The Lies That We Tell

𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐝'𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲

On the next Saturday, Quentin's family celebrated Eleanor and Everett's fifth birthday. Because his parents had known his friends for years, he could invite them to the party so he wouldn't be too bored alone.

Birthday twins invited their own friends and Quentin could already imagine their two-storied house full of little children screaming and running around, making a mess everywhere.

And it wasn't only twins who invited people but his parents too. Knowing them, there would be a lot of relatives, the ones who he always got along easily and the ones he couldn't even remember.

A few days ago, he saw his mother sitting alone in the kitchen, drinking her usual hot chocolate while writing something on paper. When he had asked about it, she answered that it was a list of everyone she wanted to invite. There must have been at least fifteen names.

In times like this, Quentin missed her antisocial mother who only spent time with him and her brother before remembering that she was very lonely and sad back then. Now he was just glad she had found more people who made her happy.

Quentin already knew that his father had only invited his family from Colorado and few friends. He knew some of his parents' friends who had been regular visitors in their house since forever. They weren't the worst kind of adults, some of them were pretty nice actually.

There were one couple, Joey and Kenneth and their three adopted children. Patrick came too with his wife Emma and daughter Violet. Apparently, he was his father's roommate when he first moved to New York years ago before living with Quentin and his mother.

Wesley and Sofia were also invited but he wasn't sure if they would come. They were still quite broken over their son who died eight months ago. He had suffered from leukemia almost his entire life. It was tragic, Cole's parents were so devasted and Quentin could see that the young boy's death affected also on his parents.

When they had attended the funeral, even he had shed a few tears as he thought how unfair life was sometimes. God, the kid was only seven! Now Quentin knew better not to take his family, friends or anyone he loved for granted.

All in all, there would be a lot of people in the house today but they still had about an hour left before quests came. He could see his mother panicking in the kitchen, worrying if there was something that still needed to be done or if something went wrong.

He couldn't understand why she worried so much because it was just a normal birthday party with an unusual amount of guests arriving. Oh well, she had his father so Quentin could be in his room away from her.

"Quentin, sweetie! Came downstairs!" He rolled his eyes before walking down the stairs where his mother was already waiting for him.

"Is that what you're gonna wear? It's a party, you can't look like you just woke up! And tell me again how many friends did you invite?" she asked, sounding a little hysterical.

Alright, he knew what was happening and luckily, he also knew how to fix it. Being about six inches taller than her, he went down a little bit so he was on her level before putting his hands on both of her shoulders.

"Four, Isaac and the girls. And Marco, my new friend from school. The one from your class, remember? You gotta relax, Mom. I'll change my clothes later. Now, why don't you go sit down for a bit and let me and Dad take care of everything."

She looked at him as if he was stupid and instead of listening to her eldest son, she went back to the kitchen where everything seemed to be done. For some reason, there was three kinds of cakes. One was a huge strawberry cream cake with some children's cartoon picture on top of it, two chocolate cakes and three different cheesecakes.