When people think of New York, all they think about is the Big Apple. But honestly, there are vast swaths of countryside, farmland, and forest. That's what we're driving through now, the relatively quiet parts. Even though it's dark, the moon sheds just enough light that I get flashes of déjà vu, of traveling this same stretch with my dad to NYC, to Schenectady to visit my estranged aunt, Bess.
“Did you know my dad actually has a sister?” I say into the quiet of the van. I think my boys are trying to be respectful by staying silent, giving me a chance to think. I'm not sure that I want to get too deep into my thoughts right now. “So I guess I do technically have family left. I've met her a handful of times, but not one of those visits was pleasant.”
“What's she like?” Cope asks as I hear this shuddering sigh from the backseat that makes my nipples harden, despite the situation. And then Ransom is folding his arms on the back of the seat between me and Cope, watching me carefully.
“She's a veterinarian,” I say, realizing that's not exactly the question Cope was asking. “Devoutly religious. I guess my grandparents were, too. I mean, not that my dad wasn't religious, but he wasn't a zealot either. Aunt Bess is … too judgmental, aggressive to a fault. My dad cut her off completely after Yasmine died.”
“How come, darling?” Ransom asks, his voice sliding around me like a silken ribbon.
“Well,” I start, wondering if this might affect either Ran or Pax negatively. “Yasmine identified as bisexual. Between dating asshole metalcore boys,” I say with a slight smile, “she sometimes dated asshole metalcore girls, too.” A small laugh escapes me as I sweep my fingers through my hair. “My aunt came to the funeral with a God Hates Fags sign. I haven't seen her since. Frankly, I don't really care. I thought about contacting her to let her know that …” I stop and swallow hard. I guess I just can't casually say my dad passed. Nope. It won't come out. “Anyway, fuck her.”
“Fuck her,” Paxton agrees from behind me. “I don't have much tolerance for bigots. You'll see, when you meet my parents. There's more than one reason we don't get along.”
“Paxton's parents are the fucking devil,” Michael says from the front, scaring the crap out of me. I'm already nervous about meeting them; that doesn't help. “No wonder we all ended up here, starting a new family. Looks like we either lost the good ones or ended up with the shittiest blood relations known to man.”
I notice that Muse isn't weighing in on the conversation and decide to change the subject. He might just be too focused on driving to join in, but my guess is that he really doesn't want to talk about his family. The only things he's told me about his past are that he was emancipated at fifteen, that he worked in a magic shop, and that he shares his middle name with his uncle.
“I have my house key from before I moved to Arizona. The locks haven't been changed in years, so getting inside isn't a problem.” I poke at my purse with the toe of my black heel. These ones have a silver skull and crossbones buckle across the front. “I don't know what my stepmom left in the house, but if there's a lot of stuff we can cart it over to my dad's storage unit.”
“Did she have access to that, your stepmom?” Muse asks, finally rejoining the conversation.
See, I think I was right.
“Nope. Just me and dad. I have the key for that, too, if we need it.”
I take another deep breath and lean my head back against the seat, still clutching Cope's hand. Ransom turns his face toward me and presses several loving kisses to my temple. The stubble on his face tickles my skin, making me smile.
His fingers start to massage my scalp and I close my eyes for a second, just to take a moment to collect myself, prepare my heart for the sight of the familiar turned distant, the homely turned foreign, the living turned dead.
But I guess I drift off to sleep because when I open them, we're pulling into my parents' driveway.
My lashes part, eyes opening, head lifting, my gaze taking in the quiet suburban street with a detached sort of acknowledgement. Yes, my heart says, we once lived here, but we don't know this place anymore. That thought's fine and dandy, a good shield against the pain, but as soon as I open the minivan's sliding door I know it to be a lie.
Setting my high heel on the pavement, I see two pairs of children's handprints with dates scrawled in messy lines below them. Above them, the words Lil & Yas.
Fucking fuck.
