by Anthology
"Everett," I yelled over the music he was blasting.
He turned, looked at me a moment and blinked rapidly. I could visibly see him adjust his expression, wear the mask he often wore around me when I’d caught him behaving moodily. "Yeah?"
I held the sigh that threatened on my tense exhalation. "Do you want something to do?" I asked, hoping to distract him from terrorizing the cupboards.
Everett’s hand was on the knob and he stared at it as if forgetting what his purpose had been. While staring at the cupboard, he said, "Depends?"
I couldn’t suppress my sigh that time, so I dropped the box on the floor, creating a completely unsatisfying sound, nowhere close to echoing the frustration that simmered through my veins. "Laundry. Fold it."
Everett closed the cupboard with more gentleness than before and turned around, trudging from the kitchen to the attached laundry room. I reached over and punched the power button on the stereo, sending the room into blessed silence.
Not for the first time, I thought of the whys that plague our relationship.
Why did I think moving in together was a good idea?
Why did I rush things?
Why was our home more of a mausoleum of our things mish-mashed together? Not really a home, but a house with shit in it.
Why did Everett get so damn moody?
I knew the answer to that last one – the cancer. It would never leave us, even if it had physically left him. Cancer created more than a superficial scar blending with the others on his head: it created strife, confusion (mostly for Everett, but also for me when I was questioning why I thought this was a good idea), short term memory lapses, and complete and utter chaos in a life that had once been simple.
But more than those things, Everett was an everyday reminder of the cancer that he nearly succumbed to, the cancer that brought us together and tore us apart at the same time.
I pressed a hand to my forehead, eyes closing. I heard the metallic banging of the dryer shutting and then the low hum of the dryer starting again.
But the biggest why, the one I wondered daily, the one I worried over, was something only he could answer. Something I was too afraid to ask.
Why did you go through with it, Everett?
I opened my eyes as I heard him shuffle past. Turning to the kitchen, I opened up one of the boxes left on the counter. "Kitchen shit" in Everett’s handwriting.
I put away the small appliances, appreciated how carefully they’d been packed up by Everett, pre-road trip, a whole eighteen months earlier. Everett post-surgery would have packed his underwear in with the toaster oven, and shrugged when I brought it up.
After several minutes of silence, I walked into the living room and found Everett sitting on one end of the couch, book in hand, his stupid-sexy glasses perched on his nose. My eyes moved to the laundry basket on the floor beside the couch, the bottom littered with a colorful array of socks. I walked over picking up the socks and trying to make matching pairs.
"Did I tell you that your ass looks good in yoga pants? You should wear them all the time."
I pinned him with a look.
He shrugged. "Sorry," he said, not seeming the least bit sincere. "Not all the time, of course. I prefer you pantsless more often than not." He turned his attention back to his book, his lips twitching.
I narrowed my eyes. "Don’t be an asshole."
Everett turned to me, giving me that look. "I can’t be someone I’m not, Parker."
I sorted through the socks at the bottom of the laundry basket, grimacing a little at the men's socks mixed with women's socks, the former stained on the bottom from Everett’s nightly jaunts into the garden. An army of cats had recently taken up residence in our garden, using it as their own personal litter box. Everett’s new favorite hobby was squirting them with his Nerf water gun.
Everett leaned back into the couch, book propped up on his lap, his stupid glasses still perched on his nose. "See something you like?" he asked, not looking away from the open page, turning it carefully while his hair flopped over the top of his glasses.
"I couldn’t tell you," I replied, turning back to the socks and deciding to abandon his, sorting and matching mine instead. After standing, I reached down and picked up the laundry basket. Dropping it on the couch, I said, "Here. Sort your own socks."
"Sorting is for pussies." Everett lifted the leg of his flannel pajama pants, revealing a gray and gold argyle sock.
I wrinkled my nose. "Golf socks? Since when you do you golf?"
"I don’t." He dropped the leg and lifted the other. "And it’s sock; not socks." His other sock was wool, black, covered in a hundred colors of lint.
"I will never understand you," I declared, turning and going into the kitchen.
"That’s what keeps the romance alive, baby."
I barely resisted rolling my eyes as I opened the cupboards, deciding to unpack more of the boxes. I felt my eyebrows draw together upon seeing the randomly stacked bowls and plates, knowing it was entirely Everett’s doing. Turning my head, I took in the boxes that covered the island, some open, some still taped shut, all with "Kitchen shit" scrawled on the side.
Everett and I had moved in together a week earlier, a full six months after he regained his memory after our trip to the Purgatoire River.
Actually, I should say partial memory. Because he still forgot little things. I’d bring up a few things he’d told me about his life before me, and he’d look at me blankly, waiting for it to click. Sometimes it did, most often it didn’t. He remembered everything from our trip, and that was mostly thanks to it being condensed. But it was a big deal for Everett, after having forgotten the memories of his first trip after the first brain tumor had been removed.
His mom had warned me when Everett moved back to California to be closer to me, that small things might set him off. A side effect of brain surgery, apparently. He did have his moody moments, but seconds later he’d shift, morphing into the man in the kitchen, the Everett I knew, the one that frustrated me the least.
