"George, you are an idiot." I throw one of my peas at George from across the table.

Our mothers watch us with the same disappointed look on their faces. Both George and I ignore them.

He flinches as the pea hits him right on the nose.

"Bulls nose!" I call out, laughing. I thought it was clever instead of saying bullseye.

"More like bullshit," George rubs his nose while searching his plate for something to throw at me. He's finished most of his food though.

"George, you better watch that mouth," Ms. Davidson warns.

"Yeah, George." I stick my tongue out at him, which he returns immediately. We're just at my mum's house, so we're not worried with looking presentable as we would at a restaurant.

"You too, Maia." My mum joins in. "There is no need to throw food."

My cheeks turn a slight shade of pink before George moves on to another subject, completely unfazed by our mother's reprimands. In all honesty, this is a pretty normal thing for us.

"We can't make it to that pasta thing next Tuesday," George says as he uses a napkin to wipe his mouth. There was a bit of sauce on the corners of his mouth, but now he's just smudged them down to his chin. I purposely will not mention it.

"Why?" Ms. Davidson asks with furrowed brows.

"Wilbur's going to be in London, so we're going to stream." George places the napkin back into his lap.

My Mum glances to me, wondering why I never told her. I just nod once in confirmation that Wilbur will in fact be in London.

She doesn't know about the night with Wilbur, but she does know that we're really close. Usually, I would be bouncing off the walls with excitement that my friend is going to be staying here, but now I just feel neutral; equal amounts of excited and dread when it comes to seeing him again.

George pulls me out of my train of thought when he throws a piece of bread at my face. I turn to him.

"What the heck, George?" I ask with a laugh.

"Payback."

"I threw a pea at you." I place the bread on a napkin, not going to eat it. "You threw bread. There's a difference."

"No there's not."

"Yes there is."

Ms. Davidson and Mum ignore us as they brainstorm a different thing to do next week instead of the online pasta class we've been taking for the past month. It's been more of a Tuesday night thing where our mums attempt to make different kinds of pasta from scratch while George and I sit back to watch. Well, we helped with garlic bread one time, but we argued so much that it ended up burnt. We were fired from bread duty.

After the dinner, George and his mum left for some orchestra. I stay at Mum's for a while after. She's washing the leftover dishes.

"So your friend Wilbur is coming to London?" she asks from the kitchen.

I sigh, still sitting at the dining table. "Yeah, it's only a couple days though."

"Are you excited?"

I shrug, although I doubt she's facing the right way to see. "He's just a friend."

"Well that's not very positive." Mum laughs. "Did something happen between you two? Are you still friends?"

I cringe at the word choice there. I know she didn't mean romantically, but it kind of hit spot on for my problem.

"That's just it." I sigh in defeat. "He wants to be just friends."

"And you want to be more?" She walks back into the dining room and leans on the doorframe.

My cheeks burn red. I don't know if this is the kind of conversation I want to have with my mother. "I guess, but we can't."

"Why not?"

I shrug. "We're just supposed to be friends. We can't be anything more than that without ruining a friendship."

"Says who?" Mum laughs as if that's the most stupid thing she's ever heard. "The friendship police?"

I glance up to meet her eyes. She looks amused at my words.

Isn't this the very woman who got divorced because the marriage ruined their friendship? The one that wanted to get away before they got to that breaking point of hatred?

She begins to turn back to the kitchen, leaving me in my thoughts, but I interrupt.

"What about you and Dad?" I ask from my seat.

Her head turns in my direction. "What about us?"

"You and Dad were friends before you got married." I shrug. "I just don't want something more to ruin our friendship, and then we can never get that friendship back."

Mum is quiet for a long time before she sighs. I almost think I got her all twisted up with my question, proving that I'm right. People can't be love-soulmates and friend-soulmates. But she walks over to sit next to me.

"Maia, you're father and I were a different story. We had fun together, but we weren't mature when it came to the relationship-aspect of things. Sometimes it gets to the point where you just can't grow." Mum grabs both my hands, trying to make her point stand out.

"Wilber and I are friends. We don't act mature." Not when we're drunkenly playing pretend. "And I don't want to get to that point with Wilbur. Ever."

She laughs a little. "You and Wilbur are different from your father and I." She thinks for a moment. "Your Dad was my George."

My jaw drops a little.

I imagine in my head marrying George. It could work for a little bit, but we would argue and get on each other's nerves. It would be all fun and games. It wouldn't work.

"I know it's cheesy," Mum continues, "but do you think Wilbur could help you grow into a better person?"

I nod once. He already has by forcing me out of my shell. Now I talk to Tommy and the band and him; before the only person I talked to off stream was George.

"Do you trust him, Maia?" She gives my hand a reassuring squeeze.

Trust is a fickle thing. It means to give away a piece of you to someone, and I have issues with it. I struggle to let people see what's not the inside. I don't like saying my past to avoid questions and judgments.

But I did tell Wilbur my past. The moment where my whole life felt like it was on blast, then I got dumped. It was a low point.

"I told Wilbur about the boat," I say quietly.

Mum smiles her knowing-smile. One that only a mother could have.

"I'm not telling you what to do," she says, "but I would consider going past the whole friend thing. Don't let that get in your way of something that could be great.

She stands up to leave but pauses in the doorway.

"And Maia?"

I lift my head to meet her eyes. She's smiling mischievously now, like she has a secret.

"Your father and I are still good friends," she says, "We have lunch at least once a month."

My brows furrow. This is the first I've ever heard my of my parents talking outside of mandatory-talking type settings.

"Since when?" I ask.

"Ever since we had to meet about police reports." She shrugs. "We wondered why we ever stopped talking after the divorce, and we realized we had just missed our friend."

Now it's my turn to smile. The very low point in my life is what helped my parents become friends again. Maybe I don't regret that night as much anymore.

She turns to leave the room for real this time. I let her words soak in.

Mum and Dad are still friends. After everything that happened.

Maybe Wilbur and I are just friend-soulmates, but maybe we're supposed to be more.

What if we're the only people holding ourselves back? What if we spend the rest of our lives wondering these questions? What's the worst that could happen if we just try?

And in the end, it might not work. Maybe we'll crash and burn after an attempt.

But the other option could be spending the rest of our lives secretly in love with each other and leave it at that. Maybe that's the kind of soul mates we are.

But we're not going to know if we never try, is it?