Peroxide (Peterick)

furst i steel ur food thann i steel ur hart

I choke the brew cup with the sort of power I wish to acquire ubiquitously, and this slight reprieve from helplessness is magnificent, but this is a coffee shop in the middle of the mall, and it isn't time for my whimsical thinking, especially when a cheerful Lindsey is visibly bubbling across from me.

"Pete's just going to love what you got him!" she gushes, greeting the table with the underside of her cup a tad too forcefully, causing the other patrons to swivel their necks and investigate before returning to their pastoral lives that don't concern us.

My fingers chip away at the plastic lid in front of my petite nose (which Pete has called adorable far too much), and my reply is distant. "Are you sure?"

When Lindsey invited me to the mall, I had no intentions of buying anything, even if Christmas is around the corner, but when a little glass finch caught my attention in the dingiest thrift shop in the entire complex, it was hard to resist...so I didn't, and now that bird has me feeling queasy about Pete's reaction to come in a few days.

Nevertheless, it's in my bag, ready to be cached in widespread commercialism in the form of wrapping paper when we return to the cottage, and my fear will have to wait until Christmas morning.

"Of course I'm sure, Patrick!" Darker thoughts button up Lindsey's mind suddenly, shaken by my unease. "Why wouldn't he?"

"I don't know." I don't dare look at Lindsey, instead utilizing my hands to suck cuts into the lid of my cup like I've been doing for the past few minutes.

"You're going to spill your coffee like that," Lindsey warns, taking note of my nervous excursion.

"Then all the white girls would come to wipe it up," I jest as Lindsey gyres hickory within their whites, slightly disappointed and slightly amused by my joke.

"I love white people jokes," she opines, skin jointed in good humor. "You'd probably be the emo cousin."

Hardly offended, I revenge, "And you'd be the butterscotch grandma."

The woman shrugs. "I guess that's fair."

"I just remembered!" Lindsey yelps, and a few people turn at the commotion. "Ryan and Brendon are coming tomorrow!"

"Maybe they're finally an item," I speculate, pondering a topic that shouldn't be relevant yet somehow is.

"I'm assuming one of them is a flamboyant gay, correct?" My friend infers quite intuitively, flesh pulsating with excitement.

"That would be Brendon," I chuckle, vision leeching the inspiration from my coffee. "Have you never met them?"

"Nope." Lindsey reams her apple lips, symbolizing earnestness, and my concrete brows converge.

"I would've thought that Gerard introduced you to them at least once."

"He prefers for me to stay away from his friends," Lindsey confesses. "It's probably just a white guy thing, nothing personal."

"On the topic of white guys, Gerard's most likely the weed cousin," I diverge, our white people stereotypes throbbing with overuse. "Brendon's the gay cousin, and Ryan is the suburban mom."

"A lot of cousins, huh?" the woman giggles, swabbing her throat with the latte pressed between her carmine nails.

"That doesn't really matter, because you're being upstaged by a new mom — Ryan Ross."

Both of Lindsey's brows scratch higher on her forehead, astounded by her present status. "I'm a mom now?"

"Admit it — you know you're a mom."