We're Not Related Anymore...

Reunion at Brunch

This chapter is dedicated to suddenlyawritter7 for always making my day with her comments!

Maddie: Present Day

After going to the funeral home and choosing the 'package' that we want for my dad, Shelley and I get into the car feeling ravenous. She fiddles with her mom's car radio until a station playing pop music comes on. She lightly drums her fingers when the intro to a famous love song comes on.

We're halfway home when I hear her stomach growl. It's so loud that I hear it over the song that's palying. I turn down the music, laughing. "We should've bought those muffins when we had the chance," I tell Shelley. Before we left to make the arrangements, we stopped off at a grocery store to get some ridiculously expensive coffees. Shelley called her sister on the way and asked her if we could buy muffins for the late breakfast we were planning.

"No," she'd said. "I want to make breakfast." Shelley's face when she'd heard her sister's words was something staight out of a comic book strip. I'd never seen someone so terrified by the promise of food.

"We really should've," Shelley tells me with a sigh. "If Mary is making breakfast, we'll be lucky if we make the funeral at all. We'll probably be stuck on the toilet with the food poisoning she's about to give us."

"She can't be that bad," I tell Shelley as I pull into Lilian's driveway. Josh's truck is back, and for some reason, the sight of it causes butterflies to form in my stomach. But there's no reason for that. Lilian told me Jacob wasn't here.

"You're right," Shelley tells me. "She's worse." I watch as she jumps out of the car before I've even removed the keys from the ignition. She runs up the porch and shoves open the screen door with the hand not carrying the bunch of pamphlets she'd nicked from the funeral home. She was weirdly enchanted by all the different services the funeral home offered. I don't even want to ask her why she took them. Is it normal for sixteen-year-olds to start planning their own funeral?

I clean up the car before I go in. Shelley and I left our cups and sugar packets in here and I don't want to leave it too long in case Lilian needs to use her car today.

With my hands full of trash, I go around the house and dump the items into the bin outside of the backdoor. I open the backdoor once I'm done. It leads me into the kitchen where both a burnt and delicious smell war for my attention. It's a little overstimulating and I scrunch my nose against it.

"Mary?" I call out, not seeing anyone in the rustic-looking kitchen- it's all wooden this and wooden that. "Do you need help with breakfast?" No one answers me and I glance down at my watch, seeing the time. It's just after ten. I spot a plate full of pancakes and help myself to one before going over to the fridge to find the fruit. There's a carton full of blueberries and I take it out along with a jug of orange juice. I close the fridge using my elbow and almost drop the jug when I turn around.

"Jesus, you can't just sneak up on people!" I exclaim, seeing Jacob's tall frame eating up the doorway leading to the connected dining room. I put the jug and berries down on the nearby island and clutch my now free hands to my chest. After no verbal response, I thought I was alone in the kitchen. If I didn't know Jacob's face so intimately, I would've sworn he was an intruder.

"Maddie..." He says, his eyes blown wide. "You look... you look different." He tells me, his eyes sweeping over my body. I have to stop myself from doing the same. I wasn't expecting to see him so soon and now that he's here it's an effort not to drink in his appearance.

"Hi," he says, and something like a blush crawls over his face. It's cute-no. I shake my head. Nothing about Jacob Isaacs is cute. The guy is an asshole.