Page 4 of One More Chapter
Ain’t that the truth?
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and as I stare at the slew of notifications I’ve missed from today, I sigh. Friends, old and new, are blowing up my phone to hang out before the school year starts back up again. And yet, I’m hesitant to reach out.
Mainly because, as I sit in my parent’s living room at age thirty-three, I kind of feel like I’m back in high school again. While I’m building my dream house, I’m basically back on house arrest. Late nights out mean early morning interrogations, and while I know they’re never going to say a damn thing about it, I’m tired of feeling like I’m imposing on my friends and their homes—and, going out to the bar every night kind of destroys my middle-school-teacher-on-summer-vacation salary.
“Who’s that?” dad asks.
“Oooo! Is it a lady?”
“You didn’t tell me you were going on dates.”
“What’s her name?”
“Woah!” I interject, sitting up. I extend a hand toward them that saysChill the fuck out. “No lady. Just the guys wanting to hang out.”
“Well, invite them over!” Mom says, standing already, abandoning her project in the arm chair. “I’ll throw in a batch of cookies.”
“Do we have enough beer? We could make a run. Although you boys always found a way to get into my stash back in the day.”
I shake my head, chuckling awkwardly.
When I moved back into my parents’ house, and slunk back into that high-school-feeling, I made it a point to distance myself fromthis: from the Ant in high school who stole liquor from his parents’ cabinet, and took his dad’s Firebird out for a joyride in the middle of the night. The guy who almost didn’t walk at graduation because his senior prank got the cops called. I don’t want to be that guy anymore.
“No. Guys. They’re not…”
Mom sits back down, but shifts her knitting project to the end table. Dad slides his beer to a coaster. They eye each other, then me. I forget so often that they lost each other once. Looking at how well they fit together like cogs in a machine or pieces in a puzzle, you’d never know.
“You need your own space.”
“I forget sometimes that you aren’t our little boy anymore.”
Mom reaches over and cups my cheek as she says this, and it breaks my heart all over again. After spending my undergrad and Masters’ out of state, and then moving in with Avery for the past several years, it feels like there has been a wedge between us that living with them again has begun to repair.
“But I just got back.” I try to fight the inevitable, and like I predicted, they don’t buy it.
“The door is always open. You know that,” Dad nods, smiling.
“Where would I even go? The house will be finished enough for me to stay there in a couple of months. Renting wouldn’t make sense.”
I shake my head, pulling my hat off to comb my fingers through the dirty blonde hair that’s becoming a bit shaggy and unruly, even for my standard.
“There’s always my old place with Margie.”
Margie. Even her mother’s name makes my chest ache. My mom’s best friend since childhood. The one who was pregnant with her wild, red-headed girl at the same time that Mom found out she was pregnant with me. They lived together for those first couple of years.Welived together. Until we were two. Until my dad came to his senses and wooed my mom back.
Until Margie couldn’t afford it anymore and moved down the coast for a while.
“You guys still have that house?” I ask, voice shaking, even though I know the answer.
“I started renting it after we moved out. I send her half the commission. We have a break in rentals right now, with summer winding down. I’ll just block out the dates indefinitely, until your place is ready. Don’t worry. I won’t tell her you’re staying there until you get back on your feet.”
Mom winks, not realizing that the cogs inside my chest are currently grating against one another.
I can’t live in that house. Not when I know its history. Certainly not when I know that there’s a picture ofussitting on the mantle. Two years old. Her wild, untamed mane of red hair blowing in the wind, tongue stuck out, my pudgy lips pressed to her cheek.
Even through the ache in my chest, that thought still warms me. We haven’t changed a bit.
“Think about it, at least. It’s your best bet. Plenty of space to spread out, and only a fifteen minute drive from here. You can keep some of your boxes here, if that helps. And, more importantly, you can come for dinner every night if you want.”