And The Story's All Over You Who: Max & Lily What: The Castle siblings have the opportunity to have dinner together Where: The Castle apartment, 605 When: 7:30 pm Notes:Placeholder for a Gdoc Nvm, done! Warnings: TBA
It had been weeks since Lily and Max moved into their new apartment and not once did they manage to sit down for a meal together. It had been so long since they had done this ritual that it was beginning to slowly upset Lily. She had been cooking and feeding Max since their mother died. It had always been the two of them having meals together, and later on Aunt Jill had joined the table; it had become tradition.
Whether or not Max felt the same way, Lily didn’t know, but she enjoyed cooking and sitting down with her brother to a good meal. A healthy meal. Now, with their schedules being such opposites, it seemed like the only opportunity for the two to be around one another.
Lily had begun cooking a few hours beforehand with the intention of having a late evening dinner while she was still active and Max was just getting energized for the night. With careful preparation she had pulled her bright curls into a pony-tail and set to work. Gathering enough cherry tomatoes from the little plant she kept in their living room window, she diced up a decent amount of fresh garlic, added gathered herbs from her other plants, and baked the tomatoes in the oven while cooking penne over the stove.
A simple meal to be sure but one that would be filled with flavor. She even went so far as to bring out a bottle of Pinot Grigio with an option of water if Max wasn’t interested. By the time dinner was ready, Lily was salivating over the scent of the tomatoes and garlic that filled the apartment while she set the small kitchen table the siblings shared.
Lounging in his room, working his way through a portion of a new game, Max sniffed the air as he realized there was food ready. Throwing down the controller gently, he hopped to his feet and made his way through the medium-sized apartment, finding the table set and Lily already laying out the meal.
“Smells good, Lil - what’re we having? Pasta, nice,” were his comments as he instantly began to help himself to the penne in a dish, not needing to wait for an OK from the chef herself. He spied the wine glasses, and considered his options for the moment.
“Just water, tonight? Still can’t get into wine. S’for old people, anyway,” he teased, heaping his plate high with as much food as it could hold. His sole polite move was to wait until Lily was seated at the table before starting to shovel food into his mouth with the keen dexterity and ability of a trash compactor.
Lily hit Max in the back of the head with a dish towel as she passed him to get her own plate. “It’s not for old people, dweeb.” She placed the plate at the seat across from Max and settled down. “I know it’s not covered in cheese like you enjoy but I think this is pretty good, no?”
Capturing a cherry tomato on her fork she bit into it and savored the heated mixture of sweet and spicy. She reached back and took the tie out from her hair, letting her crazed curls fall loose down her back in their more natural style before she continued to eat. Pausing, she reached for the wine and poured herself a glass, giving Max some sort of a stink eye as she did so, then settled into her chair as she slowly sipped at her wine and smiled at her brother. “So, it’s our first dinner at the new place. This is kind of like a special occasion.”
“First dinner? But we’ve been living here for weeks...” He looked up with a confused expression, noodles sticking out from his mouth impolitely. He quickly sucked them in with the tiniest slurping noise, giving a loose grin before grabbing a napkin and leaning away from Lily’s possible slaps that were supposed to be teaching him table etiquette. “Oh, you mean together. Yeah, it did feel weird - and the noodles are fine. Great, in fact,” he returned on his sister’s comment, taking yet another bite of the meal and chewing for a moment as they fell into a comfortable silence.
While Lily didn’t hit Max for his indiscretion she did manage to give him a glare before sipping at her wine. “I’m glad you like the food, Max,” she smiled at him and placed the glass back down before grabbing her fork again. After a moment where she politely chewed her food with her mouth closed she answered Max’s question. “Work is all right, just day to day stuff. Nothing extremely exciting goes on which is okay with me.” She stabbed at a tomato and popped it into her mouth. “Yoga has been nice, we’re slowly getting a following. I did try to see who could do a headstand this week, just to see if anyone was advanced, and I had a man topple into a window yesterday morning.”
