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When I hugged her back, I felt a lot of emotions that I hadn’t felt in years. Emotions I had been trying to run from.
I pushed them down and looked around at my dad’s old house. The place was as shitty as I remembered. There were holes in the floor you could fall through if not careful, the ceiling was falling in on us in places, only a plastic tarp keeping the rainwater out. Mold and mildew filled my nostrils, along with the scent of stale cigarette smoke from years of my dad’s nasty habit.
Boxes were laid out on the floor in front of the door.
“Going through his stuff?” I asked.
“Yeah, trying to pick out anything good, stuff you might want to hold on to.”
I scoffed. “There’s nothing I want to hold onto.”
“You might be surprised, come here,” she said, letting me go and motioning me into the tiny room. She kneeled at a box and handed me a familiar photo album.
I hesitated and she gave me a strange look.
“Come on, you know you want to look at the old photos of you and your friends.”
It was a photo album that Grace had made for us at graduation. Both Duncan and I got one. I took it into my hands but didn’t open it.
My mom stood and reached for it, opening to the middle, to a photo with Grace, Duncan, and I in a school play, sometime during freshman year. We were in costume. Duncan was dressed as Charlie Brown, I was Snoopy, and Grace was Lucy from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
My mom grinned like an idiot.
“Look at you guys… you look like babies.”
She flipped to another page, one from prom. Duncan and I were dressed in our fancy suits with Grace in the middle of us. We all went together as a group, but I remembered slow dancing with Grace that night… how close I had come to kissing her. She’d looked so beautiful, and her eyes were sparkling when she looked up at me.
My heart ached remembering Grace’s beautiful eyes and how she looked at me the night I had left her.
“So do the three of you still hang out?” mom asked.
“What?”
“Do you, Duncan and Grace keep in touch?”
“No, not really.”
“You haven’t heard from them?”
“Not in years, no.”
“Huh, that surprises me, considering how close the three of you were.”
I snapped the album shut and placed it gently on top of one of the boxes. “I need something to drink.”
“The fridge mostly contains beer.”
“Perfect,” I muttered as I walked through the home.
I tried not to look at the furniture or at anything, really. Every corner of that place held memories and not much had changed.
I stepped into the kitchen and opened the avocado-green fridge that was likely older than my parents. Mom was right. Beer, beer, and more beer. Dad’s favorite brand. I grabbed one and cracked it open, that familiar sound, standing in that kitchen, brought back memories of dad standing in that same spot, opening yet another beer. I always knew that once they started flowing, I needed to get out of the way. He drank when he was stressed, and drinking made him angry. He took that anger out on whoever was nearby, usually me. So, I would make myself disappear. I couldn’t leave, not until I was older, so I would hide in my bedroom.
Hiding, however, didn’t protect me all of the time. Dad would find a reason to seek me out and make up some story about how I had wronged him, and his belt would come off…
I slammed the fridge door shut and threw back the beer. I needed the alcohol, a lot like he did back then, to calm my nerves, and that scared me.
At least I didn’t turn mean, I consoled myself.
