when the dinner gets cold
While Peter had heard much about Remus from Lily, James, and Sirius, he didn’t fully trust him when it came to how Lily was doing. Peter knew it was something terrible if Remus hadn’t been able to tell him why Lily had disappeared. He doubted that Lily was fine. If she were fine, she would have come to the concert. She would have answered his texts or calls. If Lily were fine, she would have been there, standing in front of him. However, she was not, so Peter was about a second away from hopping on a flight to wherever she was. The problem was that he had no idea where that was.
He had desperately tried to text and call Lily to no avail. If he had been sincere, while he had told himself not to expect her to answer, he had secretly hoped she would. There was something, deep in this pit of worry that Peter had in his gut, that made him feel unwanted. Logically, he knew that wasn’t it, and there was something obviously wrong, but Peter had hoped that Lily would have been able to tell him about it.
It was a complex feeling, so, of course, he wrote a song about it. Peter took the underlying feeling and twisted the words until they fit the storyline of Sealed With a Kiss. He would have shown Lily, but certainly, the problem was apparent why he couldn’t do that, so instead, he decided to go to that Chinese restaurant Lily had once taken him to.
Peter didn’t have much to do that day other than answer a few emails and work more on the lyrics of some songs. He supposed he could have gotten the melodies down for the ones he hadn’t recorded yet if he really felt like being productive, but otherwise, he hadn’t had time at the studio for a few days, and it was a Friday anyway.
On Tuesday, Peter and Sirius agreed to meet so they could finish the songs Sirius was featured on for Sealed With a Kiss. The deadline for the album to be turned in would approach before Sirius wrapped up the second leg of his tour, so they had to get it done before it resumed in two weeks.
Sirius’ last concert had been on Sunday, which meant he was probably in his apartment sleeping off multiple weeks of exhaustion. He deserved a break. Then again, it was Sirius, so if Peter knew him, he was probably out doing something. Whether that ‘something’ was productive or not, Peter didn’t know.
While Peter hoped that Sirius was taking care of himself, he wasn’t too worried. Sirius took few things seriously, and one of them was his job. Sirius wasn’t a teenager, so Peter could trust that he was still alive. Besides, the media would have been all over it if he had done anything too reckless.
Every few sentences into the email he was writing, Peter would take a break and a bit to eat. He had his calendar pulled up and was typing in the date for the movie's premiere, which was already scheduled. From what Peter had heard, they were a week or two into filming. He had some meetings later in the week, but Peter had a relatively slow weekend as far as his work went.
The bell over the door rang as someone entered the shop. Peter didn’t even bother looking up. This restaurant had a lot of foot traffic, especially during the evening. If he looked up every time someone came in, he would never have gotten any work done.
However, a few seconds after the door closed, a voice made Peter instantly lift his gaze from his computer. “Hi, I placed an order online,” the familiar voice said.
Peter had to have been hallucinating because there was no way on Earth that Lily had stumbled upon the restaurant he was in at the right minute. But as he observed her burning red hair and dark maroon sweater, Peter was sure that it was Lily standing at the counter.
He stood from his seat hastily, managing to knock his plate from the table and onto the floor. There was a loud crash, and everyone in the restaurant, though there were few people dining in, looked at him. He couldn’t avert his gaze from Lily, who now stared at him as well. He didn’t know what to do or what to say, so he shyly waved. Lily gave him a warm smile, but there was something behind it that he couldn’t read.
A waitress came by with a broom, and Peter realized what he had done. He began to apologize profusely and help pick up shards of the plate. Peter grabbed a napkin and cleaned up the food splattered across the floor. He helped until everything was cleaned up and then insisted on giving the waitress twenty dollars so they could buy a replacement.
Steps approached Peter from where he was still kneeling on the ground, finishing picking up the last few napkins. Just as the waitress left, he turned his head to find Lily in front of him. “Hey,” she whispered, offering a hand to him. He took it, but he didn’t know what to say.
Sure, Peter was glad to see that Lily was alive. He was thrilled. The weight on his chest had lessened severely, and he wanted to fall to his knees in relief. But he was also slightly mad because Lily stood before him. She was alive and hadn’t answered him in weeks. The anger came rushing to the surface, but then Peter noticed the dark rings around her eyes. There was a type of fatigue in her expression that Peter had never seen before.
“Are you okay?” was the first thing that came out of his mouth.