She laughed slightly at the memory, shaking her head and her curls falling into her face. “He was rather cocky when he went to do the hand stand. Then he tipped over, crashing into the window, didn’t break it or anything but he managed to cut open his foot somehow.” She looked at her brother with a sparkle in her eyes and took another sip of her wine. “And how are classes with you, Max?”
“They’re, uh, fine.” He shoved another forkful of food into his mouth, the chewing giving him time to think. “Gotta be careful who finds out about the headstand into the window, though, Lil, gonna give people the wrong idea.” The words came out through the food, just the last few chews, and thankfully he didn’t spew anything onto the table top. He swallowed, piecing together his words. “But uh, yeah, classes are fine. I, uh, fell asleep in Design, but managed through Computer Science. Good thing, too, ‘cause there’s a test next Tuesday...” Mumbling the last bit, he quickly shoveled more noodles into his mouth as though to hide his admissions.
A drink of water and another forkful of the pasta, he began to think of how to approach a question that had appeared earlier in the day. He still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, if maybe he’d imagined it (he had fallen asleep on the bus system more than once) but he knew of one way to try and figure things out. But how did he frame it for Lily so she didn’t freak out? He wasn’t entirely sure.
“So when are you gonna make something from that new cookbook I got you? I thought you’d be itching to try it out.”
Raising a thin eyebrow, Lily finished chewing her food before speaking, “I figured I would make you something you’d find edible first before I dove into the vegan cookbook. You know I’d be using tempeh and tofu.” She placed her fork down and rested her elbows on the edge of the table, cupping her chin with her hands. “It looks like an awesome cookbook though. Thank you. I’ll try it out this weekend maybe. Do you want me to try anything specific? A dessert? A breakfast meal?”
She was already growing calmer as her energy began to drain away. A good meal plus the day quickly ending left Lily relatively calm by this hour. She always started to have a dreamy look to her eyes around this hour and it only got worse as the evening progressed.
Max shrugged. “Food’s food, I mean, I’ve had so much tofu at this point that you’d think it was coming out of my ears.” He grinned, forking more penne into his mouth. As he chewed, his face adopted a thoughtful look. “I’m not sure what you should try. I mean, I guess whatever appeals to you the most, or you could just start on page one.” The grin reappeared once more, then was lost in favor of more food. Plate quickly growing empty, Max helped himself to the main dish once more to load up on more carbs.
“So, um,” he started as casually as he could. “Do you...have any pictures of Dad?”
Lily was about to vocally consider the cook book options when Max suddenly dropped a bomb. Her dreamy eyed expression turned hard as her face carefully became a mask. She sat up straight in her chair and put too much attention into lifting her fork, stabbing a piece of penne, bringing it to her lips, and biting it. She said nothing, only chewing the food and using it as an excuse to remain silent for a moment.
“Um,” she considered. “I don’t know, I don’t think so... why do you ask?” She did have a photo of their father stuffed at the bottom of a box of photos. A family portrait right after Max had been born. She was beaming just as her mother was and Max was a squirming pink little thing. Her father stood behind them, looking serious and with a lack of emotion. He hadn’t cared from the start and Lily would rather the very memory of him vanish from the world.
With a clatter she placed her fork down and looked at Max with a forced smile as she waited for his reply. She was trying extremely hard to appear calm but was failing miserably.
He knew the effect the question would have on his sister, but it was of paramount importance. Giving himself time to phrase his explanation, he added more noodles to whatever space was left in his mouth and chewed. Finally, after several swallows, he gave the lightest of shrugs and kept his gaze on the grain of the wood table.
“I, uh, was...just curious. There was a guy...at school today,” he began, suddenly deathly interested in the way his napkin was folded, “And he, uh. I don’t know, looked familiar? But I’m not sure if I was asleep or not, so I just wanted to...be sure.” He looked up from his fiddling with the napkin, both hands still full of silverware, and gave Lily a carefully measured look. Of course she had the option to deny him, and he’d drop the topic if she didn’t want to speak on it again. It was just that the image of the man was burned into his mind, but he had such few memories of his father that he just couldn’t be sure.
