Feels like Home (Lake Fisher Book 2)

by Tammy Falkner

  I look around the room. I have a lot to do to pack this place up. Most of the furniture will be sold with the cottage, I assume, but we have to decide what to do with all the knick-knacks and pictures. I’m guessing that we’re going to box them all up and put them in storage. I pick up the picture that rests on the mantel. It’s a picture of me and Eli on the day we got married. We got married standing beneath the arbor near the dock here at Lake Fisher. The day had been perfect. The picture almost hurts my heart to look at it, so I set it back down.

  A knock sounds on the door. I walk over and open it, and I’m startled when I find Aaron standing in the doorway. He leans against the doorframe and grins at me.

  “Bess,” he says. Then he rushes toward me and grabs me tightly, lifting me in the air as he spins me around. He sets me down and looks at me. “Nice jammies,” he teases, as he pulls a lock of my hair. I look down at my ratty old pajamas with the ducks on them and grin.

  “Not everyone can look this sexy in duck jammies,” I reply. I give him a small curtsy.

  “True,” he says. He looks around the room. “This place hasn’t changed at all.”

  “No one has been here in a while.” I finally look at him. “When did you get here?”

  “We got here the day before you did.” He looks everywhere but at me, like he’s trying to take in every piece of the room.

  “I thought I saw your curtain move last night. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “I was being a creepy stalker last night.” He shrugs. “I wanted to come and say hello, but it was late.” He grins at me. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he says quietly. “How long are you staying?”

  I motion around the room. “Just long enough to pack up.”

  “Pack up?”

  “We’re selling the cottage. Didn’t Eli tell you?”

  “Why are you selling the cottage?” He tilts his head and stares at me. It’s almost unnerving how direct his gaze is.

  “No one comes here anymore.” I give him a shrug. “We have to divvy things up for the divorce.”

  His brow furrows. “Divorce?”

  “Yeah, it’s time…” I say slowly.

  “Why?” He has a little vee between his eyebrows, and the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle a little as he frowns.

  I heave a sigh. “It just is. I’m actually surprised that Eli didn’t tell you.”

  “Oh, he did,” he replies. “I just wanted to hear it from you.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “No. He never did.”

  He still stares at me. His gaze is unnerving, like he can see into my soul. I turn and walk to the kitchen. “You want some coffee?”

  “Only if you can make it a cup to go. I have somewhere I need to be this morning.”

  I reach into the cabinet and take out a mug with a lid.

  “Hey,” he says slowly. “Do you have plans today?”

  “Just packing,” I reply as I fill up his coffee cup and top it with a plastic lid. “Why?”

  “I want you to go somewhere with me. Will you?”

  “Where are we going?” I ask as I fill a cup for me too.

  He grins. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “I don’t know.” I hesitate to say yes, even though he’s adorable asking the way he is. “Especially since you won’t tell me where we’re going.”

  “You used to be fearless, Bess,” he says. “What happened to you?”

  I straighten my spine. “Life happened. That’s what happened.”

  “I only need you for a few hours,” he coaxes. “Come on, Bess. Fly away with me.”

  We were six years old the first time he used that line on me. We’d been making paper wings and we had them on our backs. Mine were fairy wings and his were dragonfly wings, although to me they looked remarkably similar. He’d jumped on his bike and called for me to come fly away with him. I didn’t want to because I still had to add the glitter to my wings. But then he’d said the magic word:

  “Chicken.”

  I’d jumped on my bike and raced after him, my wings blowing in the breeze, riding so fast down the hills that my wings bent from the force of the wind.

  Now he stares into my eyes and says it again. “Chicken.” It’s slow and succinct.

  I look down at what I’m wearing. “Can I at least go change?”

  He grins. “I kind of like the duck jammies.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.” I go to the bedroom and start to get dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Then I pull my hair into a ponytail. I yell into the kitchen, where I can hear him moving around, “I don’t have to look nice for this, do I?”

  “You don’t ever have to look nice for me, Bess,” he calls back. “I’ve seen you naked, remember?”

  “It was one time when we were thirteen!” I respond. “It doesn’t count!”

  “The curtain shifted where you were changing clothes and there was your booty.” He barks out a laugh.

  I come out of the bedroom feeling lighter than I have in a really long time. “And you started singing ‘Baby Got Back’.” I shove his shoulder. “You’re still a jerk-face.”

  “You ready to go?”

  He has a pile of my mom’s photo albums in his arms. “What are you doing with those?”

  “Taking them with us. I want to look at them.”

  My mom took pictures of everything, and there are photo books all over the cabin, along with stray photos that never got placed between plastic pages.

  “Have you seen Eli?” I ask as we walk out the front door.

  “He’s fishing with my twelve-year-old, Sam.” He points toward the lake, where I can see two figures sitting on the edge of the dock, their feet swinging back and forth.

  “Where are the other two kids?” Last time I checked, he had three.

  “Kerry-Anne is with her new bestie, Trixie, Jake and Katie’s daughter. And Miles is with the babysitter, who just happens to be Jake and Katie’s other daughter.” He opens the car door for me to get in. “Do you need to tell Eli you’re leaving?”

