone calling me darling and looking at me like that. With such honest, genuine kindness.
I want to tell her she shouldn’t waste it on me.
That I’m not worth it.
“All good,” I say. And then I smile.
The kind of smile I’ve worn a hundred times in a hundred rooms where I didn’t know what else to do.
But inside, I want to disappear.
Lilia looks up, mid-bite, her eyes narrowing slightly. But her mouth is full of toast and probably half a jar of Nutella, so she doesn’t say anything.
Her dad, oblivious, points at the toast. “That’s going to break the toaster. Again.”
“It’s not going back in the toaster,” Lilia replies through a mouthful.
“You say that,” he says, leaning back with a sceptical sip of coffee, “and yet a few days ago, I pulled a croissant out of there that was literally on fire.”
“Science is about risk,” Lilia says cooly.
Dawn, sitting at the corner of the table with her knees now pulled up to her chest, speaks without looking up. “Last week you put a Pop-Tart in with the foil still on it.”
Lilia waves her off. “That was Tuesday. Ancient history.”
Her dad points his coffee mug at her. “You nearly electrocuted yourself.”
“Yeah, well. It was a low point.”
“That toaster cost me eighty euros. From Italy!” her mother says with absolute seriousness.
