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“Suck it up,” I conclude as I throw the blanket over his legs again.
He sighs and stares at the darkening garden.
“I remember you sitting on this porch all the time when we were growing up,” he says. “There were always stacks of books everywhere. I never understood how you could read so many books. You read so freaking fast, and I always wondered how you had any time left for living your own life.”
I remember being out here all the time, and I remember the stacks of books. Mom and dad bought me a lot of books and I was incredibly lucky in that aspect. But it was never enough, and I was a regular at the local library as well. I mostly remember the porch swing for being the best place to read upside-down on. If you throw your legs across the back, it has the perfect width to support your head that falls over the edge. I like its support for when my neck hurts from reading too much. And I like looking at things with a new perspective.
“I did a lot of living through the books, and while that made me perfectly content for a long while, I’m ready to do some living of my own right now.”
It's weird how strongly I feel about this. It’s so out of character for me I don’t really recognize myself. Maybe that’s the point. When breaking off my last relationship, I had an epiphany, seeing that my search for love wasn’t working. I had the clarity to take a step back and instead of falling straight back into old patterns, I saw I needed to do something new. It was the day I called my parents to ask if I could come live in their home while they were off traveling for a year. I decided to do things differently, like the heroes of my books so often did as well.
I’m lost in my thoughts, when I look at O and see him staring into the backyard. He looks calm, almost serene. It’s a look that suits him and in the soft light of the garden, he looks like a dream. Just like he did when we were kids and I had a little crush on him.
He shifts a little on the swing, making our sides touch. It’s kind of cozy and it’s somehow oddly intimate. Beneath the blanket, he puts a hand on my knee, the warmth of it giving me as much comfort as my blanket.
“Remember when we were ten and decided to build a treehouse in that big tree out back, so we could run away and live in the tree instead of at our houses?” he reminisces.
I do remember. It was over the summer holiday, and we would play outside every day. We found some planks and decided to repurpose them into making a treehouse. Then we would have our own home. When we didn’t get home for dinner that night, O’s mother found us. It wasn’t like we really went far. I could see the outline of the tree we had chosen to make into our new home from the porch we’re sitting on. O’s mom had praised our plan to build a treehouse but said that she would be very sad if O wouldn’t come home.
“Your mom found us when we were nowhere near done. She said a treehouse did not make a treehome, and you should come home with her. I always thought that was very poetic of her,” I answer with a smile. I pull my feet up from the ground as O just moves his hand along with my shifting legs, and curl myself up in the swing. His hand is now on the inside of my upper leg and it feels like it should always have been there.
“She was very poetic, wasn’t she?”
I nod, remembering the bright woman who oozed love in my memories. I remember the same bright, hazel eyes that O has and the same kindness that could be found in them.
“Sometimes I think the treehouse wasn’t a treehome because she wasn’t there. She was what made everything home.”
When I look at O, he looks years younger. He looks like a boy who lost his parents and lost his home along with it. I don’t know how to respond, so I don’t. I pull my blanket a little higher over his legs, giving him some extra comfort the only way I know how. He smiles at the gesture without looking at me, squeezing my leg a little. We sit for a while listening to the crickets that are making noises in the garden, when he breaks our silence again.
“It’s weird, you know. We’re in such different places in life. I might be done with having fun. It’s time for me to stop running and find my home again.” His eyes find mine and I can see his thoughts going a mile a minute.
“You’ll find it,” I say, mimicking his words from earlier this evening. It’s the last thing we say before he goes back to the house next door that isn’t a home anymore.
