TAKE IT EASY • TC ✔️

45. A Friend for Velma

"Happy birthday, Mom," Marco said the next morning. It was rare that he was up before his sister, let alone his mother, but there he was, clad in his apron (he seemed to have gotten the memo about wearing a shirt underneath it) and flipping pancakes with a spatula.

Lu was sat on one of the kitchen chairs, sipping on a glass of juice and scrolling through her phone. Looking for texts from Timmy that didn't come, and why should they? She was the one who'd ruined everything, after all. She was the one who'd walked away.

Lu looked up as Giulia walked in, surprisingly not in her usual work attire, but jeans and a blouse. Her hair was still scraped back into a bun at the nape of her neck, but everything else seemed remarkably casual.

She smiled at her mother. "Happy birthday."

Giulia came over and pressed a little kiss to Lu's forehead. "Thank you, Lucia," she said quietly. Lu sniffed. Took another sip of her juice.

"Birthday pancakes," Giulia smiled, passing the counter and wiping a few drops of batter from the surface where Marco had spilled them. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and let her them rest on Marco's shoulders for a second.

"What else?" he asked good-naturedly. "What do you want on them?"

"What would you like," Giulia corrected. Patted his shoulder. "What's Lu having?"

Lu wanted to point out that she was still in the room, but she wasn't sure this would have been received well, it being Giulia's birthday and everything. She gulped down some more juice. "Lemon and sugar," she said.

"Hmm?" Giulia asked, not even turning around.

"Lemon and sugar," Marco filled in for her.

"Oh. No. I don't think I'll have that," Giulia said reprovingly. There was a hint of pity in her voice which would have been hard to detect had Lu not been so used to it. "I think maple syrup will do just fine for me, thank you."

Lu didn't say anything. Frowned at the news story on her phone.

"Lucia, stop looking like that, you'll get frown lines," Giulia said lightly.

"A plane's just crashed in Denver, I think I'm allowed to frown," Lu replied swiftly. Clicked off the story and checked her texts again. She wasn't really hoping for something from Timmy, or maybe she was, but it wasn't a rational hope. It was just a whim, just a far-fetched, unlikely idea that would probably never come to fruition.

Marco came over with a stack of pancakes, which he sat down in the middle of the table. Lu reached out, and he batted her hand away. "Do you not have any manners?" he scolded, but he was smiling. Lucia huffed. Sat back in her seat and watched morosely as Giulia sat down in the seat opposite, taking her sweet time with the maple syrup and the blueberries.

Eventually, Lu slipped a couple of pancakes onto her plate. They had been near the bottom of the stack and were now cold and limp around the edges. She sprinkled on caster sugar and doused the thing in lemon juice. Tucked the pancake in on itself and began to eat.

Lu could feel Giulia's eyes on her as she tucked in, lemon juice dripping onto the plate, sugar encrusting her fingers. She glanced up, and her mom averted her eyes quickly. Cut off a neat portion of pancake and swirled it into the maple syrup pooling at the edges of her plate.

"Lovely, thank you, Marco," Lu said, sucking some lemon sugar from the tip of her finger. "Just like Dad's."

There was silence for a moment as Lu realised she'd said the wrong thing. Giulia coughed.

They weren't like her dad's pancakes at all. Ron's were thinner, crepe-like, and these were too big, too thick. But she hadn't known what else to say, and now she'd gone and said the wrong thing entirely.