I’d Googled "effects of brain surgery" and had terrified myself with stories from people who ended up getting divorced, disowning their children; people who became the ultimate perfectionists. As Everett moved boxes in, I’d worried about it, but clearly I didn’t need to. Everett had halfway unpacked most of our kitchen with things, but didn’t really seem to care if a coffee mug was placed in a bowl on top of a cookie sheet in the cupboard.
I sighed, closed my eyes, took a deep breath. I needed to be patient with him, with this step. Moving in together was a huge step for a man still regaining his memory and finding his footing after his third round of cancer. But it was a gigantic step for me, after having two roommates whom I mostly tolerated while keeping to myself for the most part.
I opened my eyes, closed the cupboard so I didn’t have to look at it. Looking down, my eyes caught on a piece of paper on the counter.
Everett O’Callaghan has an appointment with Dr. Bollinger at 1:15 p.m. on March 29.
Something pinched the vessels to my heart, the same pinch I often felt when I thought of it: the cancer. There was always a chance it would come back because it had before, and Everett would have appointments several times a year to check his progress, any new symptoms, and to see if it had crept back in. He would live with routine checkups, which meant he’d constantly go through prodding, poking, being shoved into the tunnel of hell that he called the MRI.
But today, he was alive.
My hand shook as I lifted the paper and held it flat to the refrigerator. I popped a magnet on top and on bottom and didn’t remove my palm from the paper until I heard his voice behind me.
"It’s almost Christmas," he said, leaning against the doorjamb.
"I know." I glanced behind him, to the sparse living room. No tree was set up, no lights were strung around the windows. But it was the Christmas I knew, the Christmas I was familiar with.
"I think we should get out of town for the holidays," he said,
blue eyes watching me from the doorway.
"Do not even think about it, Everett. I am not going to Texas for Christmas."
Everett’s lips lifted in a crooked smile, likely remembering my reaction a week ago when he had suggested going to his mom’s for the holiday. I’d done that the year before when Everett still couldn’t remember who I was. Even though things had changed in the last year, I still ached a little when I thought of sitting alone on his mom’s rug, watching Everett talking with everyone except for me, the stranger.
"Not Texas," he said. He walked further into the kitchen, moving to the island that separated us. "Somewhere else."
"Not a road trip," I said, thinking of all the states that had slushy, icy roads this time of year.
"Not a road trip," he agreed. There was something about the way he looked at me, steady, sure, his lips in a curve that suggested he held a secret.
"What are you not telling me?"
"Can I tell you tomorrow? At the airport?"
I shook my head. "Not a chance in hell. I hate surprises."
"Come here." He held a hand out across the island towards me. I placed a tentative hand in his and held it as I traveled around the block of black quartz. When I was in front of him, he smiled, brought his hands to my face. "When you were a kid, what did you usually do for Christmas?"
I drew my eyebrows together and looked at him in confusion. "I was a foster kid," I said. My complete lack of experience with holiday traditions couldn’t have surprised him, given the very un-Christmasy state of our house. "We usually got new clothes."
"That’s boring."
I shrugged. "I was never in one place long enough to develop a need for toys of my own." I hadn’t given it a lot of thought, because when I did it made me feel like I was missing something.
"That’s exactly why you should have had your own things." He dropped one hand and let the other slide into my hair. "I want to give you a real Christmas."
I instantly froze, stopped leaning into his touch as I stared up into his eyes, an unspoken question on my face.
"I’m not talking about anything serious," he said. Sighing, he smiled down at me, creating deep, beautiful lines around his mouth. "In fact, I’m talking about exactly the opposite of that."
Impatience simmered below my skin. "What are you talking about?"
He let go of my face and I paused, my head still angled to how he’d held me. I straightened and put my hands on my hips.
Everett still smiled at me, a secret playing at the corner of his lips. He braced one hand on the island and ran the other through his hair. My eyes followed his movements, seeing the newer scar along the old one, feeling my lungs tighten. My heart thudded and my stomach twisted, as it did every time I stared at the scar for too long.
"Colorado."
I let out a breath, slid my gaze to his. "Colorado?"
"Not Purgatoire," he said, reaching a hand behind him. I heard the rustle of paper as he pulled it from his pocket, showed it to me. "It’s closed during the winter anyway." He pushed the paper into my hands.
I looked down at the airplane tickets and then looked back up at him. "Denver?"
He nodded. "The state itself means a lot to me, to us. I want to spend Christmas there. With you. We’ll be staying in a cabin outside of Denver, but it’ll be just you and me in the state you fell in love with me."
I narrowed my eyes. "The state I fell in love with you? Try that the other way around." It was true, but talking about love still made me feel itchy and jittery.
"Well, that was a given." He smiled. "What do you say?"
I looked back down at the tickets again, ran my finger along the perforated edge, thinking. Looking back up at him, I waited a beat. And then I reached my hands up, pulled the glasses from his face and set them down on the island. I looked at the glasses a moment, glasses he hadn’t needed when I met him. So much had changed since the year I met him.
Meeting his eyes, I said, "I say, ‘okay.’"
