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From the kitchen counter, Simon and I both turned to look at my mother, standing at the base of the pantry cabinet with her arms stretched overhead toward one of the top shelves in all her five-foot-nothing glory. No amount of straining or stretching was going to make the miracle of excess height happen, and I snorted at the sight of her struggle.
“You wanna never call me Dilly again?” I asked as I walked over and plucked the canister in question from the top of the cabinet, still holding it out of her reach.
Mom wasn’t amused. “Until the day I die, you’ll always be my Dilly,” she said, planting a fist against her cocked hip.
“Ah, that’s too bad. Guess you don’t need this then,” I said with a forlorn sigh, ready to put the container back where I’d found it.
“Dylan, you are never too big for me to kick your ass,” she scolded while unsuccessfully holding in her laughter. “If you want me to cook for you while you’re home, you’ll give that to me now.”
Without another wisecrack, I handed the breadcrumbs to her with an apologetic hang of my head, and she promptly smacked me gently in the arm as she snatched them away.
“Are you staying for dinner, Simon?” Mom asked as she headed for the counter, where the other ingredients for her famous meatloaf awaited.
“I wish,” he grumbled. “I already told my parents I’d be there to eat.”
His disappointment forced a snort from my nose. Simon’s mother was a lot of things, but a gourmet chef wasn’t one of them. On a good day, she couldn’t fry up a grilled cheese sandwich without setting the smoke alarms off while Si’s dad could barely microwave a can of soup. As a result, Simon had always been a skinny little shit of a kid until discovering my mom’s skills in the kitchen.
We’d plumped him up in no time, and he was rarely home for dinner.
“Oh,” Mom replied with a sympathetic grimace. “Well, what is she making? Maybe it won’t—”
“She’s using her own recipe for what she called garbage can gumbo,” he said, sighing as he pinched his eyes shut.
“Well, you enjoy that,” I replied, clapping a hand against his back.
“Yeah,” he muttered, slowly moving his way toward the door. “Pray for me.”
“I’ll save you some meatloaf,” Mom promised, reaching out to pinch his cheek before he could escape her grasp.
“Bless you,” he replied, pressing both hands to either side of her face and kissing her forehead.
“Thanks for the ride, Si,” I said.
“No prob, Dilly,” he called as he ran out the door, not looking back as he took off, jogging for his car.
“What did you guys do today?” Mom asked as she began dumping the ingredients into her big blue mixing bowl.
“Eh, you know,” I said with a tired shrug and an even more tired sigh. “Jammed a bit, went over some of the new songs. The usual shit.”
“You don’t sound too thrilled about that,” she commented with the intuitive perspective of an FBI agent making a big break in a case.
I walked back to the counter, where my half-empty bottle of water waited. “We’re just a little stuck,” I explained with a tap of my fingertips against the counter.
“Do you think maybe you jumped the gun with the new album?”
This woman’s ability to read me was downright scary sometimes.
“I don’t know that I’d say it like that, but …” I raked a hand through my hair while wrapping my other hand around the bottle. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Who says you have to finish it now?”
“Deadlines, Ma,” I clipped, snorting as the bottle lifted to my lips. “We’re kinda on a schedule here.”
“Okay, so change it,” she said, as if it were that easy. “Tell Damon—”
“Devin.”
“Okay. Tell Devin you need more time. Don’t tie him up, let him do what he has to do, and get back to him when you’re ready.”
