The Beauty in Time

18

◿𝙼𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚠◸

I'm not late when I walk through the door. I'm early, even. Too early. My mom puts me to work immediately without much of a hello. She makes me sit down with five different balloon packets, telling me to fill all of them with helium.

Morgan sits happily beside me, kicking her feet and watching with a shit eating grin as I blow up her birthday balloons for her. She, obviously, isn't being told to go do something. It's her birthday, after all.

I still narrow my eyes at her. "Morgan, go do something." I try shooing her away. "Get away from me."

Her smile widens. "I want that one bigger." She points to the balloon I'm in the middle of tying.

"Go away." I dismiss with a roll of my eyes.

"Mom! Matthew's not blowing the balloons up right!"

I glare at her the entire time my mom scolds me from the other room.

"There's still time for me to skip this." I murmur my warning quietly, never daring to say it in front of my parents.

Morgan laughs because she recognizes the joke my parents would never notice. "Skip it or miss it?" She asks.

I scoff and look away to stick a new balloon on the helium thing. "What's the difference?"

"Skip it is on purpose." Morgan reasons. I look back at her, stopping before I can turn the air on. She smiles a little weaker, doing her best to still joke with me. Or at least make it seem like she's still joking. "You didn't skip it last year, did you?"

"I missed it, Morgan."

She nods to herself and looks to the tv. "Yeah, because you're stupid." She hums. Her smile gets wider and she tries to hide it by pretending to watch tv.

I laugh it off with her. It's much better than acknowledging the events of last year any more than we already have. The little bit we just acknowledged seemed to be for her own benefit. Just so she can have some piece of mind.

Morgan sighs as she reaches for the remote beside her. I pay her no mind and continue blowing up multicolored balloons. I don't tie strings to them though since I was never given any. I smile to myself as I let them go, letting them float all the way up the ceiling where my mom will order my dad to get them. It's a bit of payback for that stupid order he gave me before he left Elle's last weekend.

"Ooh," Morgan gasps. I glance at the tv to see her click on a movie trailer.

I roll my eyes at the movie, completely uninterested in the ongoing franchise of the cartoon. "That's stupid." I declare, just to piss her off.

"Elle said she wanted to watch this."

I sit up quick. "What?"

Morgan looks over at me. She makes a face. "Elle." She repeats like I didn't hear her name. "We were talking at the park. She said she wanted to watch it too."

I frown a little at the tv. It does look like something she'd want to watch. That fact makes me frown more since I just called it stupid.

"Do you think you could ask her if she wants to go to the movies and watch it with me? None of my friends like these, they won't watch with me."

Morgan's tone is hopeful and genuine which makes it harder for me to frown at her. "Sorry, kiddo. I don't, uh, think she'd be up for it." I apologize quietly as I look down at the balloons again.

"Oh." Morgan mutters. She lets it go easily, probably because she doesn't know Elle that well anyway. They got along great at the park, better than I could've ever imagined a twenty-five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old could.