How We Are Meant to Be

I awake with a start as something hits the floor and breaks in another room. I hear an oh-so-familiar French curse word spew out of my roommate’s mouth across the apartment. Quickly glancing at the clock, I see that it is ten in the morning on a beautiful Saturday as the sun shines straight through my curtains.

I slowly untangle myself from the wrath of blankets on my bed and sit up to twist myself so my previously warm feet hit the cool hardwood flooring. I groan after a moment because I realize why Micah would be breaking things, not on purpose, but because he is terrible in the kitchen. I now assume he is trying to do something nice for me, but nothing Micah ever does in the kitchen will ever turn out nicely. Even on October 22 - my least favorite day of the year.

Without another thought, I throw my feet into my old, brown moccasins that are falling apart and too stretched to barely stay on my feet before heading into the bathroom attached to my room. I do my business, brush my teeth and bedhead before washing my face. Once my ritual is complete, I head to the kitchen. It turns out Micah is attempting to make me breakfast, hence the broken glassware.

“Micah, the stove!” my voice croaks as a bright orange flame grows on his hash browns, or what used to be hash browns. He grabs a pot lid from the counter, turns off the gas, and throws the lid on top of the fire to extinguish it.

After it is safely out, I take a moment to survey the damage that Micah’s cooking experience may have done. For the most part, it is just dirtier than how I left it last night. I look to Micah and a burst of giggles gushes right through me and out into the air around us. He is covered in egg splatter, pancake batter, and some flour by the looks of it. There is also a grease stain on his shirt. It takes him a moment to realize what I am laughing at, but when he does, he joins in.

“Get out of my kitchen; I appreciate everything you are trying to do. But seriously, out!” I point in the direction of his bedroom, down the hall from my own. He puts down his towel and dutifully listens to my command. “Now, go shower and change while I make breakfast, but you will clean this mess.” He nods and some of the batter drops to the floor. It is moments like this that I am glad to have hardwood floors in our apartment.

I survey the kitchen once more as I head towards the stove. The kitchen is complete with stainless steel appliances, an island, and plenty of cabinets to fill an entire house, let alone an apartment. The walls are the same white as they were the day we moved in a little more than three years ago. The cabinets are a dark mahogany with a complimentary brown marble speckle countertop. It’s the nicest part of our apartment without a doubt, which is why I love the place so much.

Seeing Micah’s mess only reminds me of how much I am the cook in this apartment. If it wasn’t for me, he would eat out every night and it would not be good for his hockey-player diet that the team attempts to keep him on.

Micah plays for the Sewickley Slasher’s in the North American Hockey League, NAHL. It’s only called North American because there are teams from both Canada and the United States, but nowhere else. There are 30 teams in this league altogether from Los Angeles and Vancouver in the West to Washington DC and Ottawa in the East. But Sewickley is a northwest borough of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Sewickley is the biggest borough surrounding Pittsburgh and while the city isn’t far, Sewickley has everything anyone could ever need to survive. We have a Post Office, mall, grocery store, movie theatre, zoo, and even a small community college. If we don’t have something here, we can easily take the train or drive into the city, but it usually isn’t necessary.

Once I hear the running water, I fix his stiff pancake batter and then cook them carefully avoiding the burner that caught fire. The water cuts off a few minutes later and I turn off the burner with ten flapjacks in total. I set the plate full on the table before reaching for the syrup in the cabinet. Unfortunately, Micah put it up a single shelf too high for me to reach at my 5’4” height. Just as I am about to turn to grab a chair to stand on, I feel two strong hands grip my hips and hoist me up to gather the syrup bottle. I giggle as Micah set me back down. It’s almost like I am fourteen again, when Micah and I met. He was tall than too, so he would lift me up to reach things up high then like he just did.

“Thank you, tall and strong, sir,” I bow at his thoughtfulness.

“It’s the least I can do for your birthday. You turn twenty one today, happy birthday!” he smiles and looks at me for some kind of reaction. I just give him a shrug and move towards the table as birthdays are not really important to me. They are to my sisters because it means they are getting older, but for me, it’s just another day. It’s my least favorite day because everyone wants to make a big deal out of it and it isn’t.

“Thanks, I guess. You know birthdays really aren’t that important to me. It is just another day,” I move away from his burning brown eyes, the ones that I always thought to be more beautiful than my own. Mine are a dull gray color that does nothing to stand out amongst my dark hair; a shade lighter than Micah’s which is almost the same color as our cabinets.

“I know you don’t care, but I thought you would be excited for your twenty-first birthday. You are now legal to drink in the US!” he looks defeated although his face holds a smile. I smile quickly in his direction as I grab my flapjacks off of the community plate and onto my own before taking my seat and pouring the syrup over top.

“I am kind of excited, I guess. But it also means that I get to be annoyed by my sisters’ presences.” He swears lightly under his breath, again in French.

“How did you know that they were coming?” he asks in a confused voice.

“They come every year, it is not hard to connect the dots and figure out that it relates to my birthday.” I tell him truthfully. This boy is my best friend, he knows how much my sisters can get on my nerves, but he still pretends that they don’t. I know it is in hopes that my sisters and I will be on better terms in the long run, but it just isn’t a place where we are happy right now. Things have always been different between my sisters and I. Maybe because I was the youngest daughter and I spent more time with Dad then Mom because I loved being with Dad and Dallas, or maybe it’s just because those two are so career focused that they really don’t know how to be anything or anyone else.

“They are going to be pissed; they were dead set on surprising you. I don’t know why they bother now; you usually hate spending any time with them.”

“Well, we don’t all get what we want. I wouldn’t have to celebrate at all if that was the case. But it isn’t, so I deal with the life I was dealt. It is unfortunate, but it is what I have to do.”

“True enough, can I give you your present now before they come and pounce?” I nodded and he gets up, heads down the hall he had earlier towards his bedroom, and comes back holding a box. Meanwhile, I have gotten up to rinse our plates and put them in the dishwasher. “Don’t be mad, but I spent money on it,” he smiles sheepishly as I turn back towards him. I almost groan at the idea of spending money on a birthday present for me. I move from the dishwasher back to the table. I notice the box to be horribly wrapped, almost like a truck has driven over it at some point, but that is how all my presents from Micah come. I’ve come to expect it and if they are nicely wrapped with his name on it, I know he hired someone to wrap the gifts for me.

“I hate when you do that, Micah Leroy Stevens.” He hands me the horribly wrapped gold package anyways as I sit and unwrap it carefully. Once the box is unwrapped, I have to take off the lid to find the real gift that lie inside. Once the cover was off, I’m staring at a photo album. The cover photo is of Micah and me with both sets of our siblings.