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Despite not having a crazy huge closet, she still has enough clothes and shoes to fill three of the large boxes. I’m just wondering what to pack up next, when she steps back into the room.
Now that she’s showered and dressed, I can see that she’s wearing a cute light blue fitted sweater and stonewashed jeans, and her blonde shoulder length hair is tied back in a low ponytail.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Good,” she admits, before she locks eyes on the empty closet. “Oh, wow. You’ve been busy.”
I shrug. “Just trying to get you all packed up.”
“Thank you,” she says, coming over and kissing my cheek. “It would have taken me ages to sort through all that stuff.”
I can imagine. She probably has folding techniques.
“I bet you pack everything precisely, don’t you?”
“No. Well, maybe,” she admits. “It’s a gift and a curse.”
“Well, I’m here so we’re going to get everything else packed up fast, too. If you’ve got any breakables, I’ve left a bit of room in the tops of these boxes. That kind of stuff will do better wrapped in the clothes.”
She nods. “I don’t have a lot of ornaments, or whatever, and I’m happy to leave most of my kitchen stuff for the next person who rents this place. I just need to pack up my DVD player in the living room, and the blue lamp through there.”
“Wow. You really do have a lot in common with Bishop. He’s still watching DVDs, too. He only watches streaming stuff if someone else puts it on.”
“I just really like rom-coms. I have a whole bunch of them. Oh, and my sister left her karaoke machine here. I should probably make sure that gets back to her.”
“Have you heard from her since she’s been on your business trip?”
“Uh, no, actually, but I kind of expected that. Chaos Burning are her favorite band of all time. I figured she’d either be texting me, non-stop fan-girling so she can be cool with the band, or she’d go radio silent until she feels like giving me an update.”
“Well, she won’t have been there long, I guess.”
I pick up one of the boxes. “Where’s this blue lamp you were talking about?”
She leads the way out into the hall and into the living room.
I can’t help but laugh when I see her blue couch. “You really like blue, don’t you?”
“Who doesn’t?” she asks, shrugging. “It’s kind of always been my favorite. You know how most parents of twins do the whole thing where they dress them up identically from birth? Well, ours actually wanted to be able to tell us apart as babies so I was always in blue, and Scarlett was always in red. We just ended up really liking those colors.”
“Rueben has a thing for blue, as well. He picked the couches in the lounge back home. I couldn’t believe blue leather was a thing.”
“I like those couches.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that.”
She laughs, and I can’t help laughing along with her.
It’s been a long time since I outright laughed.
Rueben’s always telling me I’m too dour or serious, and maybe I should have actually listened to his critique. It’s almost like I’ve been punishing myself ever since I lost Luke and Amy. Like it’s not okay to have fun when I know the last two people I really cared about are doing so damn badly. There’s nothing I can do about either of them. I should have realized I was only really hurting myself long before now.
“This is the lamp,” she says, unplugging the small round-based table lamp and winding the cord around it. It’s a nice bright shade of cobalt. Rueben will likely love it.
I set the box down and open it, then I hold out a hand for the lamp.
Once it’s nestled safely in amongst her sweaters, I look up.
“What’s next?”
