Page 35 of The Blessing

“Dean, stop it!”

Dean chase me. He scary when jumps. Hay is in my mouth and Dean laughs. He hold his hand out, but I no up. My head hurt.

“Trev, you okay?” Dean sound scared.

Daddy run to me. He look mad. He funny mad. I giggle at him and he stop running.

“Guys, what did I say about roughhousing? You know your mother doesn’t like it and it’s not safe.”

Daddy pick me up and kiss my head. He put me on his shoulders and let me pick pumpkin. I like big orange one. It look funny. Daddy get one for me. He let me down to play with Dean. This time I chase him. He runs away and I roar. Dean laugh and I tackle him. I laugh, too. He funny. I love my brother.

“Stop that!” Mommy say.

She pull me off ground and spank my bottom. Dean frown. He hold my hand.

“Dean, baby, are you okay?” Mommy ask him.

Dean okay, he says. He hold my hand. He bring me to daddy. Mommy and Dean look at pumpkin. Daddy get me apple. He let me sit on his lap. I want to play. Mommy not like it when I play.

“Where’d you go?” Ronnie asks, pulling me away from my thoughts.

“I was just thinking about how I used to come here all the time as a kid,” I tell her, giving her a small smile in hopes that she’ll see everything’s okay.

While she can obviously tell that I’m troubled, Ronnie nods her head and says nothing. She understands that remembering my brother is painful and she’s sweet enough not to press me. However, it’s more than just my memories of Dean that are painful. The memories of the way my mother used to treat me also sting like a bitch. She must sense my unease because she reaches out to take my hand in hers again.

“Do you want me to take a few photos of you and Grey? You know, so you can remember his first trip to the pumpkin patch?”

I’m not one for pictures, but I can’t seem to deny this girl anything. As silly as I feel, I pose with Grey in front of a large pile of pumpkins. He’s giggling as I hold him in my arms and I play with him, and Ronnie is all smiles as she snaps some photos on her smartphone.

“These are all so adorable, Trev. You should see the way he looks at you,” she gushes as she quickly comes to crouch down beside me and slides through the photos on her phone for me to see.

As my eyes scan the pictures, I barely recognized the tattooed man holding a little baby. I’m smiling. I look so fucking happy. I’ve never seen myself look this happy. Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I smiled for a picture. Grey looks even more content, smiling broadly in every photo as he holds onto my finger. We look like the perfect little family. Me and my little guy. There’s one picture where he’s looking up at me that takes my fucking breath away. He looks at me like I’m his world, and considering how small his world is, I suppose I am. His eyes suggest I’m everything to him. My heart feels so fucking full at this moment.

I turn to Ronnie to thank her for taking the pictures, but she stops me with her lips before I can even open my mouth. Her lips are soft and needy against mine and I want her so terribly bad. She slips her tongue inside my mouth and teases me so deliciously before pulling away. She gives me a shy smile and runs a nervous hand through her hair.

“What was that for?”

“I don’t know,” she says, breathlessly. “You’re just so cute with him.”

“I want a few photos of you,” I say as I hand her Grey and pull out my phone. Saying she looks happy is a complete fucking understatement. She holds Grey and smiles proudly at the camera. I snap a few pictures, some with her smiling brightly and some that are just silly. We feel so much like a little family, I can see us easily transforming into one.

“How do they look?” she eagerly asks as she gets off the hay covered ground with Grey in her arms. “I never look good in pictures.”

“What are you talking about, Ronnie? You look just as fantastic as you do in real life,” I tell her as I admire her beautiful face on my phone. When I look up at her to show her the photo, she’s blushing at my previous comment. “Come on, you know you’re gorgeous.”

She playfully shoves me and looks down at the picture. “Well, I definitely don’t look as cute as Grey.”

I didn’t know that, like me, she doesn’t know how to take to take a fucking compliment. I bend down to kiss her cheek, feeling more and more comfortable with the physical side of our relationship after the kiss she initiated a few moments ago. I take her hand in mine and together we walk towards a concession stand to buy apple cider and caramel apples—just like I used to do when I was a kid.

“So, you grew up coming here?” Ronnie asks as we take a seat on a nearby hay bale.

“Yeah, I used to love coming here. Closer to Halloween they’d have these awesome hayrides and I’d sit in my dad’s lap, while Dean would sit in my mother’s. We’d get so scared at the littlest things. I would burry my face in my dad’s shirt and stay like that until the ride was over. Dean loved it, though. He’d always get a kick out of anything scary when he was a kid. The only thing he hated was how my mother would make him pose for all these pictures. He hated getting in front of the camera. Even when he was really popular in high school, he never liked getting his picture taken.” I pause, realizing this is the most I’ve talked about him since his death. Sure, I’ve talked about him dying and how desperately I missed my older brother, but I’ve never just talked about him. I haven’t shared a memory without bringing up the fact he’s not here. Doing so feels so freeing and I can tell that the small memory I just shared has really been a big step for me. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t over thinking shit. Maybe Ronnie caught me off guard since I’m so relaxed around her and I couldn’t help but want to share. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I talked about him. Now, she knows a little bit about the type of man my brother truly was.

She smiles, seeming to be just as proud of me as I am. “So, your mom never made you take any pictures.”

“No, not really. I was usually off doing something with my dad.”

“Well, hopefully there’s some photos of you. I’d love to see what little Trevor looked like,” she teases me.

“I looked a little like my brother, Dean. Just a little rougher around the edges, I suppose. He was clean cut and straight edge and I was his complete opposite. But everyone said we had the same eyes and smile. Dean looked a lot more like my mom, though, where as I look nothing like her at all. My aunt used to tease me about being adopted,” I say with a laugh.

While I looked a little like Dean—I didn’t look exactly like anyone in my family. Which I suppose is fitting, considering I grew up being the outcast. It’s funny because my aunt would tease me about being adopted because I used to feel like I didn’t belong. I suppose I felt more like a stepchild. My brother was the apple of their eyes and I was just a nuisance.

“I’m sure you were very handsome,” Ronnie says with a smile. “Just like Grey.”

Completely spent by the enjoyable, yet, emotionally draining day, we end up watching movies at Ronnie’s apartment instead of going through with my plan to carve pumpkins with our little guy. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. In fact, he fell asleep on my lap after the first Disney movie of the night. Knowing he’s asleep causes the tension in the room to become fucking palpable. I want to touch Ronnie so desperately, yet, I restrain myself. God, she’s beautiful. Someday soon, I hope to show her physically just how much I care for her—just how much she means to me.