"Oh, did your friend leave already?" Jon's mom, Linda, called from the sofa as the boy retreated to the living room. "I would have invited her to stay for dinner."
"No you wouldn't," Jon's dad, David, shouted from the kitchen, "I only thawed out five chicken thighs, I wouldn't have had anything to cook for her!"
Linda sighed. "Well, it's nice to see you getting along with some new people, in any case.
Something felt odd about that statement to Jon. Had he been getting along with Sarah McMillan? He supposed he had. something didn't seem right about that.
Furrowing his brow, Jon sat down next to his mom and stared blankly at the Gilmore Girls re-run that was playing on TV. It wasn't really Jon's kind of show, but he didn't really want to watch, he just wanted to decompress.
"You okay, honey?" Linda could sense her son wasn't himself. She put her hand on his. "Look at me, you know you can tell me anything and I won't judge."
Jon turned to his mom and was about to say something, but the thought stopped before it could form. A curly lock of his mom's hair had fallen out of place and in front of her eye. It bothered Jon in a way he'd never experienced before. He just felt an insatiable need to fix this error, to make sure his mom's hair stayed neat. Before he realized he was doing it, Jon reached up and gently guided the stray curl back behind his mother's ear.
And with the crisis solved, he was able to answer his mom, truthfully. "I'm okay, just kind of lost in thought." He then turned back to one of his favorite shows, Gilmore Girls. "I think it's almost like I'm Rory, and Sarah is Paris, y'know? It's a complicated relationship, and I don't even know if I'd call it a friendship."
"Well, I'm sure you'll work it out." Linda gave a gentle smile, and the two watched until the end of the episode, when David called them in for dinner.
