Lilah Tov (NaNoWriMo)

two

two

           “William, do not touch that sausage yet!” scolded my mother.

           I stared at the warm cylindrical piece of meat, forcing myself to not drool at the sight of it. Currently, it was ten o’clock. I had been up for almost three hours, even though I went to bed late, because I was playing Madden and thinking about that damn girl. She was absolutely not my type from a personality perspective, but there was something about her that really struck a cord in me. Maybe it was because she was hot. Regardless, I had been up since seven, and my mother had strictly cockblocked me from eating. We were having brunch (which was practically a sac2red tradition to my family in the summer), and nobody ate until everything was perfect and set and ready. Like, I couldn’t even sneak an apple without my mom being on my case. This must’ve been close to what prison was like.

            “Mom,” I groused, “I’ve up since seven, and I haven’t eaten! When are we going to eat?”

           “When everybody’s here,” replied my mother.

           I glanced around the table. My dad was at one end. My mom was at the other. Because Charlie was away with his boys, drinking beer on some yacht somewhere, I was stuck in the middle, facing no one due to temporary-only-child syndrome. If my parents thought that Charlie was miraculously going to waltz through the front door with a hangover and some girl he met on the way over just for a few pieces of bacon, they were sadly mistaken. Though, there were five extra place settings out, which was really strange, unless they thought that Charlie would bring back his friends and/or a horde of prostitutes for Brunch with the Brooks Family. “Who could we possibly be missing, Mom?”

           And then as if fate heard my pleas of hunger, the doorbell rang. My mother sent me a satisfied smile before going off to answer it. I sighed, standing up as my dad did the same, because that was just what you did when someone entered the room—you stood up. It was kind of a weird thing, but it had to do with respect and etiquette and all that crap that my family cared about. Some families valued NASCAR and monster trucks. My family valued table manners and decorum.

           A minute later, my mom returned to the screened-in porch with five familiar faces following behind. She was in a lull of easy conversation with the matriarch of the group, Eden Green. The two had always gotten along well, despite the age gap of about fifteen years, though my mom swore it was only ten. Behind Eden was her husband, Asher. When he came in, he nodded politely to my dad, and then headed over to that side of the table to join him. The men needed to have their bonding time, after all. Close behind Eden were her two kids: Jake and Sara. Jake was a too-cool-for-school ten-year-old, and Sara was a shy seven. They were pretty good kids, except this one time Charlie and I were setting off fireworks on the lawn, and because they needed to go to sleep (it was barely nine), we had to shut down the operation. Other than things like that, they were perfectly fine neighbors. And then lagging behind the very back of the Green pack was the same girl who I attributed half of my sleep deprivation to: Lilah Tov.

           She was dressed in nothing more than sweatpants and a T-shirt, and though it was probably fifty shades of off-putting to my mom, I thought that she looked great. Lilah seemed like the type of girl who could literally make a trash bag look hot. Oh, and since it was the late morning and not early evening, I could now see her more clearly. And I happened to like what I saw a lot. She was even hotter and prettier in the full-light than she was in the half-light. There was kind of this effortless, natural beauty or some shit about her. Lilah Tov was a ten—maybe even an eleven, easy.

           “Robert, Hillary, Will—this is our niece, Lilah,” introduced Eden with a gesture towards the inappropriately dressed teenage girl. “She’s about you age, Will, and she’ll be staying with us for the summer.” I didn’t feel like explaining to Eden and my parents that I had already met the girl, so I didn’t.