it’s a family affair | eli&ella
Elijah’s parents called him often, inviting him home for dinner at the weekends, or telling him that ‘he just had to come with them’ to one thing or another. And there was only so many times that he could make up excuses before he had to say yes. He often wondered if they called Ella as much as they did him, or whether they only invited her after he’d said yes. Eli never asked either of them. A family dinner was definitely not how he would have preferred to spend his Sunday afternoon, he knew it was bound to be another tense and sullen affair which would leave him wishing he hadn’t come. In an odd way he did love his parents, deep down, he really did, they just didn’t make things that easy on him, and definitely not on his sister. And when it came down to it, he’d always put his sister first.
Speaking of his sister, she was late, and Eli was sat alone at the kitchen table, trying his best to look like he wasn’t checking his watch every few seconds. The kitchen of his family’s home was bright and white, almost too much so when the sun came streaming through the window, but it had been that way since as far back as he could remember. It was the kitchen he’d once filled with smoke when he’d fallen asleep while he was trying to cook his dinner, and the kitchen whose window he’d once broken, and the kitchen he would gladly never set his eyes on ever again. He definitely didn’t appreciate having to stand about alone with his mother while she fussed over him and the food she was cooking.
“So, is there a pretty girl in your life yet?” she asked, stirring a pot absentmindedly.
“Mum, I’m gay,” he said with a withering look over the top of the glass he held in one hand.
“Oh yes of course,” she said with a girlish laugh, as though it was silly of her to have forgotten. The two of them had a sort of running charade where she’d feign amnesia over his homosexuality, he’d correct her, and she’d try again the next time like eventually he’d just say; “Yes there is, you’ve cured me”. Feeling the prickle of annoyance beneath his skin he turned from her and busied himself with washing out his glass, trying not to be blinded by the sun that was shining in his eyes.
As if on cue, and before his mother could say anything else, or his father could emerge and start pestering him about when he would give up lacrosse, the door opened and the sound of his sister’s voice carried down the hallway, exclaiming her apologies. He turned just in time to see her entering the room and smiled;
“Took you long enough.”