  I shake my head and get in. “He won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  And that is the truth. I could dye my hair purple and put on a pink tutu and Eli wouldn’t notice.

  “I think he notices more than you think,” Aaron says after he gets in and tosses the photo albums into the back seat.

  “No. He really doesn’t,” I say quietly.

  He reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze. But I’m okay with where my marriage is right now. I’m okay with it being over.

  “So, what’s up with you?” I ask.

  “Not much,” he replies. “Staying busy.” He drives out of the complex and past the campground.

  “Kids are doing okay? Since Lynda?” I don’t say “since Lynda’s death” because that part still seems like poking at an open sore.

  “Miles and Kerry-Anne are fine. Sam is a little bit of a challenge. She misses her mom. I think she wishes it was me who’d died instead.”

  I turn to face him. “She doesn’t wish that.”

  “It’s okay,” he replies. “I wish it had been me too.”

  The car is quiet for a few minutes. I can’t think of the right thing to say.

  “How’s work?” he finally asks me, breaking the silence. “Are you still taking pictures?”

  “No,” I reply. I quit doing that a few years ago. “I got an office job. Crunching numbers.”

  His brow furrows. “You hate numbers.”

  “Have to pay the bills, and taking pictures was just a hobby.”

  “When we were little, you never went anywhere without a camera.”

  I had wanted to be just like my mom. She always had her camera with her, and I wanted to do everything she did. “I’m not little anymore,” I remind him.

  He turns off the highway and pulls up to a medical building. “Come on,” he says as he flings open his door.

  “Why are we here?” I ask as I get out.

&n
bsp; “I have an appointment,” he replies. He gets the photo albums out of the back of the car. I follow him in through the glass door, the cold air tingling my cheeks. He checks in and I stand back, but they take him to the back immediately and he motions for me to come too. I follow warily, unsure of what we’re doing. He follows the chatty nurse to the back of the building, where lines of chairs and curtains are set up. He settles into a chair and unbuttons his shirt, where I see a tiny plastic disc on his chest.

  I lean closer so I can see it more clearly. “What’s that?”

  “Chemo port,” he says blandly, still chatting with the nurse as she gives him a little cup with pills in it, hangs a bag of fluid, and affixes the other end of the tube to the port.

  When she’s gone, I blink hard and try to clear the confusion. “Are you sick again, Aaron?”

  “Cancer’s a bitch,” he replies.

  I suddenly feel like it’s hard to breathe. “I thought you were in remission.”

  “I was,” he says. “Now I’m not.”

  “And you’re only telling me this now?” I feel like someone just let the air out of me. “How long have you known?”

  “I found out a little while before Lynda died.” He stares hard into my eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t want to face it.” He shakes his head. “Cancer a second time is a little scary, Bess.” He looks into my eyes. “And I’m telling you now.”

  “What’s your prognosis?”

  He shrugs. “What’s anybody’s prognosis? None of us are promised tomorrow, Bess. Lynda is proof of that. One stupid drunk driver and she was gone. One minute she was yelling at me about the kids’ lunches, and the next my kitchen was empty and my life had changed. It is what it is, but still…”

  He picks up a photo album and I can tell he’s done talking about that. He starts to flip through the photos, pointing out pictures of me and him.

  “Do you remember the day we met, Bess?” he asks.

  I think back. I can’t remember the day we met. He was a fixture in my life from the early days. Our moms said we were in diapers together. Every summer we came back together, and it always felt like no time had passed during the months we hadn’t seen one another. “I don’t remember when we met. You were just always there.”

  “You were like a rock in my shoe,” he teases. He used to tell me that all the time.

  “And you were like a bee in my soda can.”

  He laughs. “God, I have missed you.” He lays his head back and flips through the albums, one by one, sometimes showing me pictures. I sit, still somewhat shell-shocked by his cancer news.

  “Do you remember the day you met Eli?” he asks. He has gotten to the album that has mine and Eli’s early pictures.

  “Yes, I remember it.” I don’t say more than that.

  “Tell me about it.” He closes the album and leans his chair back, his eyelids growing heavy. “They give you an antihistamine in case you have a reaction to the meds,” he explains. “It always makes me tired.” He passes me the album. “Tell me about the day you met Eli,” he commands.

  “I don’t want to talk about Eli.” I cross my arms over my chest.

  He glares at me. “I’m sitting here getting chemo. So what you want doesn’t matter. Talk.”

  I sigh. “We were fifteen,” I say slowly, searching my memory.

  “Keep going.”

  “And it was early June. You and Lynda had just started kissing one another, and it made me want to puke every time I looked at you two.” I make a pretend gagging noise.

  He chuckles. “And then Eli showed up and made everything right.”

  I scoff, but more with amusement than disdain. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Tell me about the first time you saw him. I can’t remember when that was.”

  “We went to go play skee ball at the arcade,” I say.

  “Ah yes, and he had knocked your top score off the leader board.” He laughs. “You were so mad.”

