Blade (Ch.24)

Blade (Ch.24)

24
A flashlight beam came through the passenger side window when we pulled up, half blinding me. Then it moved, and hit the ground, illuminating the person who held it for the most part at least. I saw all of them there, waiting for me to step out of the car.

“You guys,” I laughed unbelievingly. Tom went around back to lug my suitcase from the trunk. They all huddled around me, hugging and talking in one mess of conglomerated words.

“Did you seriously think we weren’t coming?” Chuck said distinctly, smiling while she spoke. “Have more faith in us than that.”

“I thought it was too early for any of you to get up,” I confessed.

“Jen, we would get up at midnight for you,” Prudence told me, and they all agreed. “It’s not like we would miss saying goodbye.”

And Eli gave me a list of everyone’s cell and home numbers in case I forgot, as well as their addresses. “Don’t lose that,” he said, closing my fingers around it.

“I won’t,” I guaranteed him.

“We have to get going, Jen,” Tom notified me. I embraced them all individually, and as a last goodbye, we came together for a group-hug.

“Call us once in awhile,” Dylan pled.

“Don’t worry, I will.” I straightened the collar of my temporary jacket I only put on for the morning temperatures, and boarded the ferry with Tom. I wouldn’t need it later…or well I might in the plane, but atmospheric temps usually didn’t bother me. Every single one of them waved until I couldn’t see them from up top anymore, when I went inside and rode the ferry out.

We caught a cab to the airport and arrived in plenty of time. I waited in the gate flipping through outdated magazines without really paying attention to the contents, looking up at the lady waiting by the hangar door to see if she was getting ready to call. The minute she started shooting off names, I wasn’t prepared. Tom had to nudge me to get me to realize that she had called mine, and I was to wait in line with my ticket. Before I left, I embraced Tom tightly, told him I wouldn’t forget him and that I would call him often, and off I went. It seemed to whisk by too fast; like he was a ribbon I couldn’t grasp before it slipped through my fingers. It was funny, how I didn’t want to leave him now when I had wanted to go back to Utah so very badly the moment I came to New York. I wished he could come, too, so I wouldn’t be leaving one part of my family behind to be with the other, but you can’t have everything.

Once I had a mindset on where I was to go once the plane took off, I felt as if the ride would never end. I couldn’t wait to see Riley smile again, and I couldn’t wait to hold Frederick in my arms. (Well I liked to think of it that way, but there was no way I could really hold him, just hug him, because he did the holding.) I wanted to listen to Seth’s sarcasm in person, and feel Richard’s wise nature near me. And those were the only things I dreamt of when I slept on the way, to knock some hours out of the entire trip altogether.

The jolt of the plane landing on asphalt roused me—I must have dozed again after waking from a nap that killed at least two hours, maybe three. Groggily, I walked out of the plane down a ramp they provided when it was safe, pulled my bag off the cart outside (which the attendant had to help me with), and drug it along after me, numb flight-legs and all. I came into the gate only half aware of who was who for a minute, and then started looking when I had my senses.

And I saw them. In a way I never saw them before, but I saw them all the same. Riley had nodded off on Richards shoulder, Seth was staring straight at me, the goofiest smile on his face, and Frederick had his nose in a book. Seth shook him, but I knew he was aware of my presence. It came as an instinct to all of them (the demons anyway) to feel me just as I felt them, only in a different way.

He set the book down on the seat next to him and stood slowly, as if expecting me to freak out, which I almost did, but not quite. My version of freaking out came off a whole lot less strong than he thought it would. My hand released the handle of my roller suitcase so it came to the carpeted floor, and I ran to him. I ran to him and jumped into his arms, hooking mine around his waist. Way to make a scene in front of the entire gate, I thought, but then I disregarded it.

Frederick put a hand on the back of my head and held me to him, as if this were the last day we would be together, and not the first of a long time to come. I thought he might have cried, but I knew better.

“What did you do to your hair?” he whispered, coursing his fingers through it. At least he didn’t have to go through knots now to come back to the top and cob it with his fingers again. He could tousle it all he wanted and he would never find a knot.

“I cut it,” I answered. Obviously.

“Did anyone ever tell you that that question usually comes off as a rhetorical one?” he chortled. “I wasn’t really expecting an answer.” Well I was stupid. Why did I always answer rhetorical questions more than real ones?

“Too bad, you got one anyway.”

“Here’s one that you can answer: why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you cut it?” he clarified, letting up on my head so that we could see each other’s faces.

“I…er, I had to. Mauve had a hold of it, and so I hacked it off with scissors to get away…and blah blah blah.” He rolled his eyes, wondering why he didn’t think of that.

