Sunday morning dawned bright and golden, accompanied by the muffled rumble of traffic outside that was the closest equivalent to birdsong that one could ever manage to get in a big city. Felicity stretched in the bar of sunlight slanting across her bed through a gap in her curtains, then got up and went to the window to open them the rest of the way, flooding her bedroom in brilliant morning light. She found herself smiling as she blinked spots from her vision. Sundays were her favorite day of the week. She'd usually finished up with her grading as well as the rest of her work the day before, which meant on Sunday, the whole day was hers, to do with what she wished. And right now, what she wished was to park herself on her couch in her pajamas and binge watch Netflix.
To that end, Felicity took a few moments to make her bed, straightening out her covers and making sure that everything was smoothed out and neat, before padding out into her kitchen to make herself breakfast. She ate it perched on the edge of her kitchen counter, since she'd somehow never gotten around to getting anything in the way of dining chairs, then sat herself down on her couch with coffee and a blanket and started her Netflix binge for the day, the very same one that she'd told Oliver she'd had scheduled way back the night before. She'd mostly meant that as a joke, but the fact of the matter remained that she was usually so busy during the week that she pretty much did have to schedule her leisure time on the weekends.
Midway through the afternoon, right as Felicity had reached the point where she'd zoned out to everything except the TV in front of her, her phone started vibrating against the coffee table nearby, startling her back into full awareness. She glanced at the screen and saw that it was her mother calling, and for a moment she considered not answering. Only a moment, though- she'd become estranged from her mother when she'd gone off to college, due to seemingly insurmountable differences in their worldviews, and they'd only recently started to reconnect with one another. Felicity knew that if she didn't answer her phone right now, she ran the risk of ruining all the hard work she'd put into repairing their relationship.
"Hi Mom," she said, lifting her phone to her ear, a sigh slipping out with her words before she could stop it.
"Hi," her mother replied on the other end of the call, and Felicity heard her start to add a "honey" to the greeting before stopping herself. "I'm not interrupting anything important, am I?"
"No, Mom," Felicity reassured her. "I finished my work yesterday. What's up?"
"I just wanted to check in," her mother replied. "See how you're doing. See if there's anything new with you."
"I'm doing fine," Felicity said. She thought for a moment, then added, "And we have a new kindergarten teacher joining the staff this year."
"Oh!" her mother replied, brightening. "That makes them your coworker, right? What are they like? Are they nice?"
"He's pretty nice," Felicity said, smiling at her mother's enthusiasm. "And his kids seem to love him. He bought me coffee yesterday."
"Oh, he did, did he?" her mother asked, obviously hinting at something, given her tone.
"Don't get any ideas, Mom," Felicity replied, laughing. As much as her mother's obsession with her love life had always annoyed her, it was still strangely pleasant to hear it now. It was comforting to find them slipping back into the familiar patterns of their relationship. "We're just friends. The coffee was meant as a thank you, that's all."
"What do you mean?" her mother asked.
"Well, you see, his previous job was teaching preschool," Felicity explained, "and on Friday, he was struggling with how to present a particular subject to his class. I helped him figure it out, and he thanked me with coffee."
"Very observant of him, to have noticed your caffiene addiction," her mother remarked teasingly.
"I keep a coffee maker on my desk at work, Mom," Felicity replied. "I'm not exactly trying to keep it secret."
"Fair enough," her mother replied with a laugh.
"Anyway, we decided to make it a regular thing," Felicity went on after a moment. "Meeting for coffee, I mean. Oliver thought that it would be a good way for him to get more help if he needs without having to disrupt my class again."
"That's his name?" her mother asked. "Oliver?"
"Yeah," Felicity replied. "Why?"
"No reason," her mother said. "It's just that we somehow almost got all the way through this entire conversation without you mentioning it."
"Oh," Felicity said as she thought back and realized that her mother was right. "Oops."
"Oh well," her mother said. "I'm sure it would have come up eventually even if you hadn't mentioned it."
"Probably," Felicity agreed. There was a moment's silence, then her mother said, "Well, I'm going to let you go now, but it was nice catching up with you. I'm glad to hear that things in your life are going well."
"It was nice talking to you," Felicity said, and realized as the words left her mouth that she meant them. "Here's hoping we get to do it again soon."
"Here's hoping," her mother agreed, her words punctuated by a faint click as the call disconnected. Felicity sighed and set her phone back down on the coffee table and threw herself back down on the couch and resumed her Netflix binge. This time around, though, her focus was elsewhere, somewhere other than on what she was watching. The only thing occupying her thoughts was how happy she was that she had gone against her first instinct to not answer the phone when her mother had called. If she hadn't, she would have missed out, not only on an admittedly rather pleasant conversation, but also on a rare opportunity to continue rebuilding the relationship between them.
