“Don’t eat chips before dinner, or you won’t want to eat.”
“Killjoy.”
Yeah, being the eldest in my immediate family sucks sometimes. I’m the one who has to say no to stuff even when I wanna say yes. Be responsible and trustworthy for the adults.
“I thought she wouldn’t be boring anymore now that she’s dating him…” Brandon whispers loudly to Blake, and they scramble out of the kitchen.
And boring, add that to the eldest daughter curse.
I turn off the music that I didn’t even notice was still playing in the background.
“We should probably clean up.” I scratch a spot on my nose and hurry to the pantry to get the broom.
I don’t look up, but still hear him washing the bowl and the other stuff we got dirty.
“I’m not that boring, right?” I ask the ground, hating that I even have to ask this to West of all people. He’s the opposite of boring. He’ll be that person who will be full of stories to tell his kids, and they can envy him and resent him, and he’ll seem socool. I wish I dared to do half the stupid shit he does. That’s why I give him such a hard time about it. Pure childish envy. I wish I could just stop overthinking everything and all its consequences, but I can’t just turn off my brain like that.
“I hardly think someone chugging beer upside down is boring.” He recalls, and I roll my eyes, stopping the sweeping motion, while he gets down to pick up the dust pan and take it to the trash.
“No, but that was today, and you and Allison talked me into it. That doesn’t count.”
“Brown, you don’t work that way. You must be the most stubborn person I know, so trust me, we didn’t convince you to do anything. If you didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t have done it.” He bangs the dust pan against the trash to make sure everything falls into it.
“Okay, but what if I did it because I wanted to prove that my life isn’t boring? Not because I really wanted to? What does that make me?” I rest my chin at the top of the broom, and he comes closer.
“That makes you human.” Slowly, he takes the broom from me and ends up sweeping the rest of the kitchen himself. “Just because you don’t party like Allison or me doesn’t mean your life is boring. You must have read about a hundred books in your life, you walk around the city all the time, and talk to different people, especially older, experienced people. You can sing, and you listen to all types of music from six different decades. You have an open mind and have intelligent conversations.” He turns to me while sweeping. “You’re curious, and when you’re interested in something, you deep dive into it until you know more about it than Wikipedia. You observe people to the point where I think you could be their therapist, and they wouldn’t need to say a word to tell you what’s wrong. I don’t know Brown, it seems like your life is rich to me.” He casually walks off as if hedidn’t read my entire being and essence. Like it’s just something he does on the regular, no big deal.
I feelseen. And I hate to admit it, but he opened some locked part of my brain that deemed me plain and without substance.He’s right.
“I-I hate you, too.” I shrug, speechless, not knowing what to say, and his laugh lines slap me right in the face.
“I love it when you react like that.” He brushes past me to put the broom and dust pan away and then comes back.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re malfunctioning because you can’t believe I’m a normal person and think things through.”
He’s definitely not normal. He’s somehow the complete opposite.
“I know, I just-” I truly have nothing relevant to say right now. Actually, I hope he doesn’t feel like that. “Off the record, I do think you think things through, you’re just good at choosing what’s worth thinking about or not.”
Something I lack because I just overthink everything.
“Hmm, off the record, because you can’t be caught dead complimenting me, right?”
“See?”
He nods, a smile creeping up, and I find myself smiling back, ever so slightly.
Silence and muffled laughs from afar. It’s the second time today I’m wishing to draw his freckles and memorize the color of his eyes.What?
“We should…” He gestures towards the flour all over us.
“Yeah… Outside, so we don’t upset yourcleaning condition.” I phrase it slowly, and he scoffs.
“It’s called being organized. You should try it sometime, and you know, not live like a raccoon in a dumpster.”
“It’s not that bad.”