  “I hated him at first sight. He was such a cocky bastard.”

  “Tell me about that day…”

  6

  Bess

  Every Saturday evening during summer, if it was raining, Mr. Jacobson would open up the game room. It seemed like it was a magical room, and everyone loved it. He only opened it during bad weather because he said that children needed to be outside where they couldn’t “bug the shit out of people.” Yet he still opened up the game room during rainstorms.

  It was a small building, with lights that fell from metal beams that corded the ceiling. The walls were bare corrugated metal, and the floor was hard cement. That never seemed to matter since most of the kids went barefoot anyway.

  He had a few arcade games like Pac Man, Tempest, and Centipede, and there was a big pool table and a ping pong table that took up the center of the building. But my personal favorite was the skee ball game. It was kind of like bowling, but you had to roll the ball into a series of holes that were worth points. I’d been on the top of the leader board for the game for the past two years. I was the champion, and everyone knew it. Even Aaron couldn’t beat me, and he had certainly tried. He’d spent his entire allowance on rolls of quarters so he could play. But I was still the best.

  Until he showed up.

  Aaron and I were playing each other at the ping pong table while Lynda cheered for Aaron, who was terrible at ping pong anyway. I didn’t know why he even tried. Other people waited in line for a turn, but we’d refused to give up the table.

  Until the lights on the top of the skee ball game went off. I heard the peal of the bells and saw the flashing strobes and looked around. Then I realized what had happened.

  Someone had beaten my top score. Someone had knocked me off the leader board.

  I laid my ping pong paddle on the table and Aaron discarded his too, trapping the ball beneath the paddle. He and I walked slowly toward the group of kids who were all clapping around the skee ball game. I shouldered my way through the crowd until I stood at the front of the machine.

  And then I saw him.

  He stood tall and lanky, almost like his arms and legs were too long for his body. His hair was dark and a lock of it fell over one eye. He tossed his head to move it out of the way so he could see, and his startling brown gaze met mine. He grinned. The cocky bastard had the nerve to grin.

  I looked at the scoreboard. “You must have cheated,” I said, my voice as crisp and cool as an autumn morning.

  His eyebrows crashed together, and he stood up a little taller. “You take that back,” he said.

  “No takebacks,” I retorted and squared my shoulders.

  He’d beaten me by thirty points. Thirty! No one had come close to my score in two years, and he had just beaten me by thirty points.

  He took a step toward me. “Take it back,” he said again.

  “Go to hell,” I said, and I tossed my hair over my shoulder as I spun away from him.

  Lynda threaded her arm through mine and leaned close as we walked toward the other side of the room. “He’s hot,” she said.

  “He’s stupid,” I replied.

  She rocked her head from side to side. “And hot,” she finally replied with a giggle. “He’s watching you.” I turned to look in his direction. “Don’t look!” she hissed. “He’s staring.” She nudged me with her elbow. “I think he likes you.”

  “He’s still stupid,” I replied again. But my heart was thudding, and my palms were already suspiciously damp.

  “He’s coming over here,” Lynda nearly squealed in my ear. I reached up and rubbed at it. “He’s coming to talk to you!”

  But he didn’t come and talk to me. He came and talked to Aaron. They high-fived.

  “Do you know who he is?” I asked Lynda.

  “Yeah, we met him down at the lake today. His name is Eli.”

  “When did he get here?”

  She scrunched up her face. “Yesterday, I think. I’m not sure
. They rented cabin number eighty-six.”

  That was just a few cabins down from mine. “Do you know how long he’s staying?”

  “No idea.” Lynda finally stepped away from me and walked over toward the boys. She grabbed Aaron’s hand and he looked down at her and smiled. The two of them together still made me a little pukey. They’d been friends for the past few years, but this year they were…more. They had even started kissing. No one had kissed me yet. Not even once.

  “Number two on the leader board, huh?” the newcomer said as he came to stand next to me.

  “You cheated,” I said again, and I crossed my arms.

  “You know I didn’t.” He didn’t say anything else. He just hitched a shoulder against a tall metal post and stared at me.

  “Well, I’ll get it back.”

  “Get what back?”

  “The number one spot,” I spat. “What else?”

  He laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”

  “You can count on it.” I knew I sounded like a spoiled brat, but I couldn’t let this injustice go unpunished. I just couldn’t.

  He pulled a pack of gum from his pocket and popped a piece in his mouth. It smelled juicy and sweet when he blew a huge bubble. “You want a piece?” he asked. He held the pack out to me.

  I took a piece reluctantly, slowly opened the wrapper, and tossed it into my mouth. It took a solid five seconds of chewing to soften it up, but then I blew a bubble even bigger than his. It was so big that it popped and covered my face. I lifted the sticky film from my face and shoved it back in my mouth.

  “You have a little right here,” he said, and he reached out and touched under my eye. I blinked and looked down. I had a piece stuck to my face. I picked it loose and rolled it between my finger and thumb. Then I did the almost unthinkable, and I flicked it toward his face. I regretted it almost immediately, but he didn’t do anything I expected him to do.