Reality And Us

Chapter Twenty-One

When Nicklas woke up the next day, it was already noon. He never minded waking up so late, it wasn't that unusual he woke up when other people had lunch already. Blame it on his age.

He yawned loudly as he put both his arms above his head, his eyes were shut tightly. He trotted over to the light switch, turning it on, so that he could see a bit more - his room had previously been the darkness itself.

He looked around himself, trying to locate his phone. He had yet to find out that it was almost one pm.

Seeing the object he was looking for on his desk, he grabbed it. His eyes opened wide as he read the time, he hadn't realized how late it already was. Not that it mattered.

He looked at his notifications and saw that he had received a new message, from Zane, agreeing that they could meet, maybe at two pm, at the little park. Nick answered with 'sure', and put his phone away afterwards, he had to get ready after all.

After he had done that he went into the kitchen, preparing some bread and other stuff to eat. After having realized that he could either eat something now, which would result in just another usual breakfast, or he could organize a little meal to eat with Zane, which would be a welcomed change to his normal mornings. It sounded cool.

There were fresh brownies in the kitchen, his dad sometimes would bake on Saturday or Sunday mornings, he took some of them as well.

He wasn't preparing a picnic, but it might be nice to have breakfast together with his friend. Or rather a brunch. Or maybe you already consider it a lunch? Nicklas didn't know.

It was his first meal of the day, which screamed 'breakfast', but was it for Zane? And it would be lunchtime already, so that was an argument for calling it 'lunch'. But that wasn't food you usually eat for lunch now, was it?

Realizing he had lost a few minutes contemplating whether or not to call it 'brunch', he started to take care of the food once again. He didn't want to be late. He hoped this wouldn't be weird, if he went to the meet-up with what felt like half the kitchen.

Nick took a few small boxes to put the food into. He took more with him than he thought they'd eat, but he didn't really know a lot about Zane's food preferences, so he didn't really have a choice. He wanted to make sure there was something his friend liked, after all.

His father walked into the room, he had just taken care of the plants. "What are you doing?", he asked.

Nicklas looked up, startled at the other's presence. "Preparing a brunch."

His dad mustered the boxes, before speaking up again, "You're out today?"

The boy nodded, "Socializing.", he said. He couldn't help but feel as if their conversation, or whatever lingered in the air, was extremely awkward. Probably because of the day before.

His father rose his eyebrows. "Where? When will you be back? With whom? What will you do?"

Yes, it was definitely because of yesterday. His parents were never that inquisitive, always let him have that certain freedom, a freedom that probably wouldn't be too visible in the near future. He mentally cursed Jamie and his stupid idea, but he wasn't that angry. He just had to tell his family more, it wasn't that bad.

"Long Branch Park, I don't know yet, with Zane, what was the last one?", he said, trying to recall what other information his curious father had wanted to know.

"I asked what you guys wanted to do. And please be back before six."

Nicklas nodded, he doubted that they'd spend that much time together. Not that he didn't want to, it was simply unlikely because Zane probably had stuff to do, whatever that could be.