Reality And Us

Chapter Thirty Four

Have you ever encountered that weird feeling of third-wheeling when being with your parents?

Nicklas just got into these situations way too often, and this car ride was a brilliant example.

It wasn't even that the topic was something he couldn't participate in discussing, it was just the way they talked to each other that had any attempt to join this conversation doomed to fail in miserable awkwardness for their son. So he just kept on listening to whatever his parents thought to be interesting.

His dad had been in the kitchen all morning, and the result of it were some delicious looking cupcakes. Not many, and everybody knew they'd all be gone at least on Monday - both Jamie and Stella would kill for his father's baking.

Now, a little while later, his mom was busy praising her husband for his absolutely incredible skills, and how cute he looked with that pink apron and what-not. They probably thought their son couldn't hear them.

Well, he could, and this by far wasn't the first time things like these happened, it weirded him out. Sure, his parents were human beings, with all that need for useless human-typical behavior, but have you ever heard your mom calling your dad 'darling'? And sounding like one of these love-sick idiots from teenage movies?

What made this even worse, his dad was smiling the whole time, every single time Nick's mom called him that, it was easy to notice in the rear-view mirror. This was literally like one of those  Rom-coms you cringed at so hard it hurt.

Of course, he wasn't opposed to his parents being each other's whole world or something, but please without the cringe. And those weird, embarrassing pet-names. And this lack of ability to be somewhat private. Especially in front of their children.

They probably expected him to have that at one point in his life as well, an idea which didn't exactly make him happy. They were so similar to a lot of other parents or older people, ignoring possibilities and wanting to write the script of the life of their child a little too much.

This whole car-ride was pretty much idiotic. His parents had wanted to go on a walk, or rather a hike. The weather had been surprisingly good that morning, and the decision to leave wasn't hard. Just that they had to drag their son along. Family bonding or something.

It was - for a day that late in autumn - almost hot outside. Okay, a lot of other people might still regard it as cold, but they were simply not used to that beautiful winter their country had. Depending on how far up north you were willing to go, there surely would be people regarding these temperatures as moderate, average or even warm. For the latter you might have to look for some of the weird people in Nunavut or the North-West Territories.

But still, it wasn't too bad.

There were trees at both sides of the road, a lot of them, forming huge forests which made the rest of the world disappear. They were mostly made up out of pine trees, but somewhere between those still green giants one or two bald trees hid, difficult to spot.

The road they used slowly started to narrow, and after choosing a small branch leaving it, the way they drove felt like the route to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, at the back of beyond.

It didn't take long until they arrived at a small parking lot, and eventually they found themselves surrounded by old trees, taller enough to let their heads disappear within the sky. His father locked the car after they took their bags and it was silent for a while, each of them appreciating the calm. 

Nicklas felt like one of those primitives who refused to even use a phone, that's how far they were from civilization.

"Where do we go now?", he asked, breaking the silence. A slight annoyance was to be found within his voice, but his mother was too optimistic to notice.