I grab my purse and carefully pull my phone out, snapping a photo before I can think better of it. I might not want to look at this right now, but later …
“I can be your photographer,” Cope says, sweeping hair back from my face, “so you can just relax and look around.”
“Okay,” I say. I think my eyes are already watering. Yep. When I reach my fingers up, I find warm saltwater on my cheeks. “Thank you, Cope.”
I lift my gaze from the driveway and pan down the row of houses on either side of the street. There are a few differences here and there—a new mailbox, a fresh coat of paint, a stump where there used to be a tree—but otherwise, I may as well have stepped into a time warp.
Walking around the front of the van, I see the For Sale sign swaying gently in the nighttime breeze, stuck right in the center of my dad's fastidiously kept lawn. It's been a while since he was strong enough to care for it properly, but it still looks fantastic. I figure he probably hired someone to take over when he no longer could.
“Let me get my key,” I say as my boys cluster around me, giving me the small burst of strength needed to move up the walkway, as familiar to me as my own hand, and pull the ring of keys from my purse. I unlock the front door and push it open before I can change my mind.
It occurs to me how many times I stood here after dates with Kevin, lingering on the porch so I didn't have to leave his side. Half the time, Dad was in the living room peeking at us through the curtains, trying to make sure we didn't take our goodbye kissing too far.
“Welcome home,” I whisper, because there's nobody else left to say it.
Grief is a weird emotion, isn't it? So disconcerting. It's like there's this part of your life missing, this part that you ache for. After a while, it gets easier to pretend it was never there, but that doesn't make the want go away. And it's those little moments every now and again, those reminders of a time past that tear the scab off, make the pain feel fresh.
I think that's what happens to me when I walk into the gaping emptiness of my childhood home. Living in Phoenix, there were no reminders of Mom, of Yasmine. Being on tour with Beauty and Lies, there were no reminders of Dad.
Here, there are signs and symbols everywhere, happy ghosts smiling and laughing, hugging, living. I see the dent in the wall as soon as I take a few steps into the room, that place where Yas and I accidentally crashed our new bikes—after we were told a dozen times not to ride them in the house. Yes, that spot has been patched and painted over, but there's a dip that I can feel when I run my palm across it.
“Picture, please,” I tell Cope, trying to keep my voice steady, full aware that tears are just streaming down my cheeks. I don't let the guys see, keeping my face turned away from them, my melancholy quiet. If one of them hugs me right now … I might just break down.
I move past the foyer, across scuffed hardwood floors and into the living room.
There, the hole above the fireplace where one of Mom's paintings hung my entire life. Even after Dad married Susan, he kept the colorful canvas there, and every now and again I'd catch him looking up at it with a slight glaze in his eyes, a gentle smile.
That painting is now sitting on the floor, leaning against the bricks of the fireplace. There's a pile of random meaningless shit next to it, gouged from my childhood bedroom. Susan stacked my old headboard, my nightstand, and bedside lamps in here, too.
I hardly register any of it.
There, on the fireplace mantle is a small urn, similar to the one in my purse.
That … vase is all that's left of the man that put bandages on my wounds, held me whe
n I cried over boys, kissed my forehead before I fell asleep at night.
Fuck.
I need to get out of here.
“I can't breathe,” I say, turning and pushing through my boys until I'm out in the yard again, breathing in cool damp air.
I make it about ten steps outside the door before I fall to my knees. I'm not trying to be dramatic; it just happens. I mean, Jesus, my dad's been dead all of fourteen days. Fourteen. That's not even long enough to heal a shallow scratch.
“Oh, sweet thing,” Ransom says, kneeling down next to me. The violet scent follows him to the pavement as he sweeps his arms around me and holds me tight. I lean into him because I know he understands. I'm not being whiny; I'm not trying to make a scene. I'm just fucking grieving, fighting to heal. Everyone has their own process and this is mine. This … is mine.