“You’re safe with us, now,” Richard assured me, coming up to his son’s side. Riley tackle hugged me out of nowhere, laughing to beat the band.

“Riley!” I squealed, hugging her back for what it was worth. “You wouldn’t believe how happy I am to see you!”

“Same here!” she bubbled. “I can actually talk to you in person!” She mussed my hair tauntingly. “Love your new style.”

“Thanks?” I said, trying to figure out how my hair changed my style.

“You’re like, all sleek now,” she explained. “Looks nice.”

“Oh.” Next was Seth, who gave me a bone-crushing bear hug and patted my shoulder.

“Nice to have you back, bud,” he chuckled. I went to retrieve my suitcase momentarily, realizing that I left it behind, and came back to embrace Richard before we left the airport, had something to eat, and went back to the place I truly called home. I stood and stared at the front of the house for a good ten minutes at least before Frederick said ‘come on’, and dragged me inside. The first thing I wanted to do, even though Richard said it could wait, was put my things back in the dresser and officially establish my place here again. The top and second from the top drawers were empty like I left them—that’s where my clothes were, and Frederick’s sat in the third and fourth drawers.

“I could have done all that if you left it till tomorrow,” Frederick said, watching me unload pairs upon pairs of jeans, shirts, and the like.

“I can do it; if I didn’t want to then I would have left it,” I told him simply.

“But it takes you forever,” he whined.

“Oh shut up,” Riley interjected, coming to help. “Super Riley saves the day.”

I giggled and allowed her to help me put things back where they belonged while Seth entered and talked to Frederick mutely. They weren’t fighting, and their conversation was upbeat, mixed with mild chuckles and brotherly actions. Richard watched the news in the living room, as if I hadn’t left at all.

Riley and I had everything put away neatly by the time the sun started to set, when she decided to finish a novel she recently started, and went into her room to chill and read. Seth joined her because he’d been reading over her shoulder, which left me with Frederick. I rolled back on the floor and took a long breath, glad that the suitcase was finally empty. Frederick took my arms and heaved me up on my feet again.

“Oh no you don’t,” he murmured, spinning me onto our bed. “I waited for you to finish unpacking, so now you’re mine.” I snorted jokingly and curled against him when he sat on the edge of the bed where I was . He wrapped his arms around me, and flipped us both over backward, surprising the heck out of me. I should have expected it, but being away from him so long caused me to forget what he did and when.

“I missed you,” I informed him, though he already knew that. I placed my hand over his still heart.

He reached into his pocket and brought out the ring I left behind. “Will this work?”

“We can make it work; I mean it this time,” I promised. I slipped my finger into it, and my lips touched his and remained against them for a long time.

Needless to say, that night was the best night of sleep I’d gotten since I left for New York. A lonely bed didn’t feel quite so awkward (because even the twin bed felt odd) with him to fill it and hold me while we both slept till near-noon the next day. He would never make a good alarm clock if he didn’t wake until I did.

I sat still in his arms for about a half an hour before I decided to place a hand on his cheek to rouse him. He took a deep breath and placed his hand over mine, encouraging his deep brown eyes open. They seemed to shine in a way I’d never experienced before; pure bliss.

Though neither of us wanted to, we got up and dressed for the day. Unlike most days where I was too lazy or too tired to do anything but walk around and watch movies, today I was so full of energy I could hardly contain it. I ran up and down the halls while Frederick took a shower, and sprinted outside, running in circles, rolling in the grass and laughing. Seth watched me like I’d lost my mind overnight from the dining room, but to Riley it was completely normal. She was still young, so it wasn’t anything new if she was overly hyper sometimes. She joined me outside and we giggled together like two girls fresh to middle school.

“Why are we running?” she called to me from across the yard when I stopped to catch my breath.

“Does there have to be a reason?” I hollered in response. She shrugged and fixed her hair; both of us completely drained of hyper pockets for the moment being.

“Hey, you put the ring back on,” she noticed when I walked closer to the dining room to meet her. “Does this mean it’s on?”

“Hmm?”

“Should we make new plans for a wedding sometime in the near future?” she repeated, making motions with her hands that suggested she wanted an answer.

“I guess so, huh?” I said, considering that for the first time. “I kind of screwed it up last time, or at least Tom did. But it wouldn’t hurt to give it another try, would it?”

Her eyes brightened. “Richard!”

They would be discussing it most of the day I figured, so I stayed out of their way, grabbed a bowl of cottage cheese, and sat on the porch under the sun. Inside, I heard brothers squabbling, but it didn’t last long. Frederick came running around the corner of the house, looking in both directions until he saw me.

