WHO: Lumos Boot & Lakshmi Patil WHAT: Lakshmi helps Lumos with a thing! WHEN: Tonight WHERE: Lumos's
“I’ll have to tell Terry,” Lumos called through the bathroom door as she stared at something on the sink. She glanced at her mobile, watching the clock tick by. “I mean, if it’s, you know.” She paused. “If it’s not, this never happened, by the way!”
Sillily enough, Lakshmi was actually pacing silently outside the bathroom door, unable to occupy her time waiting in any other fashion. “Of course you will,” Lakshmi soothed, although she wasn’t sure how Terry would take that news anymore than Lumos did. “And of course not, if it’s… then there’s nothing to discuss. Ever!”
“It’s probably not!” Lumos said, glancing at the door and then back at her mobile. “I’m probably overreacting. I’ve been really stressed lately!”
Lakshmi stopped her pacing on the opposite side of Lumos’s bathroom door. She wasn’t sure how much she believed that either thought, either. “That’s true,” she said slowly, “and we’ll find out very shortly!” She had her phone in her hands to watch the countdown as well.
A beat of silence passed. And then, quietly, “We were really careful, Lakshmi.”
“I believe you!”
Lumos opened her mouth to insist, but the alarm on both of their phones sounded and she snapped her mouth shut, shooting the sink a nervous glance. But she couldn’t actually look by herself. So with a deep breath, she reached for the door handle and swung the door open to let Lakshmi inside.
Despite watching the timer tick down on her phone, Lakshmi almost jumped when it went off in tandem. She swung around to face the door in expectation for Lumos to call it out, but then the door swung open. It took her only half a second to realize that Lumos hadn’t actually looked yet, and then she took a few steps in. “One of us needs to look,” she offered unhelpfully.
Lumos screwed her eyes shut. “I can’t.”
Taking a breath to steel herself, Lakshmi laid a hand on her friend’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “Do you want me to?”
“Yes.” But before either of them could move, Lumos opened her eyes and snatched the item in question from the sink. “Wait, no. I’ll look.” She swallowed hard and, after a very long moment, looked before holding it out for Lakshmi to see.
“Okay—” Lakshmi made move to do just that, but Lumos beat her there. Instead, she had to wait patiently, trying to read her best friend’s facial expression. It was impossible to tell, because the situation was so complex that either way it would be a mixed reaction straight off. Tentatively, Lakshmi leaned closer to the object. “Oh!” she said, looking from it to Lumos herself.
“Lakshmi,” Lumos said, half-whispering. “I swear we were careful. I don’t —”
“I believe you!” repeated Lakshmi, voice louder and a touch strained at the news. “Sometimes life just—” Words failed her, and she just ended up making an odd waving hand gesture.
“Is unfair?” Lumos filled in. She set it, the test, down on the sink, positive side up. But the plus sign glaring up at her made her reach out and turn it over. “I can’t believe — we were joking and he’s — I guess this explains why I’ve been so tired lately. I thought I was just sad, but no, I’m —” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it. So she threw both of her hands up with an, “Again!”
It wasn’t what Lakshmi was grasping at, but the words were true nonetheless. “You were joking about what?” Lakshmi pressed on anyway, “I’m sorry, life is unfair.” Although this was a bittersweet situation it, wasn’t all bad. “But it’s… it’s.” She couldn’t find the words either, to say that this was a positive even in spite of Byron not being around, and so she simply moved forward and wrapped her arms around Lumos’s shoulders, pulling her into a hug.
Lumos allowed herself to be pulled into a hug, returning it limply. She didn’t explain the joke. It had been between her and Byron and after everything that had been taken from her, she didn’t feel like giving that away.
“I got a week with him,” was what Lumos said instead, burying her face in Lakshmi’s shoulder. “A week and now there’s still a part of me that doesn’t really get why I miss him so much. But he’s everywhere and I still have to do this by myself.”
Using one of her hands to rub up and down Lumos’s back as soothing as she could, Lakshmi cast another glance at the sink, and the test inside that had ‘caused’ this situation. “How could not miss him? He’s very important to you — to all of us.” Her head tilted enough so that it was leaning her cheek against the top of her friend’s head. “You’re not alone, either. I’m here, we’re all here, even if it’s not what you mean.” It was so difficult. A life was such a cause for celebration, normally, but when the father was murdered?
“Because he could be so bloody frustrating,” Lumos said, muffled by Lakshmi’s shoulder, but her end of the hug grew a little tighter. “I wanted to strangle him myself sometimes! But I — I always cared about him. Even when he was making me want to tear my hair out. I thought there’d be more time.”
“He could be, but he was also intelligent, dedicated, sarcastically funny which also made me want to strangle him…” Lakshmi trailed off, not willing to let Lumos go down the negatives even if she knew how her friend thought about him deep down. “You should have had more time, it was so unfair that he was taken from you.” She pulled Lumos a little tighter herself.
Blinking back tears, Lumos only hummed something unintelligible into Lakshmi’s shoulder. She fell silent, clinging to her friend like the life preserver she so desperately needed, allowing herself the occasional sniffle as she unpacked what this really meant. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed Byron until she’d said it aloud, how strange she’d felt since he’d died. They’d had what managed to feel like so much and so little time together. And now…
With one last squeeze, Lumos pulled away, smoothing her hands over her clothes. “At least I’m not fifteen,” she said with a very weak laugh.
Lakshmi fixed her best friend with an emotional smile that wasn’t quite happy, but not quite sad either. The news was bittersweet. One hand still held Lumos at half an arm’s length instead of the tight embrace from moments earlier. “Merlin forbid more OWLs…” she said softly, an attempt to lighten the mood. “But she or he is going to be beautiful, I know it.”
“They’ll probably have Byron’s ears,” Lumos said with the same bittersweet smile.
Lakshmi had to bite back her first reaction about Byron’s ears. She pressed onward with a smile. “They might! And then they’d look like Terry, too.”
And even though Lakshmi had smiled, Lumos managed an actual laugh for the first time in nearly a month. She knew Byron’s ears weren’t ideal. Covering Lakshmi’s hand with one of her own, she said, “We’ll see.” The test caught the corner of her eye and she finally reached for it, binning it. “But for now, let’s eat. I’m suddenly starving.”
When Lumos laughed it was practically impossible not to as well, as short and quick as it was. “Then let’s go make dinner.”