Copeland squats down on the other side of me, his face completely free of judgment, his look sympathetic and sweet. I know he wants to take care of me, but I'm not going to let him. There are four other boys that can do that right now and he deserves a break from Cara, from his grandma, from his mom. But then … he reaches out his arms to hug me, too, and I can't resist.
I melt into the pair of them, sobbing until the initial shock of the moment passes and I'm left with a runny nose and burning eyes.
“Do you want us to load up the stuff in the living room?” Muse asks, leaning over me, pushing hair back from my forehead. His glasses almost fall off his face, but he rescues them at the last minute with a hand covered in black bat tattoos.
“Yes, please,” I whisper hoarsely. “And anything else you find. I want it all. Everything.”
“Got it,” Derek says, standing back up and heading inside to do what he does best—make sure the practicalities are out of the way so everyone else can revel in their emotions. That poor fucking man.
I sniffle and run my arm across my face, staring at the thick trunk of the tree that decorates the front corner of the yard. I think it's a called a champion oak or something. It looks like a champion, stretching its massive arms to the starry night sky.
“You just tell us when you're ready to go back in, wonderful,” Ransom says, his soft voice the perfect pitch and cadence for the moment.
I sit there for a while, glancing to my left to see Michael, Paxton, and Muse loading up the back of the van. It's going to be a tight fit to get us all in there with my stuff. A visit to the storage unit is definitely in order.
“I'm ready,” I whisper after the van door is closed, my stuff loaded.
“Hey, love,” Pax says, pausing in front of me, much more subdued than usual. I appreciate that. “We got everything but the, uh …” He stares down at me for a few seconds, gorgeous, but almost like a stranger in his jeans and t-shirt. I can't decide if I miss the suits or not. “We left the ashes inside,” he continues, using some of that skill from the stage to make his words melodious and easy to listen to.
“Thank you,” I say, letting Cope and Ran help me to my feet.
I brush off my knees and turn to find Michael and Muse waiting on the porch for me.
Heading back to the front door, I slip an arm around each of their waists and lead them back inside the dark living room. It's an older house, so most of the rooms don't actually have any lights of their own. My mom used to joke about it and say she was just glad for the excuse to buy a lot of lamps.
It doesn't matter to me. In fact, it's probably better that I only see the familiar rooms in a bath of moonlight.
“Let me give you guys the tour,” I say, taking Dad off the mantle and adding him to the plastic bag that holds Mom. She's already spilled inside and if he spills, too, then at least they'll be together again. That's how I'm going to sprinkle their ashes, mixed together, next to the Goode family mausoleum where Yasmine is buried. Well, technically it's just her name inside the actual structure, her body buried in the small plot behind it. “Obviously, we have the living room here,” I say, totally detached as I take the guys through to my dad's office, then back through the living room and into the kitchen.
Cope takes pictures of everything, the flash on my phone highlighting dark nooks and crannies as we make our way up the stairs to the bedrooms.
“This was my sister's room,” I say, opening a door to an empty square box that looks nothing at all like the palace Yasmine had turned it into, draping everything in pink and glitter and crystals. It's because of her that I like the color pink so damn much. I stare into the room for a long time, the guys' bodies keeping me warm despite the empty cold of the house. I think it's in the mid-forties outside, and there's no heater running in here so it's seriously fucking chilly, like ghosts are passing through my body as I close the door and move back down the hallway.
The door to mom's art studio is cracked, and I kick it the rest of the way open with my heel, staring at the floral patterned wallpaper that Susan put up when she moved in.
“Mom's art studio—although it was a hell of a lot cooler before my stepmother got ahold of it.”
The guys follow me into the room, even though there's nothing really there to see. Four walls, a closet with sliding doors, a window. But to me, this room is so much more than that. This is where my love for art was born.
I tell the boys that.
“My mom gave birth to my creativity in this room,” I say, stepping over to the window and squinting into the darkness like I can see the cemetery if I try hard enough. During the day you can, the green hills dotted with gray gravestones. My mom used to say it was peaceful, that she enjoyed the view. Personally, I'm not a fan of graveyards.