“There you are,” he groaned. “Tell somebody where you’ll be next time? To make too much trouble to wander off alone.”

“You sound like my mother,” I scoffed, grinning. “I’m nineteen, soon to be twenty. I can handle myself.”

“Since when?” He came to sit by me and I rested my head on his arm since I didn’t quite reach his shoulder. “Anytime you go off alone you get attacked by somebody.”

“Nobody’s going to come after me,” I mumbled.

“You don’t know that, hun,” he argued gently, kissing my forehead. “I haven’t seen Dez for awhile now, which leads me to believe he’s up to something.”

“You call him Dez now?” I interrupted, changing the subject. “That’s so cute! It’s like you’re buddies.”

“No.” I flinched, startled by his change in voice and black eyes. “Far from it.” I took his face in my hands and forced him to look at me.

“I didn’t mean anything by that, it was just a—

“Hush,” he whispered, pulling my hands away. His eyes slowly filled in with brown, and he ran his fingers through my hair. “That was my fault.”

We touched noses. “So Riley wants to re-plan a wedding,” I began. That was as far as I got conversation wise.

“I have a tux, you have a dress; we’re good.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“I wonder where it’ll happen,” I mused. “You never know with Riley.”

“Hopefully in a spot that won’t take long to drive to,” he said optimistically. Randomly enough, I just noticed a difference in his truck, sitting farther back on the driveway. Richard brought me home in the HHR yesterday and I was tired, which might have been why I didn’t see it before.

“Nice wheels,” I huffed. “Now I look like a midget compared to your truck. How am I supposed to get up into it?” He had beefed up the tires which made the truck taller. It looked like the kind you might see on television crushing little cars like I drove, only not quite as scary. A Chevy was still a Chevy, so it had a classic feel to it, and the wheels didn’t make it look vicious.

“With a little help,” he decided. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Naw. Just making a big deal out of it because I could.”

Things seemed so incredibly easy from then on. I caught up on lost sleep from getting up early for college because there really wasn’t anything to do all day unless Riley really had an itching urge to go somewhere and do something. Each morning I woke with my head tucked under Frederick’s chin, and every day things got better between us because we would mend more and more. Somehow I locked Dezeret out of my mind and I didn’t wonder why I hadn’t seen him since forever. I had better things to think about.

Like the wedding, for instance, which Riley planned for the thirty-first of July, three days after my twentieth birthday. I called everyone back in New York including Tom to tell them about the news, and then sent out formal invitations to my friends, since Tom said he would stay in Brooklyn. All he wanted was for me to have a good time and to send him pictures. I didn’t mind it, but I kind of wished he could be there. Wasn’t it every dad’s aspiration to walk their daughter down the aisle?

Maybe not. It wasn’t like he never dreamt of walking me down the aisle, just that when the time came for it, he was half way across the U.S, old, and sick of airplanes. I understood, and didn’t let it get to me.

Chuck told me she was coming no matter what, and that she would bring Prudence along to shop for dresses they could wear at the event (which was to occur at the house in the wide expanse of a backyard we had since Riley thought that would be best). As far as I knew, Dylan could make it because his sister could, Eli could make it unless something else popped up, and Mandy was coming as long as her mom gave her the O.K. Her mom knew me and Tom, so I doubted she would refuse unless she didn’t want to pay for plane tickets.

Riley tried my hair in all kinds of styles that worked for such a short length, but didn’t really find any at first. The last one she tried, she liked the best, which basically was each side of my hair pinned up with some lovely clips she found in her hair things drawer of the bathroom.

“That’ll work,” she chirped. “Let’s just hope I can do it again for the real deal. It gives a nice feel to the whole thing combined.”

“It does,” I yawned, beat for the day. While the sun was out, the boys and girls wrestled on different teams, leaving Riley and me to brawl outside on one end of the yard while Richard, Seth and Frederick scuffled in the other side. Boundaries were well kept with Richard watching when his sons let loose and really clashed like the demons they were. Occasionally, Frederick and I would migrate and get tangled up in each other, but it didn’t last long before I ran back to Riley and tackled her to the grass.

When the evening approached and the moon rose, Riley insisted she had the time to mess with different hairstyles she thought of for the wedding using me, of course, as a model. When she found the last one to be acceptable, it was at least nine thirty at night, and I was tired from the backyard brawl.

“How’re you still boiling over with energy?” I grumbled, wondering how she still jittered about with a high strung energy I only saw in ten year olds and younger.

She shrugged. “I’m younger; and I guess it’s part of my nature. Unless I have school and homework galore, I’ve always got energy to spare.”

