Fighting First Love

Confrontation and Acceptance

“Are you sure you can even breathe in it?” Leroy asked, sarcastically.

Why were they giving me a hard time? I thought I looked okay, this outfit made me feel bold and daring. It was silly to put so much stock into my clothing, but I was still broken inside, so this was my form of armor. Why couldn’t they see that?

My distress must’ve shown on my face because in an instant Lance was in front of me, placing his hands on my shoulders, “Ignore us, Ly. We’re just being hard headed brother’s. You look beautiful, doesn’t she Leroy?” he said the last part with a raised eye brow in my brother’s direction.

“But it’s so…the guy’s are going to be…thing’s are going to be said…faces are going to be punched…” Leroy rambled on.

“Leroy, tell Lylah she looks beautiful and let it go.” Lance once again sent a look Leroy’s way.

After a couple more glances at me, then one toward Lance and his no nonsense glare, Leroy relented, “You do look beautiful Lylah, you always do.” Then under his breath he mumbled, “That’s the problem.”

I smiled, finding his over protectiveness sweet, for the moment.

“Thanks guys.” I said kissing Lance on his cheek and then doing the same to Leroy. I saw that they had a bowl of fruit loops waiting for me, so I took my seat placing my bag on the chair next to me, poured some milk on my cereal and began eating. Lance returned to his seat across from me and finished his cereal.

From the corner of my eye I noticed there was a plate of burnt toast to the side of my bowl, but decided to ignore it. My brother’s decided otherwise as I felt their eyes on me. “Aren’t you going to eat your toast?” Leroy asked. “As soon as it was finished I loaded it with butter just the way you like it.”

I paused with a spoonful of cereal just inches from my mouth and flicked my glance to the burnt toast, then to Leroy’s anxious face, and once again back to the toast. I really, really didn’t want to. There were only a few parts along the top edge of the bread that wasn’t burnt, and I knew all the butter in the world wouldn’t take away that charred taste.

I wanted to say no, I really did, but my brother looked so hopeful that I couldn’t risk hurting his feelings by declining. Through all of my debating, it wasn’t lost on me how Lance was having a hard time hiding his amusement at my expense nor how his burnt toast had yet to be touched. I battled with myself once more before giving in. I placed my spoon of delicious, fruity goodness back in my bowl and reached for the toast. The smell of burnt bread intensified as I brought the toast closer to my lips and the last thing I thought before I took a bite was that it couldn’t possibly taste worse than the glue I ate on Theo’s cookie.

I was wrong. As I bit into it, I had to bite a little harder to break it, therefore taking more of it into my mouth than I wanted to. Had I been blindfolded, I would never have guessed that at one point this food product was bread, because it tasted like straight ash. I was literally chewing nothing but burnt air, is what it seemed. I was trying my hardest not to gag, and put my hand over my mouth while closing my eyes to compose myself.. Leroy mistook this for me thinking his toast was so delicious I had to closed my eyes to savor the flavor. “Pretty good for someone who can’t cook, huh Ly?”