Banana Pancakes ▷ James Rhodes

1 - ANOTHER DAY

FLICK WAS RUNNING LATE. It was not something she made a habit of, as surprising as it was to the people who had only recently met her, as she more often than not found herself entangled in some problem rendering her incapable of making all her prior engagements on time, but she truly did try not to make a habit of it, and she definitely did not like being trapped in it in the first place, but the past was long gone, and she could only make the most of what she had.

It had only been partly her fault. She had passed out immediately the night before, which meant that she hadn't been able to set an alarm, meaning she and her daughter had slept in until nine o'clock, only woken up by a phone call from the school, as she hadn't called in to explain why her daughter was absent that day.

"I am so sorry, I had worked the night shift last night—we're heading over right now, I am so sorry," she babbled, jumping out of bed, nearly crashing into her ironing board which she hadn't collapsed from the day before, stumbling out of her room and into her daughter's room across the way, clumsily opening the door and barging inside, shocking the poor girl half to death.

"Mom!" she screamed, sitting bolt right up in her bed, looking ready to cry in fear and anger.

"You're late for school," Flick breathed, trying to fully wake herself up from her daze, "You can eat in the car, go on, get ready."

Libby shouted in shock, begging her mother to be joking as she threw herself to her closet, searching for clothes while Flick raced to her own room, racing through her routine at twice the speed she normally did, barely even washing her face, groaning at her hair which she hadn't washed in the past three days.

She could hear Kaiko laughing at her the way he used to, mockingly reminding her that she should have showered the night before, and, if he had still been around, she would have turned around and snapped that 'it's a little too late for that, Kit-Kat,' but she would have already been smiling and her sour mood would have already started to disappear, because she could never stay mad with him, and he could never stay mad with her, not in the almost two decades they had known each other; it should have been more.

But he wasn't here anymore, so she just let the sour mood fester, trying to squash it on her own, because she didn't need him to be okay, she didn't, just trying to get through her routine without crying, because now was definitely not the time to have a breakdown. She was stronger than this, she promised herself that she would be, she had promised him that she would be. Yet there were days, as was with anything else. But now was not the time.

So she got dressed into another one of her uniforms and adjusted the familiar skirt fabric looking herself over in the mirror with a soft sigh. She looked like a complete mess. Dressed in her forest green uniform with the hem of the skirt beginning to fray, her hair in a bun that couldn't even be graced with the mercy of being called a loose form of messy, and eternal dark under her eyes unable to fully be covered by the foundation she had put on, which was the only thing she had had time to put on, yet even that was uneven and flaky, despite how many times she had tried to fix it.

She couldn't remember the last time she looked in the mirror and had a positive thought in her mind; her younger self was rolling her grave.

She took a deep, steadying breath, whispering to herself softly, looking herself in the eye. "Just get through the day. It'll be fine."

"Mom," Libby shouted from the front of their apartment, already jumping into her shoes, "Let's go!"

Shaking herself back to reality, Flick grabbed her bag and hurried out towards the front door where Libby was waiting, jumping into her flats, the two hurrying out the door, Flick only barely remembering to throw herself back into the kitchen to grab her daughter some semblance of breakfast.