Egg, Cream Cheese, and Orange Marmalade -- Lifetime Original Story

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The moment Egg was laid, he was abandoned. His dad, if he even existed, left long before Egg was born, and his mother didn't want a kid -- she thought it would mess up the "free-range" lifestyle she'd gotten so used to over the years. He was accustomed to not having anyone looking out for him. For awhile, Egg stayed in a communal home with eleven other kids in situations much like his own; they called it the "carton". It wasn't much, but at least he had his own room and a bit of company. Until he didn't. One moment he'd been checking his neighbor for spots, the next he was spread wide on a hot pan -- totally exposed and covered in butter. At that moment, Egg stopped being tough. At that moment, he was just a kid, alone and scared.

***

Cream Cheese was a guy trying to figure stuff out. His mom and her boyfriend had given him 3 hours to move out of the foil wrapper he shared with them, and he was a man without a plan. Orange Marmalade was a pampered princess prone to rash decisions and longing to experience life outside the jar. She heard about Cream Cheese's situation through their mutual friend Table-Knife; she teasingly begged him to invite Cream Cheese to split rent with her on a chic tortilla she had found in the Counter District. Table-Knife relayed the message.

Much to everybody's surprise, Cream Cheese accepted.

They met on move-in day. Once T-Kn dropped them off at the tortilla and offered his goodbyes, they were left to the mandatory familiarity with which they now found themselves confronted. They sat in silence for several minutes, with nothing but the faint sizzling of butter in a distant frying pan to relieve them from their aloneness together. In an attempt to escape the wordless void into which he and Marmalade had stumbled, Cream Cheese started to stutter- "Th-thanks so much for offering to let me split. . . I mean share---"

"Oh come on," Marmalade interrupted him, "you're laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?"

"Sorry."

Thus began their life on the new tortilla. They lived together as strangers live together, because that's just what they were to each other -- strange. He was dairy, she was fruit; she liked a night out with her 'sugar and spice' types, while he hung with a gang of savory characters; he listened to Two Chains, she preferred Taylor Swift. They never spoke to each other about anything personal, each keeping closely to their respective halves, both physical and emotional, of the tortilla they shared.

***

The kitchen timer had just struck 5 minutes when Marmalade heard noises above the tortilla. She looked up to see the slatted green underside of a non-stick spatula. "Cream Cheese! Did you order something? It's here!" -- she bellowed towards the other side of the tortilla. "No, what is it?" he asked as he, too, looked up towards the spatula. As it neared, the frayed and glistening gold-white edges of a freshly fried egg -- steam still rising off it, became visible around the corners of the spatula. "Then where did it com---" she couldn't finish her sentence before the egg plopped onto the middle of the tortilla.  As they looked at the shining, scared yolk staring around its new surroundings, both Cream Cheese and Marmalade saw in it the meanest parts of themselves laid bare. Cream Cheese saw days of fear and uncertainty and abandonment; Marmalade saw the unrelenting, excruciating desire to be sincerely loved. And in that moment, a beautiful thing happened. Marmalade and Cream Cheese rose to embrace the egg and each other. They forgot awkwardness and haughtiness and instead focused wholly on comforting another edible thing, and Egg felt really safe for the first time in his life. The tortilla folded together in an embrace filled with tenderness and butter and warmth and Cream Cheese and Marmalade and Egg. That day, they had discovered the sweet savor of true friendship.

Too Long; Didn't Read: Sandwich butter-fried egg in tortilla spread with half cream cheese, half marmalade. Fry in more butter. Eat.