A small part of me thrills in having sex in my grandmother’s house. She was so uptight. Even from a distance, I could feel her disapproval most of my life. I think I have lived out loud because of her. Some people wonder, “What would Jesus do?” Instead, I wonder, what wouldn’t Agnes Sterling do?
Much later, we head to the local Stop and Shop. This isn’t the first time Jared and I have bought groceries together. He claims cart-driving duty the second we’re inside the store. He’s always said it’s because I can’t see over the cart. I’m short but not that short. Still, I’ve come to let him win this battle. We get some stares as we make our way around the store. I do tend to stick out. I’m used to it and meet any stares head on, a saucy grin plastered on my face.
I weigh maybe a buck ten, and even though I have Sasquatch with me, I like to think it’s my “take no prisoners” stare that makes oglers back down. As we wait in line, Jared tugs me against him, tucking me between the cart and him. I lean against him, ignoring how couple-y it seems. I tell myself I’m tired from walking all over the store; not that I like hearing the thump of his heart, and that the way he smells relaxes me. Nope, it’s not that.
There is a moment when Jared starts to pay, but I stop him. My hand is on his arm, reminding him that he bought the pizza last night. His hesitation bugs me for some reason. When we’re unloading the rental car, I carry a stupid amount of bags. The plastic cuts into my forearms and through my winter coat in some insane need to show Jared I can take care of myself. I hate that he still carries more. Once the groceries are put away, we take packets of mini muffins into the library and pick up where we ended last night.
I keep anything that seems to have something to do with my dad. There are a couple of framed photos and a small clay pot with his initials cut into the bottom. Those join the yearbook in the breakfast room. I hesitate over a Bible, a family Bible with dates of births, weddings, and deaths carefully scribed in the back by more than one hand. Religion scares me, being somewhat of an outsider and being friends with many so-called misfits. I’ve seen how unaccepting those who claim faith in a higher power can be.
I keep it, anyway, as a record of my father’s life. We break for lunch after finishing that room. Jared makes us sandwiches that we eat with chips while we figure out which room to do next. I’m thinking the dining room will be the easiest. After she saw the pics, Sarah called dibs on the set and had arranged for a shipping company to come pick them up. I want to have the china and linens out and in boxes before they arrive. I want a couple of pictures in that room and that’s all.
The lawyer for the estate had been kind enough to procure and stow moving boxes in the back mudroom. We spend the rest of the afternoon emptying cabinets of floral china and silver. Jared carries the now brimming boxes to the library, figuring we might as well store them there. We work well together. He passes me stuff, and I pack it. It’s a good system because he can reach the stuff on the high shelves. This room takes considerably less time to go through than the library.
While I cook a simple meal of toast and canned soup, I putter around the kitchen. The only thing I have any interest in keeping is an old book of recipes. Flipping through its pages, I can’t help but wonder which had been my father’s favorites. Memories have a way of playing tricks on you. I wonder what memories my mind invented to make my dad seem more than what he was. It just doesn’t seem possible that what I remember is real. No one’s that perfect all the time.
I remember growing up on a farm or at least spending a lot of time on one. It wasn’t in New England but somewhere further south, maybe Tennessee. Who knows?
Flashes of me climbing trees and working in a garden with my mom invade my thoughts. They were always smiling; could my mom and dad truly have been that happy all the time? It is safer not to trust those memories, nothing is ever that perfect. Or if that level of perfect existed maybe it tempted fate to destroy it. The risk versus reward of a so called happy ending scared me most of all. I’ve lived through having perfect, and then losing it.
“Three rooms down,” I whisper a breath across my spoon to cool my soup.
Jared is intently shredding his toast into bits and pieces that cluster and float in his bowl. “How many more to go?”
I do the math in my head. “Three more down here, four upstairs, and I have no idea what’s on the third floor.”
“Want to check it out tonight?” He tilts his head to the side, almost as a dare.
“Do you think I’m scared?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Old house like this, that tower thing up there? It’s got to be haunted.”
I laugh and reply, “I ain’t afraid of no ghost,” in my best Ghostbusters impression.
He smiles. “I’ll protect you from them either way.”
Oh, is big bad Jared going to protect me from the things that go bump in the night? I want to argue, but I let him have this. I let him think he can.
After we rinse the bowls and put them in the dishwasher, we head up to the third floor. I’m not scared, mainly curious. I’ve never been up here before. A narrow set of stairs bloom from a skinny door opposite the second floor bathroom. That, with the steep slant of the steps, makes me immediately dismiss this floor as being used for anything other than storage. There is another narrow door at the top of the stairs.
I can imagine how claustrophobic it would feel to be on these stairs with both doors closed. There isn’t even a light. Jared’s using his cell phone to light the way, after insisting he go first. He has to give the top door a good shove, and it takes a minute for him to find the light switch. When he does, my mouth drops. We’re in what must have been my father’s room.
I turn, unsure of where to settle my gaze. When I had been here all those years ago, I had gone in search of his room and assumed my grandmother had just erased every trace of him. How wrong I was. This room had obviously been cared for. There’s dust on flat surfaces but no more than the rest of the house.