“Peter, I–”
“It’s just, you know, I haven’t heard from you in weeks, and it doesn’t look like you were going to answer anytime soon. Something must be wrong because I didn’t do anything to make you hate me. I’ve thought about it enough to know that much, and–” He truly had meant not to accuse her at the first moment.
“Petunia was in the hospital,” Lily said weakly, barely meeting Peter’s eye. “They found a”–Lily shook her head and forced her eyes closed tightly–“I can’t do this here.”
The guilt washed over Peter because there had been an edge in his voice before, and it hadn’t been personal, just like he had said but hadn’t believed. “You don’t have to tell me, Lily. I’m just glad you’re alive.”
Her grip on the white plastic bag that held her food tightened. “Do you want to come back to my apartment? I do want to tell you, and I know I’ve neglected you. I haven’t been answering anyone, so it’s not you, I promise,” she insisted, and she sounded sincere.
Peter only nodded and pulled out his wallet. He tossed some cash onto the table and looked back at her. “Yeah, I’ll come.”
They walked to Lily’s apartment in silence. It wasn’t too far away, and Peter got the sense that Lily was about two words away from tears. He nervously glanced at her every couple of minutes from when they left the restaurant to when she dropped her keys in a metal bowl on a table near her door.
She didn’t say anything as she took off her red leather Doc Martens with one hand and then drifted into the kitchen, where she set her food on the counter. Lily’s apartment was full of blankets and colors and throw pillows. Peter could see through to the living room from the kitchen. Stacks of books were on the ground in front of the television, and Peter knew they were Lily’s novels. He wanted to ask why she had never bought a bookshelf for them, but she was just staring at the plastic bag on the ground emptily.
“I got a call a couple of weeks ago. It was a teenage boy talking, and I didn’t recognize it. I thought it was a prank call,” she recalled, only looking at the bag on the floor. “The boy told me that his mother, Petunia, was in the hospital. She collapsed. I asked him if he knew who he was calling because Petunia couldn’t care less about me. I haven’t talked to her in years, and she hates me. The boy, Dudley, he told me, said that he had gone through the attic and found all these photo albums. He didn’t even know that he had an aunt.” Lily laughed humorlessly. “He said it took him days to get my number because he didn’t even know my name. I didn’t even know I had a nephew. Dudley gave me the address to the hospital Petunia was admitted to and asked me to come.”
Peter crept closer to her, and as he did so, Lily slowly lifted her face, and Peter could see the tears filling her eyes. She quickly pressed her wrists, covered by cloth, to her eyes so the tears wouldn’t fall. Lily placed her hands on the counter and leaned, her head hanging between her arms.
“And so I went and saw Petunia, and it took her seconds to recognize me. You see, they found a tumor, and she was convinced that she was going to die. Petunia thought she was on her deathbed, so she told me she didn’t care that I was lesbian. She didn’t care about whatever our parents said. I stayed in the hospital for a week while they ran tests, and I met Dudley and even Vernon, her husband.”
“Is she okay?” Peter asked because he couldn’t bear the expression on her face.
“The tumor is benign, but there’s still something wrong, and we don’t know what. Petunia’s back home and I can’t stay longer because my agent’s about to file a missing person’s report, and I have meetings. But I’m scared, Peter. What happens if she collapses again and this time I’m not in time to the hospital? What happens now that she’s alive and telling me that she accepts me when I’ve done my best to forget that she existed for the past ten years? What happens now that I want to know my sister, but her husband keeps giving me shifty looks, and I know he warned Dudley not to talk to me anymore? I don’t know what to do,” Lily ranted, and there was really only one step that Peter could see clearly.
He placed a comforting hand on hers where it was on the counter. “You eat first. Then I call Remus. You don’t need to do anything yet, and you look like you haven’t slept in weeks, so maybe you sleep on it too,” he suggested. “These problems aren’t going to be solved with solutions you come up with when you can’t think straight.”
She faltered like she was going to object, but Peter had already opened the takeout box and found a plate from the cupboard. He piled the food onto the plate and put it in the microwave because it had gone cold when they talked. Peter’s mother had always sworn that life decisions needed to be made on a full stomach and good sleep. She would have known what to do, but she wasn’t there, so Peter had to do his best.
The microwave beeped, and Peter pulled out the steaming plate of Chinese food. He placed it in front of Lily and found a fork he passed to her. She gave him a grateful look, and Peter grabbed her phone from the counter and told Siri to call Remus Lupin, who answered and said he would arrive in twenty minutes.