I heard Rafe approaching, his footsteps making the attic floor creak as he came up from behind and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Hmm, you didn’t answer. Maybe you don’t want to go?”
“I have to see what my boyfriend says first,” I told him, wiggling in his embrace until I was completely turned around and facing him. “He might not want me hanging out with my stalker. He’s very protective of me like that.”
Rafe rolled his eyes. “He sounds like a smart guy, this boyfriend of yours.”
“Yep. He’s a good kisser, too.”
“Oh yeah?” Rafe flashed a sexy smile as he leaned closer. “Is he better than this?” His lips captured mine in a slow, perfect kiss that sent shivers throughout my body. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he pulled me closer, our bodies touching in all the right places. When we pulled apart, his face was flushed and his eyes were very green and very bright, and it took all of my self-control not to shove him to the floor and attack him.
Probably not the smartest of ideas, with Dad due home soon for pizza night. And yes, I had called him up asked his permission before allowing Rafe to step one foot inside of the house. Surprisingly, he had said yes. I wasn’t about to ruin my chances of ever seeing my boyfriend again by doing naughty things in the attic. Besides, it was dusty up here. And the bare wood floor didn’t look very comfortable.
“You’ve got a weird look on your face,” Rafe said. “You’re thinking something perverted, aren’t you?”
“Shut up, I’m not.” I shoved him, trying to downplay the blush that was spreading across my cheeks. I wasn’t a pervert, dammit! It was just that Rafe was so damn cute and such a good kisser and of course I could easily imagine doing some hardcore making out up here, amongst the tacky wreaths and angels. I pulled away and pointed to the box of angels. “Ready to put your muscles to good use?”
“Sure.” He picked up the box with one hand, grinning when I rolled my eyes. What a show off. Thirty minutes later, he was no longer grinning, not after I had made him haul every single box down both sets of stairs and into the living room. Rafe collapsed on the couch, sweaty and panting, while I moved from box to box, opening each one. Mom had labeled everything on the outside, but I still wanted to see the decorations for myself. It was like being reunited with old friends, and I couldn’t stop the huge grin that spread across my face.
“The penguins!” I gasped, pulling the fuzzy black and white stuffed animals from the box. “We put them on the couch! Right where you’re sitting, in fact.” I snapped my fingers when Rafe didn’t respond. “Move, Rafe.”
“Are you serious?” He took one look at my face and shook his head. “Yes, you are.” He got to his feet with a loud groan and said, “Can I grab a bottle of water from the fridge?”
I was already pawing through another box. “Sure. Then hurry back so you can help me put everything up.”
Rafe groaned again as he walked out of the room. “Are you trying to kill me before Christmas?”
“Um, don’t have huge muscles if you don’t plan on using them.”
“I do use them!” His voice echoed down the hallway. “For things worth using them for!”
“This is worth it!” I replied as I unearthed a mini-tree. Shoving aside a pile of Chloe’s fashion magazines, I set the tree in the middle of the coffee table. There should be ornaments to go with it…I shifted through the decorations. Aha! There they were, neatly collected in a container. I shook my head in amazement. I had to hand it to Mom; she was completely organized when it came to her decorations. Me? I would have ripped everything down and shoved them into any old box, but she made sure to put each and everything back where she found it. Would I do the same now, when it came time to put everything away?
Yeah, I would. I didn’t even have to think about it. This, like the garden, was Mom’s legacy. It was a way to connect with her, the woman I had loved, instead of the woman I hated for abandoning us. That, I thought, was something Rafe would approve of, even if it meant he had to get dirty and sweaty to make it happen.
“What are you smiling about?” Rafe asked, returning with two bottles of water. He handed me one before drinking half of his in one gulp.
“Oh, just enjoying the sight of you all hot and sweaty. A girl could get used to that, you know.”
Rafe choked on his water, his face turning bright red.