“I think this was my dad’s room,” I quietly explain to Jared as he seems to be wondering why I’m just standing there.
He scratches the back of his head. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
I shake my head and walk over to the twin-sized bed that’s tucked under one of the sloping walls. I sit on it, tucking my feet under me and look around. My father may have sat in the same place and done the same thing.
My eyes fall on a door perpendicular to the wall of the door through which we entered. It hits me that this room is too small to represent the entire third floor.
I clear my throat and ask Jared if he wants to check it out, that it might be the entrance to the widow’s walk. He hesitates but eventually nods and leaves me. I know I had, initially, wanted him to stay, but now I want to be alone in this space. There’s a small wooden nightstand next to the bed. It’s made of a warm toned wood, maybe maple. I gently tug the drawer open and pull it all the way out and set it on the bed next to me.
There isn’t much in it. Some papers, mainly blank, others with notes that don’t mean anything to me. There’s some loose change and buttons. I pick up one of the buttons. It’s small and metal with ivy leaves. I wonder what shirt or jacket it came from before dropping it back into the drawer and putting the drawer back into the nightstand.
My head pops up when Jared walks back into the room. “I found the stairs for the tower thing. Want to come see? It’s pretty cool.”
His crooked smile is infectious. I stand and cross the room to him, grasping his outstretched hand. The room off my father’s room appears to have been used for storage, like an attic. There’s a set of circular stairs even narrower than the ones leading from the second floor. Jared’s hand tightens around mine as we follow the curved stairs upward. When we reach the top, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the night sky.
My grandmother’s house is by no means isolated, but there’s some distance to her nearest neighbors. Still, the lights from the other houses on her street somehow give me
comfort. I’m not sure why I’m uneasy. I’m not scared of heights or the dark or anything.
A window seat wraps around the small space, except for the opening for the stairs. Jared sits down, tugging me into his lap and burying his nose in my hair.
“How are you doing?” His words are hot against the back of my neck, the concern in them clear.
I shrug, sagging against him. I don’t know how I am.
I hate that she isn’t letting me in. All I want to do is take care of her, but she’s so fucking stubborn. Why does she have to do it all on her own? My hand rests on her hip, holding her as she leans against me. I can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking.
Sawyer is so small in comparison to me. When her eyelids start falling, I sit, easing her into my lap. She’s almost asleep. I should probably wake her, let her walk down the stairs, and climb into bed. She would want that, to do it all by herself. Instead, I hold her in my arms until she falls all the way to sleep, her gentle snores letting me know when she’s really gone.
She snuggles into me, her hands on my chest. She fits me, as though she was made to be in my arms. I’ve never felt this way with anyone else.
Any relationship I had before her now seems like practice before the real deal. A relationship test drive at the dealership until you sit in the right car and just know. It molds to your back making you sit up straighter and park in the back of the parking lot to protect it from any door dings.
I’d protect her the same way, keep her safe because somehow she molds to me in a way that makes me stand taller. Sawyer can push my buttons like no one else. I’m hardwired to her touch. She pushes me away and pulls me back all at the same time. I lean back farther against the back of the built-in window seat, looking out into the night.
Birch trees illuminated by a neighbor’s house almost glow against the dark sky. The single-paned windows offer little resistance to the chill outside. If she keeps this place, they should be replaced. Some heavy-duty double-paned ones would be better. Maybe some foam insulation in the walls.
I shake my head, remembering it doesn’t matter. It’s too bad she’s selling this place. I can picture her here, in this amazing house. My dad is all into family history. Maybe it’s rubbing off on me now. I get why she doesn’t want it. She has no personal attachment to this place.
She has no attachments anywhere.
I wake up in my bed the next morning and realize Jared must have carried me down those stairs. I’m surprised, considering how tight those stairwells are. It could not have been easy. He took the opportunity to sleep in my room, knowing if I was awake, I may have chased him away. His back is to me. I resist the urge to huddle up closer to him, and slip out of the bed instead.
After making myself some tea, I take it back upstairs, all the way up to my father’s room. There’s a small bookshelf next to a writing desk. It seems my father was a fan of Robert Frost. Leaning against the desk, I open the book to a random page and read a poem aloud.
There’s a moment’s pause at its end. Jared startles me by speaking, “Robert Frost?”
“How’d you know?” I ask, surprised. “I didn’t know you were into poetry.”
“Lucky guess,” he shrugs. “I think he even had a farm somewhere in New Hampshire.”
I close the book with a snap and set it on the desk behind me. “I didn’t know that.”
“That’s a first,” he says it like a joke, but the humor is missing from his tone.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I’ve never been one to back down.
He leans back against the doorjamb, and I worry about him slipping. “Simmer down, Sawyer. Just funny that I knew something you didn’t.”
I relax. “Come away from the stairs. You’re making me nervous, and there’s tons of stuff you know that I don’t.”
He looks over his shoulder and down the stairs with a smirk before moving further into the room. I wonder what he’s thinking; hoping he isn’t reading anything into my concern.
