Yes, I left. I found some empty boxes in the garage, which itself was still full of the ephemera of multiple generations, and I put my meager pile of belongings in them. I loaded those into my car along with the suitcase I had bought for my tenth-grade trip to Washington, DC. And it wasmycar, by the way. Morgan and I were supposed to share it, but I had been the one paying for the insurance for years now, and I had been the one to negotiate the price down when I was sixteen and had bought it from a neighbor. That money had supposedly belonged to the whole family, but no one was worrying about sharing resources now, were they? So I wasn’t going to, either.
Shane was surprised to see me again when I knocked on his door. “Did you forget something?” he asked. He held up his hand to block the waning sun. That was because the light botheredhim, which was why he always wore sunglasses and hats, too. I also held up my hand to block it.
I had been thinking of how to talk to him on my way over here, but I hadn’t decided. It was the same reason that I hadn’t wanted to text: I just didn’t know how to phrase things. But now it felt like the only course of action was to spit it out, so I did.
“I left home.”
“What?” he asked me.
“I’m moving out of that house, myfamilyhome,” I explained. “I’m not going to live there anymore.”
His eyes widened despite the sunlight. “Where are you going to live?”
“I was hoping that I could rent the little bedroom, your second bedroom,” I said. “It would be temporary because I’ll find a job, one that pays me actual money and not just empty promises about loyalty. If I were here, I would help you, too. I could drive you at night when you need to go somewhere. I could drive you all around the state, or out of state,” I continued, warming to the idea. “I would spend a lot of money on leafy green vegetables, like you do, and cook salmon.” I involuntarily retched a little as I thought of the pink fish that smelled so awful. “And soon, I would move out so I could live on my own. What do you think?”
“Why don’t you come inside?” he suggested. I did and we sat on the couch that I’d helped him pick out and carry in here (he’d taken most of the weight but I had dealt ok with my end). When we were settled on it, he looked at me.
“I don’t mind you staying if you need somewhere to go, but this does seem pretty sudden,” he said. “A few hours ago, I asked what you were going to do next and you didn’t appear to have any idea. And now you’re here? It’s quick.”
“I thought about my future after we talked,” I said. “I had never done much actual planning for it because I hadn’t really believed I would need to. My life seemed predetermined, maybe not in the way I would have liked, but it was settled. Last Christmas, I found out how bad the financial situation was. That was when I felt the first threads unraveling.” That was also when I’d started scheming about how to get money, and I’d come up with all kinds of ideas. “I tried to get a second job but I couldn’t make that work, not with how much I was needed at Walter’s and I didn’t want to drop out of school. I tried to make my brother and sister go get jobs so that they could help, but all Morgan did was close her eyes and pretend I wasn’t there and Max just pitched business concepts that were worse and worse.” I’d hit on the wild dream of making someone fall in love with me and rescue us, because I hadn’t been able to figure out how I was going to do that myself.
Now I explained it to Shane. “I was looking for a rescue, trying to make one happen, but we didn’t really need that. We only needed to let it all go. Poof, it’s gone, and no one cares,” I said. Obviously, no one cared about me. They hadn’t managed to come to my college graduation and if they happened to notice that my bedroom was suddenly empty, they would probably only shrug and then close the door again.
“I don’t know why I wasted so much time,” I told him. “I don’t know why I didn’t see things the way they are.”
“What do you mean?” he asked me. “How are things?”
“I thought that my family would be together forever,” I answered. “None of us really like each other—actually, I’m pretty sure that my dad hates me and probably my sister and brother do, too. My mom has been disappointed that I wasn’t doing a better job of keeping everything going. I knew all those things but I thought that at least we were connected. We had ties and bonds.”
“Hold on,” he said, and got up. When he returned, he set a box of tissues on the cushion next to me and he offered a T-shirt in his other hand. “Just in case.”
I used a tissue first. “I wish my family was like yours.”
“We have our problems. Everybody does,” he said.
If they did, they seemed minor. “You love each other, though,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, we do.”
“Can I stay here for the night?” I asked. I sounded pitiful but I didn’t care very much, not at the moment.
“Sure, of course. I have to go to the airport early tomorrow morning.”
“I can drive you so that you don’t have to park your truck there and pay for it!”
“The Woodsmen pay for my parking. But yes, that would be nice,” he quickly added. “I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’ve gotten more used to being alone over the past few years, but it still feels strange. Before, I had sisters, my parents, teammates, roommates, all kinds of people around. Now it’s just me.”
It was just him in a world that was getting harder to see through his beautiful blue eyes. “I’ve never lived on my own. I won’t have a problem doing that when I move out, though. You said that at one point, you thought I could live here in the second bedroom. To help out with costs,” I reminded him.
“I did say it,” he agreed and then repeated, “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”
Good. “This has been such a weird day,” I said. “So much emotion.”
“Do you need the T-shirt?”
I did. “I’ll also do the laundry. I really like having clean sheets.”
“You know, my roommate in my freshman year of college didn’t know you were supposed to put on new ones. He saw me changing mine and asked what in the heck I was doing. He also hung his clothes on the end of his bed for a while and then just wore them again, like airing them out was the same thing as washing. He was used to a maid,” Shane explained. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to be one here.”