He smiled wider and his chest deflated a little as if he had actually been worried about what I’d answer. He exhaled and stepped closer to me, putting his hands on my face, his thumb brushing my jawline. I closed my eyes, stayed in his hold for a minute, and then met his lips with mine.
I pulled back seconds later, feeling the little glow I did when I remembered why I had agreed to all of this, to Everett moving in, to working on us more than I’d worked on anything. "But Christmas gifts," I said. "I’m not good with them."
"Obviously," he said, his voice amused. "We’ll set a five dollar limit. No pressure."
Thinking of one of my biggest annoyances, I smiled a little. "I have just the gift in mind."
* * *
"Calm down, Parker."
I glared at him, gripping onto the armrests as the plane shook from the turbulence once again. I looked down, saw the whites of my fingertips from the pressure. And then my head fell back onto the headrest and I breathed in through my nose.
"I hate flying," I said through gritted teeth.
"That was the most obvious statement of the century, I think." I felt his hand pat mine and it was all I could do not to swat at him. "You’ve flown before, surely this isn’t the first time you’ve experienced turbulence."
I opened one eye, pinned him with it. "Want to know the first time I ever flew on a plane?"
"Sure."
Still gripping onto the armrests , I opened my other eye and turned my face to his. "When you told me to get my ass on a plane. To leave you."
Everett’s face went slack. His eyelids slid closed for a minute as the memory slid over his face. "I didn’t know that."
I breathed out through my nose, in through my mouth, and out through my nose again. And then the plane leveled out and the turbulence stopped. "I can’t remember if there was turbulence. I was too busy…" My voice trailed off as my throat closed up, remembering boarding the plane, wearing a tank top soaked by tears, pulling my hair over my face, not wanting anyone to see what I looked like when my world bottomed out.
"Parker." In that one word, I heard apology, regret, reassurance, and most of all: love. A leaden boulder of emotion fell from my chest into my stomach and I shook my head.
"It’s okay," I said, even though we both knew it wasn’t okay. But it was the past. Everett had needed me to leave. And if he hadn’t told me as much, I would have never told him the very thing that made him change his mind.
His hand covered mine on the arm rest and I didn’t hesitate flipping mine over so it was palm up, lacing my fingers with his. "I don’t know what to say," he said while I mentally kicked myself for making him feel guilty.
Ever since the surgery last year, since Everett had regained his memory, I never ever pushed him. I never broke down, never let him see what his memory lapse had cost me. When he’d suggested he move back to California, I had been the one to suggest we move in together. I was greedy for him, for the year and a half we’d spent states apart while we each battled our own version of hell.
And in the six months since his memory returned, we’d been shuttling back and forth: me to Texas and him to California, trying to make the long distance work even when it clearly wasn’t. Everett had opened up a smorgasbord of emotion inside of me on our first trip to Purgatoire the year before. On the second, when parts of his memory returned, I’d surrendered all of those emotions to him, every single one. He owned so much of me – parts I’d given willingly and eagerly – that being without him felt like there were parts of me missing. I mourned for them, for him. A girl who had nimbly avoided emotion had found herself caught in a spider web of them, and even more surprising, she wasn’t fighting it.
Now he was here, sleeping beside me, waking me up with gentle scrapes of his stubble across my cheeks, whispered words in my ear. Holding my hands everywhere we went, as if he too couldn’t bear to be away from me even when we were sitting beside each other. Emptying my lungs of whatever fear I felt.
Life wasn’t easy with Everett
. He was messy, he spaced out from time to time. His emotions were still a roller coaster and he still had nightmares. We were both getting used to knowing the Everett After Surgery, and I’d done my best to be patient and understanding, to give to him when he needed it.
And now he was here, alive, pulse thrumming into my hand. So I leaned in and let my forehead rest against his stubble and it was what he needed to know I was okay, and what I needed to pretend I was okay. Because even though he was here with me, always touching me, there was a big part of me aching, wondering why. Why he came back to me.
"The snack cart’s coming by soon," he murmured against my hair. His hand squeezed mine. "Want extra limes?"
I closed my eyes, silently sent up a thank you for moments like these, and nodded. "Yeah."
"Can I eat your peanuts?"
I held in the laugh. "Sure."
"I was going to eat them anyway, but I thought I should pretend to ask permission first."
My lips curved and I turned my face into his neck. "Rude," I whispered along his skin.
"I never claimed to be anything else."
It was a game we played, once Everett knew what the words meant to me. I wanted those words tattooed on me. Every time he said them, I was brought back to the hospital room, staring into eyes that held no recognition for me. The words that let me know he was still there. My Everett.
* * *
After several glares in Everett’s direction as he slept through the shaky landing and taxi to the gate, we departed the plane and grabbed our bags from baggage claim. He had two suitcases with him, as large as the one I’d packed myself.
"What’s in here, a dead body?" Everett asked as he heaved my bag off the carousel.
I gave him a look. "No, that’ll be on the way back."
He just grinned, like he always did when I dished heaping spoonfuls of sarcasm.
After picking up the rental car, we headed out. The roads were slushy, but cars sped past us like it wasn’t a big deal.
"These people are crazy," I murmured as they got into our lane before passing another vehicle a few seconds later.