“Starting up here today?” His eyes are on the doorway to the widow’s walk.
I ignore his question for now. “Let’s check out the view now that it’s light out.”
He opens the door for me, and I try not to feel his eyes scorching my ass as I make my way up the curving stairs. The stairway is bathed in morning light. I make my way quickly to the top. I don’t need an over-sized house in New England but part of me wonders what it would be like to sit on the ledge on a spring afternoon or a summer night so I can watch all the fireflies dance in the trees.
That won’t happen though. With any luck, I’ll be back in Denver, and this place will be long sold. It snowed overnight, not much, but enough to make the sunlight’s reflection glaring. I keep my gaze off the ground and into the ice blue sky and cluster of birch trees behind the house. I’m usually never at a loss for words, but I feel tongue-tied. I want to spend the rest of our time here in my father’s old room, but admitting that for some reason makes me feel weak so I hold it in instead.
After maybe thirty minutes, Jared breaks the silence. “Do you want me to look at the stuff in the side attic?”
I slump further into the window seat in a brief protest before nodding my response and following him back down the stairs. He gets straight to work, looking through boxes in the attic while I run downstairs and grab each of us two packs of mini muffins to eat while we work. Jared accepts his with a grunt, and I leave him.
Maybe an hour later, I get up to check on him when I hear him coughing. I stand frozen behind him when I realize the sound isn’t from a cough but his attempt to disguise the fact that he’s crying. I hesitate for a split second while I realize what’s going on. This is my friend, my lover. I cannot ignore this.
I quietly sit down next to him and wrap my arms around his waist, ignoring his flinch at being caught. I’m about to ask him what’s wrong when I see what he’s holding in his hands. I painfully swallow the question on the tip of my tongue and press my face into his arm in an attempt to erase the image of his hands clutching a tiny-footed sleeper.
Is it awful that I know in that moment that this thing between us has to end? I don’t ever want to have children, and Jared does, based on his reaction to a box of old baby clothes. He wipes his face and escapes my grasp, soon standing.
“I’m going to go clear my head,” he says, glancing back at me before walking out of the attic.
With kids you lose your control, your individual ability to be responsible only for yourself. My parents were amazing but they still died. What if I ever had a kid and died too? I pick up the sleeper he was holding and gently place it back in the open box before putting the lid back on it. I go up to the widow’s walk and call Sarah.
I can see his figure shuffling through the snow when she picks up.
“Hey, babe; how’s everything going up there?” she asks.
I clear my throat, turning my head once he disappears from sight. “Jared just lost it going through some baby stuff in the attic.”
I hear her gasp before she replies, “Oh, my God. That’s awful.”
I trail my finger down the glass leaving a mark. “I didn’t know what to say. He left, went for a walk to think.”
“What are you doing talking to me? Go find him.”
“But he wants space.” I cringe at how foreign those words sound.
She inhales loudly through her nose. “Sawyer Sterling, when have you ever respected someone’s boundaries?”
She’s right. “I don’t know what to say to him.”
Not knowing what to say never would have stopped me from getting all up in someone’s shit before. Didn’t stop me from pushing Will’s mom and she lost not only a child but her spouse as well.
“Just find him and hug him. You don’t have to say anything to him,” she argues.
I agree and hang up on her, promising I’ll call her later to let her know what happened. I trudge downstairs and start pulling on my boots when he walks in. His face is red from the wind
. I hurl myself at him with more abandon then I actually feel. I’m not used to being scared so I decide to act like I’m not. Thankfully, his arms coil around me tightly, lifting me, leaving me no hope to pull away from him, because I would have pulled away from him.
His lips search for mine, ghosting a trail up my neck, across my chin before settling on mine. I’m unprepared for the emotion behind this kiss. There is an invitation in it that I can’t accept, and he feels it. He releases me, gently setting me down before placing one chaste kiss on my forehead.
I sink back down to the bench by the door as he moves to lean against the wall facing me. It’s coming. I can tell. I’ve been here before. We’re going to have the “where is this going?” talk.
He examines his boots and the small puddle of melted snow forming around them before his eyes drift up to mine. “I’m in love with you, Sawyer.”
I start to say something, but he stops me by lifting his hand. “And I know you don’t love me back.”
My mouth hangs open. I should say something. I should tell him that I do love him but that would be a lie because he isn’t talking about the love you have for a friend. The love he wants from me I don’t have to give. I’m just missing that piece.
“Jared...” My voice trails off.
He squats in front of me, cupping my face in his hands. “I knew what I was getting into with you. You don’t have to love me back.”
That’s a first. This is usually where any guy I’m seeing and I will go our separate ways. I’m not prepared for him to say it’s okay that I don’t love him that way.
“I do love you,” I insist.
“As a friend,” he finishes the sentence I intended to leave unsaid.
His hands drop to his boots, untying one and then the other. He’s still crouched right in front of me.
Once they’re loose, he slides his hands up my legs to cup me behind my knees. “Right now, all I want to do is take you upstairs and bury myself in you. You game?”
Sawyer Says Page 5