Michael puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close, giving me an uncharacteristically gentle kiss that soothes some of the angst bubbling up inside of me.
“That must be where you got your talent, too,” he whispers, giving me one more kiss before I pull away and take his hand, leading him into the hallway and staring at the two doors on the opposite end.
My parents' room, the carefully selected lavender walls my mom chose painted over with some of Susan's beige … and my room.
I skip the bathroom, but Cope doesn't, slipping inside and taking a bunch of pictures that I'm sure I'll be grateful for later. I mean, there are memories in there, too. Bath time with Yasmine when we were kids, getting my first period, putting makeup on before school.
I start down the hall and then pause to take off my heels. I can't take the sound of them clicking across the floors, the sound too similar to the cadence of mom's shoes as she swept down the hall to peek in my bedroom, dressed in her evening best, to tell me that she was about to head out on a date with dad.
“I've got 'em, love,” Paxton says, curling his fingers through the straps and taking the pair of heels from my too tight grip. I lean my forehead into his chest and he goes still for a second. But then with a deep breath, he relaxes and lays his hand on the back of my head. “And I've got you, too, if you need me.”
“I might,” I say, my voice echoing in the empty house as I stand up and look into Pax's grey eyes. They're surprisingly empathetic right now, reflecting some of the emotion that I know he's still holding back. This thing with Ransom is a good first step, but he still has a ways to go. Somehow, seeing his pain reflected back makes me feel a little better, less alone.
God.
I'm not alone at all, am I?
I turn back to look at my boys, at Michael and Muse and Ransom and Copeland.
“Thanks for doing this with me,” I say before I forget to do it.
“No thanks required,” Pax says, putting his hand on my shoulder. I reach up to squeeze his tattooed fingers, and then move silent as a ghost across the floor, pushing the door to my parents' room open. It doesn't look anything like I remember—new crown molding, new baseboards, different paint colors.
“My mom and dad's room,” I say with zero inflection, moving away before the hideous new décor choices fade away and memories start to peek through ugly beige paint and pressboard molding
s. “My room.”
I grab the last handle and twist it, sweeping inside and feeling my breath rush out in a gasp.
My bedroom … it looks exactly the same. The walls are painted a soft yellow, and in one corner, near the window, there's the mural my mother painted. Taking inspiration from the tree in our front yard, she painted intricate little branches dotted with fall reddened leaves. Hidden amongst the foliage is a tiny nest with little eggs in it, a pair of hummingbirds watching over it from a nearby branch. One of them is brown and speckled, the other brilliant shimmery green with a red chest.
There's a mattress and box spring sitting in the middle of the room. I can tell by the familiar floral pattern that this is literally the same mattress I slept on for most of my life.
“I lost my virginity on this,” I say as I point at it and smile through a new rush of tears. These, too, at least are silent. I step into the room, running my hand over the ceramic light switch cover that my mother painted and glazed. It has tiny flowers in pink and yellow all over it.
“Do you need a screwdriver?” Muse asks as I hand him my purse.
“There's a multitool in there, attached to my keys. It should have one,” I say, smiling back at him. He returns the expression and then slips his hand into the bag, grabbing my key ring and starting in on the light switch.
Cope keeps photographing everything, his bottom lip tucked slightly under his teeth, his eyes flicking back to me every now and again like he's checking up on me.
Mikey, Pax, Ran, and I pause in a row in front of the window.
From here, we can see the minivan in the driveway, the gentle unassuming row of suburban houses, each with a single porch light and vibrantly green lawn. There are flowers everywhere, the first hints of spring coloring the neighborhood.
“It's so weird, being here,” I say, voice echoing again. “Surreal.”
“I thought the same thing,” Ransom says, voice tight, “when I visited my mom's place to pack up her stuff. In the end, I gathered the things that meant the most to me and then left, leaving the front door open behind me. I have no idea what happened to the rest of it.”
Roadie (Rock-Hard Beautiful Book 2) Page 23
