anybody else | wilbur soot fanfiction

_chapter thirty-one_ monthly lunches

"George, you are an idiot." I throw one of my peas at George from across the table. 

Our mothers watch us with the same disappointed look on their faces. Both George and I ignore them.

He flinches as the pea hits him right on the nose.

"Bulls nose!" I call out, laughing. I thought it was clever instead of saying bullseye.

"More like bullshit," George rubs his nose while searching his plate for something to throw at me. He's finished most of his food though.

"George, you better watch that mouth," Ms. Davidson warns.

"Yeah, George." I stick my tongue out at him, which he returns immediately. We're just at my mum's house, so we're not worried with looking presentable as we would at a restaurant.

"You too, Maia." My mum joins in. "There is no need to throw food."

My cheeks turn a slight shade of pink before George moves on to another subject, completely unfazed by our mother's reprimands. In all honesty, this is a pretty normal thing for us.

"We can't make it to that pasta thing next Tuesday," George says as he uses a napkin to wipe his mouth. There was a bit of sauce on the corners of his mouth, but now he's just smudged them down to his chin. I purposely will not mention it.

"Why?" Ms. Davidson asks with furrowed brows.

"Wilbur's going to be in London, so we're going to stream." George places the napkin back into his lap.

My Mum glances to me, wondering why I never told her. I just nod once in confirmation that Wilbur will in fact be in London.

She doesn't know about the night with Wilbur, but she does know that we're really close. Usually, I would be bouncing off the walls with excitement that my friend is going to be staying here, but now I just feel neutral; equal amounts of excited and dread when it comes to seeing him again.

George pulls me out of my train of thought when he throws a piece of bread at my face. I turn to him.

"What the heck, George?" I ask with a laugh.

"Payback."

"I threw a pea at you." I place the bread on a napkin, not going to eat it. "You threw bread. There's a difference."

"No there's not."

"Yes there is."

Ms. Davidson and Mum ignore us as they brainstorm a different thing to do next week instead of the online pasta class we've been taking for the past month. It's been more of a Tuesday night thing where our mums attempt to make different kinds of pasta from scratch while George and I sit back to watch. Well, we helped with garlic bread one time, but we argued so much that it ended up burnt. We were fired from bread duty.

After the dinner, George and his mum left for some orchestra. I stay at Mum's for a while after. She's washing the leftover dishes.

"So your friend Wilbur is coming to London?" she asks from the kitchen.

I sigh, still sitting at the dining table. "Yeah, it's only a couple days though."

"Are you excited?"

I shrug, although I doubt she's facing the right way to see. "He's just a friend."

"Well that's not very positive." Mum laughs. "Did something happen between you two? Are you still friends?"

I cringe at the word choice there. I know she didn't mean romantically, but it kind of hit spot on for my problem.

"That's just it." I sigh in defeat. "He wants to be just friends."