Cackling to myself, I went back to unpacking the boxes. We had always set up a snow village in the living room, and if I could just find it…
Rafe settled back on the couch. He used his water bottle to point at the small tree I had set up and laughed. “That’s about the size of the tree we had every year.”
“Is it really?” I paused to give him a sad look.
“What is with that face you’re making?”
“Christmas trees should be big—no, huge! With ornaments hanging from each branch!” I went over to the tree, crouching down next to it to get a better look. “You can’t even put presents under here!” A sudden, horrible thought occurred to me. “Please tell me you got presents!”
“Of course I did!” Rafe shook his head. “You don’t need a huge tree for presents! And I already told you, our apartment was too small for a big tree. Where did you guys put yours?”
“In the front sitting room, in front of the window,” I said, easily picturing it. “You could see it from outside and it was sooooo pretty. Mom always insisted on a live tree, and it made the entire house smell like pine. We still get a live tree, but we don’t decorate it with nearly as many ornaments as she used to use.” I realized, too late, that I was probably making Rafe feel bad with my stories. I walked around the table and sat down next to him on the couch. “Sorry, I’m rambling. You probably don’t want to hear about this.”
“What are you talking about?” Rafe’s brow furrowed. “Gabi, I want to know all about you. All your childhood memories, everything. They’re really precious to you, aren’t they?”
I thought about that, and realized he was right. I had went from waking up in a bad mood, cursing my mom for making me feel that way, to smiling and laughing over fond memories. It sucked that she had left, and it would always suck, but at least there were good things mixed in with the bad. Like the garden. And now Christmas. “I can’t believe we’ve been ignoring all this stuff since she left,” I said, indicating the overflowing boxes of decorations. “We just packed it up and shoved it in the attic, like it didn’t exist. But she did exist. She still does, somewhere, and it sucks that it’s not here, with us, but we can’t just pretend she was never part of this family. She left her mark and I…” Rafe put an arm around me and pulled me close. “I don’t want to forget her, Rafe.”
“You won’t,” he murmured quietly in my ear. “You’ll never forget her. You can’t. She’s right here, and always will be.” He pointed to my chest.
“She’s in my boobs?” I asked wickedly.
“Your heart!” he said, blushing again.
“You were definitely pointing to my boobs.”
“STOP SAYING BOOBS!”
“Why are we talking about boobs?” Dad asked, appearing like magic in the doorway. Rafe jumped about two feet in the air before sliding across the couch to leave enough space to fit five people between us.
“We weren’t,” Rafe said, his face the reddest I’d ever seen.
I probably should have been concerned that my dad had just walked in on us discussing boobs, but I couldn’t stop laughing at the pained, embarrassed expression on Rafe’s face.
“You are so evil,” he hissed under his breath.
“I know.” I wiped tears from my eyes and tried to control myself. “Hi, Dad! Did you bring pizza?” I trailed off when I saw how pale he suddenly looked. Jumping to my feet, I rushed over. “What’s wrong?”
“Where did you…” He loosened his tie with one hand while gesturing toward the boxes with the other. “What’s all this stuff doing down here?”
It was only at that moment I realized what an id
iot I had been, for bringing everything down without asking his permission. Maybe he would have said no. Not maybe, Gabi, definitely! Crap. What had I done?
“Dad, I’m sorry, I was just thinking about Mom today, and then I remembered the stuff upstairs and…” I blinked rapidly, my eyes filling with tears again. But they weren’t tears of laughter this time. “I started going through the boxes and I couldn’t understand why we don’t decorate like we used to.”
“Because,” Dad said, each word clipped, “it’s too painful. I don’t want to see any of it ever again. Put it back upstairs. Now.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, leaving me staring at him with my mouth hanging open.
“Gabi?” Rafe approached me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“I told you I was a bitch,” I said, brushing his hands aside and rushing out of the room so he wouldn’t see me cry.