Lily was staring directly at her brother, her eyes large and serious while her jaw clenched shut. Her lips had turned into a thin line and the only movement that could be seen was the even breaths she took. She considered her options of not telling her brother she had a photo or being honest. But if her father dared to be any where near her brother it was best he knew and kept away. “What did he look like?” Lily’s voice rang out louder than usual but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Um, curly hair. Like ours. Brown. He, uh, had your nose...tall... Mostly, though, he just... He was staring at me, and it made him seem very, very familiar.” He kept his gaze on his sister, trying to gauge where this conversation was headed, to discern if she was going to give in to his request or deny it. There was always the option of the Internet, and Max was fairly computer literate and SEO knowledgeable to think that he might be able to dig something up, but he’d felt that it would be unfair to do such a thing without Lily’s knowledge. Not to mention the explosion that would occur if she found out that he was researching their father behind her back.
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, I just thought I’d ask,” he quickly added, thinking that it would be a better option to defuse this line of conversation before it moved much further along.
She gripped the edge of the table for a moment and worked at her jaw, still staring at her brother and feeling a fierce and dangerous level of possessiveness over him. She had taken care of her brother since their mom had died, she had tried so hard to protect him from their father, and now the very idea that he could be near them! “Come on, Max,” she said with a near growl. She got to her feet and quickly walked away from the table, expecting him to follow. If he was in California and near enough to be seeing Max, she wanted him to know what he looked like. She wanted him to know that he had to stay away.
He was almost hesitant to rise from the table and follow his sister. After a moment’s pause, he put down his fork and pushed his chair away from the table, rising to take slow steps to Lily’s room, presumably where she kept all of their family photos. In the apartment itself, the majority of the framed pictures were of him and his sister, some with Aunt Jill. Ones of Mom graced their nightstands, but that was it.
“Look, I’m sorry to bring this up, I just...I didn’t want to go behind your back?” He continued to stammer out an apology, like a child being thoroughly reprimanded by a parent. Which was what Lily was to him - a sister and a mother, all rolled into one. If he had a question or a need, he had always turned to her, had never hesitated to. Now, however, was the first time he’d actually second guessed going to her, and he was wondering if he was going to cause his sister to have a fatal aneurysm because of his simple inquiry.
Upon entering her room Lily paused to cup Max’s cheeks with her hands, despite that he was taller than her now she still performed this motherly touch frequently. “Max, don’t be sorry for asking about it. You have nothing to be sorry for and I’m not upset with you, okay?” She stepped away and went to her closet, pulling open the doors and kicking a bunch of yoga equipment and shoes out of the way. In the back of her closet was a plastic storage bin that Lily had begun to lug around. Their Aunt Jill had kept a number of mementos for them but Lily felt better keeping some of the more important stuff with her.
She sat down and patted the floor beside her for Max to sit down as well. Taking the plastic lid off revealed a half filled box of random childhood stuffed animals, including one that had been a favorite of Max’s, and an assortment of papers. Anything their mother had thought important enough to keep, Lily kept as well. Straight down to macaroni necklaces that she and Max had made for mother’s day one year or the snowman drawing Lily had made in kindergarten. Those little crafts were buried underneath the stuffed animals which Lily quickly pushed to the side to expose two baby albums for each of the siblings. Their mother had carefully taken note of each first for Lily and Max. The first time they smiled, the first time they walked, and random descriptions of how they were as children. All of these objects were incredibly important to Lily; she still missed her mother even if she had lived more years without her than with her, and she felt that the items were important to Max, should he ever find himself curious or nostalgic.
Finally, under the baby books was a photo envelope. Lily paused before picking it up out of the box and as she gripped the envelope in her hand her face became blank and stern again as she took in a breath then flipped back the paper lid. She let out her breath and took out the pictures, the top one being the most clear photo of their father that she had, the rest being blurry or their father wasn’t looking directly at the camera. With a glance at Max she handed him the pictures.
