Page 19 of Holding On To Good

She took the foil off the pan Kat had brought to reveal cheesy potatoes. This breakfast, all carbs and cheese and hollandaise and bacon, was like a heart attack waiting to strike, with diabetes and obesity lurking in the background.

Talk about living dangerously.

“If I have to live with arbitrary rules, I might as well stay here,” Verity said, flopping onto the seat at the head of the table to Urban’s right.

“It’s only for another three months,” Urban reminded her. “At college you can carry a pair of scissors in each hand and run up and down the dorm halls all you want.”

“That is a bright spot. But I’ll probably be too busy attending frat parties, having boys in my room and skipping all my classes to do it.”

“So you’re not going out tonight?” Toby asked, carrying the hash and eggs to the table.

“Guess not. But it’s fine. Jeremey’s party is at his grandparents’ house, so it’s going to be all clean and wholesome fun. Next weekend is when all the drunken orgies start.”

“Then you can work. We’re down a dishwasher.”

“Oh, sorry, I can’t,” she said, not sorry in the least because washing dishes at Binge anytime was the hardest, sweatiest, most exhausting, thankless job at the restaurant. But on a Saturday night, their busiest night? It was ten times worse. “I don’t have any way to get there, what with my car being taken away from me and all.”

“You can use the car to go to work,” Urban told her. “You just can’t go anywhere that you’ll have fun.”

She glared at him. “Just for that, you’re no longer my favorite brother.”

He shrugged. “I’ll be back on top soon enough. My competition isn’t that fierce.”

“The saddest part about that statement?” she mumbled, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms. “You’re right.”

Keeping her arms crossed and perhaps the teeniest, tiniest bit of a pout on her face, she sat unmoving as the rest of the breakfast was brought to the table and everyone sat down.

“One egg or two?” Toby asked her, one hand holding a spoon to serve up the eggs and hash, the other reaching for her plate.

She sat up and clutched her empty plate to her chest. “I’m not eating in protest of the endless rules, regulations and bossiness I’m forced to endure day in and day out.”

And how did her brothers respond to the news that she refused to participate in what was supposed to be a celebration of her surviving her very last year of high school and moving forward into her future as a full-fledged adult?

They exchanged silent, amused glances, then piled food onto their own plates and began shoveling it into their mouths as if her suffering didn’t even exist.

No, seriously. Why did she bother?

Holding tight to both her empty plate and her high ideals, she sat silently while her family ate and talked and laughed. Toby and Ian held a quiet nerd-tastic debate over which group of superheroes would win an all-out battle, the Justice League or Avengers. Miles told Urban and Kat about the geriatric fight he broke up at last night’s bingo game, getting a chuckle from Urban and coaxing a reluctant, almost-smile from Kat.

Fine. Good. Let them all eat and chat and enjoy their morning as if her plight wasn’t important.

She wondered if this was how Gandhi felt.

Unfortunately, she’ll probably never know because her hunger strike lasted approximately three and a half minutes.

Hey, she was hungry. And knowing her brothers, they’d eat all the cheesy potatoes just to teach her some sort of lame lesson about sulking.

They always had a lesson. Always.

And don’t think she didn’t notice how Urban fought a grin, Toby silently gloated and Miles smirked cockily as she helped herself to some hash.

Although Toby did redeem himself slightly when he wordlessly slid two pancakes onto her plate.

She scooped some of the cheesy potatoes onto her plate and took a huge bite that totally burned her mouth, but all that gooey, creamy cheese was worth it. “Yum.” She swallowed. “Kat, you’ll have to give me the recipe so I can make these when I’m at school.”

“You’ll only have a mini-fridge and microwave in your dorm,” Urban said.

She waved that concern away with her fork. “No worries. Emory’s sister goes to OSU and has an off-campus apartment. She said we can use it when we want to do laundry or cook.”

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