***
One foot out the door and I completely regretted leaving without my jacket, but I forced myself to keep moving, down the porch steps, across the pathway, and to the sidewalk. The sun had set, and a quiet, inky darkness settled around me. This is the part where I get attacked by a demon, I thought as I walked down the block. Then Rafe saves me, we go back inside, have pizza, and make up with Dad.
Footsteps echoed behind me, but instead of a demon, it was Rafe. He was holding my coat, which he quickly put around my shoulders, not letting go of the fabric until I had pushed my hands through the sleeves and zipped it up to my chin. Then, without a word, he pulled me into his arms and let me cry against his chest for a good five minutes.
Somehow, without me even realizing it, he slowly walked me back to the house. When I finally pulled away to wipe my nose, I was surprised to see the porch steps right behind Rafe. “Do you want to go back in?” he asked gently.
“I should probably clean up everything,” I said. “Sorry I made you bring it all down. I suck.”
“You don’t.” Rafe tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his hand lingering against the side of my face. “You don’t suck, and you’re not a bitch. You love your mom, and you want to remember her. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m sorry your dad reacted that way, but maybe he’ll come around—”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, I can’t do that to him. I always forget, Rafe, how much this affected him as well. She was his wife. The mother of his two children. She just got up and left one day. He didn’t know how to raise us by himself, while struggling to make enough money to support us. I still don’t know how he did it, how he didn’t lose himself to the grief like me and Chloe did. Throughout it all, he kept it together, but after what just happened…” I pictured Dad’s pale face and my stomach clenched tightly. “He’s still hurting, to this day, and I just went and rubbed all those painful memories in his face, like the insensitive jerk that I am. I need, I need-” I was crying again, my words coming out between gasps as I tried to catch my breath.
“Shhh,” Rafe said, brushing his thumb across my lips. “Calm down, Gabi. Can you do that for me?” I focused on his eyes, the green almost black in the dark, and nodded. “Good. Here’s what I want you to do. Go inside, find your dad, and talk to him. Tell him your reasons for bringing the decorations downstairs. He’s not mad at you—he’s just hurting. That’s why he reacted the way he did.”
I hesitated. “Do you think talking to him will help?” It sounded like a good plan, but if it didn’t work and only made Dad angrier, I didn’t know what I would do. Go home with Rafe? Haha, like that would ever happen.
“Yes, I do,” he said before giving me a quick kiss on the lips. “Go. Talk to him. It’s going to be okay, you’ll see.”
We went inside, and I paused with my hand on the banister. “Wish me luck.”
Rafe shook his head. “You don’t need it.”
I mounted the stairs slowly, my heart thudding painfully in my chest. I felt sick to my stomach and wanted to race down the stairs and bury myself in Rafe’s embrace again, but I had promised I would talk to Dad, and I refused to break that promise.
The carpeting in the hallway muffled my footsteps, and I knocked on Dad’s open bedroom door before I could lose my nerve. He emerged from the bathroom, his suit and tie replaced by a pale green sweater and worn jeans. The color had returned to his face, but his eyes were wary. “The pizza’s downstairs, Gabi.”
“I don’t care about pizza right now,” I said. Whoa, there was a sentence I never expected to ever utter in my life. “I want to talk about what happened earlier.”
He pressed his lips together, clearly unhappy with me. I was probably two seconds away from being grounded for life, but Rafe was right. We needed to talk about this, instead of avoiding it like we had been doing for seven years.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Dad. I just want to talk.” I gestured toward his bed. “Can I come in? Please?”
Dad sighed and nodded. We both sat down on the bed, and I spent a good minute picking at a thread on the edge of his white comforter as I tried to figure out what to say. After seven years of silence, it was hard to just talk about Mom.
“Why did you bring down those boxes?” Dad asked, probably tired of waiting for me to speak. He stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched tightly and his posture stiff. He wanted this conversation done and over with quickly, I realized, so he could go back to pretending Mom had never existed.