He took the photos in hand, one holding the stack while the other flipped through them casually. Each depicted the man who he’d seen at the bus stop, and then on the bus with him travelling back to the apartment building. The man had gotten off the bus before Max had, so at least he wasn’t aware of where they were living, but he knew Max’s school. The pictures left his face blank - not because he was hiding or suppressing emotion, but simply that he had none. Here was a man who’d terrorized and abused him for years, and if Max had any feelings toward him at all, it was nothing but apathy.
“Yeah, it was him. I’m certain now.” He quickly folded the pictures back together and snatched the envelope from Lily’s hand. Shoving it back inside and back into the box gave him something to do for the moment - then his eyes met Lily’s. “What do we do? Should we call Aunt Jill?”
Lily’s eyes had a certain level of danger in them as she grabbed the lid of the bin and covered the box quickly with a childish hope that closing the box would erase the developing problem. But after a moment of staring at the box as if it would decide to move Lily let out a short breath and shook her head. “I don’t think Aunt Jill will be able to do anything. We’re both legal adults now so we’ll have to handle this ourselves.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line once more, shaking her head and wanting to cry but keeping that emotional onslaught to herself. Their lovely little dinner had been ruined because he was trailing after them. If she saw their father she felt she could honestly kill him. “He saw you at your school? Do you think he knows where we live? Max, don’t talk to him, don’t talk to him at all. If you see him again, tell me immediately. I don’t know why he would even be trailing after us but it can’t be good.” She heard her voice catch and immediately frowned, she hated to look remotely weak in front of Max but this had taken her by surprise and she was having trouble with controlling her emotions.
Max sat, perched on the end of the bed, and quietly watched as a riot of emotions seemed to overtake his sister. It was a scary thing, watching Lily try and control herself - he was so used to her taking control, for her being the protector and always having the answers. Carefully he put an arm around her shoulders, for once trying to comfort her.
“He got off the bus before me, so I don’t think he knows our apartment building. It was kind of like... Like he was surprised to see me. Like he hadn’t been expecting it? But I won’t talk to him, I promise,” he quickly added, not needing any persuasion on that front. “Maybe, I don’t know, maybe this has nothing to do with us and was just a coincidence?” There was a faint hope in his words, like the faith a child has in a night light to keep the monsters of the dark at bay.
Lily tensed when she felt Max touch her. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate he was offering her comfort, it was more of a recoil to the fact that she was nearly losing control of her emotions, but after a moment she allowed herself to lean against her brother and breathe. “You’re right, maybe it is a coincidence. Especially since he seemed surprised to have seen you... that would lead one to believe that he wasn’t looking for you. I just... really do not like the idea of him being in the same state as us... let alone in the same town.”
She felt her stomach twist as she thought of their childhood and that this hadn’t been the first time their father had stalked them out. While they were living with their grandfather she sometimes had spotted him watching the pair as Lily waited to collect Max from school and walk home with him. They had only been children but she knew then, easily, that they had to keep far away from him. Yet she felt helpless in a way, that she had no control over his movements, and suddenly she felt that helplessness again.
He kept quiet, unsure of what to say and, again, completely sorry that he’d even brought the subject up. There wasn’t anything they could do, for the moment, and in a sudden attempt to switch the topic at hand, his stomach growled.
“Well, uh... Now that I’ve interrupted dinner, can we go back to it? The pasta was really, really good,” he tried, a smile coloring his words. His hand gave Lily’s shoulder a squeeze, but he waited for her to reply or to rise first, to be sure that everything was all right.
She took another moment, trying to ground herself enough to return to normal, but her smile to her brother was genuine. “I’m glad you like it, Max. I wasn’t sure if you would...” Her smile dulled for only the briefest of moments while her mind went back to what they had just discussed. But she pushed it aside, regaining control of her emotions and standing up. She paused to mess with Max’s hair before leaving the room. “Let’s go finish dinner, dork.”