“I didn’t have that kind of energy as a sophomore or a freshman, not even in the summertime.”

“Well you must have a calm nature then. My nature is like electricity.”

“So what’s mine like? Rain?”

She giggle-snorted. “Possibly. Rain and soft teddies.”

I might have laughed if I hadn’t been so worn out. I did smile, though, so she knew that I agreed and acknowledged her humor.

“Hey, sis?” Frederick asked, poking his nose in the bathroom door as Riley took the clips out and tossed my hair back to its natural messiness, “Can I have her back now?”

“Jealous?” Riley teased, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “I don’t know if I want to give her back.”

Frederick raised a brow and grinned. “I’m so jealous.” He peered over his shoulder. “Hey, Seth, come get your sister.”

And so Seth came over, pried Riley from me by finding her ticklish spots, and took her down the hall. She rode happily on his back with her arms around his neck while he held her legs, and I wondered.

“She’s your sister too, you know,” I reminded Frederick once they were out of sight. “Yet only Seth gives her piggy back rides around the house and lies with her way far out back to watch the stars, not including Richard.”

“Not only are they siblings, they’re best friends,” he sighed. “I have yet to get that far. She doesn’t mind being around me, but she prefers Seth; she always did. She learned to hold his hand first when she was little, even before she learned to hold Dad’s hand.”

“Did you ever think that maybe…” But I stopped mid-sentence. I didn’t think it was fair to incorporate their indestructible bond that way.

“Maybe what?”

“Never mind,” I quickly amended.

“I think about that sometimes,” he answered anyway. He must have known what I was going to ask, even before I asked it. “But they’re just sharing the special brother sister bond that forms between two siblings sometimes. I really don’t see it that way when I look at them together.”

“Huh.” I still wondered, but it didn’t seem so likely now because I didn’t think Seth could see Riley in that way either, and vice versa. “You should spend more time with your sister, though. That’s important.”

“She’s occupied right now and so am I,” he said. “Tomorrow.” I rose from the stool and set it in the corner. Frederick stayed by the doorframe, waiting for me to sleepily return to him. I secured my arms around his neck and heaved a breath.

“I’m so tired,” I murmured into his shirt.

“That’s why I saved you from Riley, or else you might have been up with her all night,” he chuckled, ushering me into our room. I slipped into my pajama shorts and an old shirt while he waited, because he always got into pajamas early at night, and then curled underneath the covers next to him.

The temperatures increased by a few degrees in the next couple days, and so sheets became the only things we slept under at night. As soon as I started wearing long T-shirts instead of the pajama bottoms and top combination to keep cool, Frederick stopped wearing an old shirt to go to bed in, and the significance of that was that heat didn’t affect him the way it did me. When that was on my mind, it somehow escaped to Riley as with everything between us.

I mentioned it to her while we played video games in my room.

“I think he’s needy; he is just a guy, after all. I’ve been wondering when you two were gonna hit it off.”

“Riley!” I choked, staring at her in disbelief. My face turned red.

“Well I was,” she giggled. “You’re twenty and he’s…however old he is now, and you’re going to get married soon…”

“Wait until after we’re married to assume things like that,” I laughed in return. She rolled her eyes, but agreed to wait.

“Don’t you ever wonder what it’s like, though?” she inquired, lowering her voice. “To look into someone’s eyes and just know that’s the right moment?”

“Personally, I never did. Maybe that’s because I was a little slow to the catch, but everybody’s different. It’s okay for you to wonder. Maybe one day I will.”

She seemed aloof to the topic now, and more interested in games, which was only natural considering she still had half a child’s mind. Riley would bounce from serious topics to embarrassing topics to happy thoughts and then nothing at all. Some days she was just a blank slate, and her face gave that away. She would wander around outside, or lay around in her room reading when days like those came around, too, and I questioned whether she knew something that we didn’t and it was paining her. She told me no, and Riley was one for telling the truth. So I believed her judgment.

I didn’t think anything of her skipping topics and moods, because I did it a lot at a younger age, too. It was part of growing up, and Riley was in the midst of puberty. Maybe I should have worried for her though, because on blank days, Richard would be off, too, and Frederick and Seth would get jumpy.

The day before my birthday just happened to be one where Riley didn’t wake up until noon, and stayed in her room even after she did, reading in her pajamas. After I showered, I had to wait for Frederick to shower, and I checked up on her in my spare time. I silently opened the door, glad to see that I hadn’t woken her up in the process. She was still a mess of calmly breathing baby blue blankets, hammock, and white-blonde hair, with one arm hanging over the edge.