I yanked at the loose thread, pulling it free. “I dream about her. About Mom. Not all the time, but when I do, it makes me…angry.”
“I know.” His words were faint, and I didn’t dare look at him, afraid to see the sadness on his face.
“And today was no exception,” I continued, “except then, it was. I talked to Rafe about her, and he told me about his parents, and we were talking about Christmas and I remembered everything in the attic…” I was rambling. I forced myself to take a deep breath and gather my thoughts before continuing. “We have all that stuff in the attic, just sitting there, and it’s such a waste. What would she think, if she saw how we ignored it, Christmas after Christmas?”
“What your mother thinks no longer matters,” Dad said, his voice harsh. “She gave up that right the moment she left.”
My heart squeezed painfully at his words. My dad was a laid back, fun guy, but to hear the anger in his voice reminded me that even after all this time, he still hurt. We all hurt, in our own ways. “I guess that’s true.” I wound the thread around my pinky. “But it’s still stupid to not use the decorations. Maybe they have memories of Mom attached to them, but they also have memories of you and me and Chloe. Like, remember the porcelain angel Chloe dropped and its face chipped? She was so afraid someone was going to find out, so she took her magic markers and tried to redraw the eyes. And of course that wasn’t enough; she had to give the angel lipstick and earrings, too.” I started laughing as I remembered the giant, unnatural red lips she had drawn on the angel, along with black globs on the ears that she claimed were earrings. “That thing was butt-ugly when she was through with it.”
Dad chuckled as well. “That thing was so frightening, I swore it was going to attack me while I watched TV. I had to hide it behind the others so I couldn’t see it.”
“Well, I saw it today and it’s just as scary,” I said. “We should put it in Chloe’s room, on her bed.”
“Gabi.” Dad gave me a stern look, which was offset by the twinkling in his eyes.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, I won’t. But you get what I’m saying, right, Dad? If you hated that stuff so much, you would have thrown it all out ages ago, with the rest of Mom’s things.” I could still remember me and Chloe huddled in my room, crying, as we heard Dad ripping through his closet and shoving all of Mom’s clothes into black garbage bags. “But you didn’t, which I thought meant that someday, you would feel like you were ready to put them back up…”
Dad put an arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into him. “I told myself I would wait until you and Chloe ask
ed me about the decorations, until you were ready to face that stuff. But I guess I was waiting for the time when I was ready, too.”
“Are you ready now?” I didn’t look at him when I asked the question, my heartbeat loud in my ears.
He fell silent, and I waited. Eventually, he nodded, his jaw brushing against the side of my head. “Maybe not for all of it, but a few boxes would be nice. The snow village for the living room, and some of those angels…” He paused to clear his throat. “How about this, Gabi? First let’s eat dinner, and then we’ll go through the boxes and each pick something. You, me, and Chloe.”
“Do you think she’ll even want to?” My little sister hated any mention of Mom, and I had a sudden image of her setting the decorations on fire. Yeah, I really hadn’t thought this through when I had forced Rafe to drag everything downstairs.
“After you talk to her, she’ll come around.”
“I have to talk to her?” I wailed. “Why me?” I turned my head to face him and Dad smiled, bemused.
“This was your idea, wasn’t it?”
At that moment, the front door slammed and we heard Chloe calling out to us. My heart plummeted. This was not a conversation I was looking forward to. “Just don’t blame me when she tries to kill me, okay?”
Dad laughed. “Just show her the scary angel; she’ll be too busy running away screaming to attack you.”
***
“I can’t believe Chloe was cool with everything.” After stuffing ourselves with pizza, Rafe and I had retired to the living room, where I was lying across the couch, my feet propped up in his lap. His hand rested on top of my foot, lazily tracing patterns with his thumb. I hugged one of the stuffed penguins to my chest. “I thought for sure she’d throw a fit when she saw all that stuff.”
An Autumn Dream Page 7
