Jily Oneshots (pt2)

Peanuts

by Mo-Nighean-Donn

April 1968 – The Evans Family breakfast table

"Morning, pumpkin!"

"Morning, Mum!"

"Better hurry, you're running late."

Lily slid into her seat and glanced around the breakfast table. All the standard elements were present: eggs and bacon for Dad, tea and toast for Mum, cereal for Lily, and—a foul odor wafted past her. She stared across the table at the source.

Peanut butter.

Lily wrinkled her nose as Petunia slathered peanut butter on toast. "Do you have to?" she whined across the table, stirring her cereal idly; it hadn't turned to mush yet, and she liked it good and soggy.

Petunia eyed her sister levelly and took a massive bite of toast, chewed, swallowed, then breathed heavily in Lily' direction. The gorge rose in Lily's throat. Peanut butter. The worst smell in the world.

"Ew, gross! Mum, Tuney's doing it again!"

"Mum, Lily's being a whiney baby!"

"Girls, that's enough," their mother scolded, but only gently. It took a lot for Mum to get really mad about anything.

"But I hate it, I really do!" Lily cried. "Tuney has peanut butter on toast every morning, and nothing else, just because she knows how much I hate it."

"Don't say hate, Lily, say you strongly dislike it."

Lily subsided into her bowl of properly mushed up cereal, muttering darkly, "Well I dislike it the strongest of anything then."

Petunia finished her slice of toast, and immediately began buttering another, following that with another heap of peanut butter.

"You better not," Lily taunted her sister. "A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips."

"Lily!" her mother choked on her tea. "Where did you hear that?"

"Auntie Bea said it, the last time she was here. Is it bad?" Lily was confused.

Neither girl saw the twinkle in the glance their parents exchanged, but their father came out from behind his newspaper to arbitrate.

"Alright, this has been going on for months, let's finish it once and for all. Lily, what do you ha—strongly dislike so much about peanut butter?"

Lily squirmed in her chair, twisting her feat around its legs. She hadn't expected to be put on the spot. "Well, I don't know. It just makes me want to puke!"

Dad rubbed his mustache the way Lily knew meant he was trying not to laugh. Lily thought he wasn't' taking her seriously enough. No one ever did. Everyone just laughed and asked how she could not like peanut butter, as if it was universally loved simply because they loved it. She liked peanuts just fine, just not peanut butter, why was that so difficult to understand? She tried to press the point home to her father.

"In fact, I wish I never had to smell it ever again!"

"Fat chance of that!" Tuney spat out. "I like it, so you just have to put up with it. So there!"

"Petunia," Dad warned, and Petunia shrank in her chair. He turned back to his younger daughter. "Alright, you've made your point, but, sweetheart, the world can't simply arrange itself around what you would like."

"Why not?"

"Can you imagine if everything had to be perfect for everybody all at once?"

Lily imagined. She grinned. "Chaos!"