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“Yeah, we can do that. Jenny, Emily, and I were planning to do our usual big Christmas morning breakfast anyway, so from experience, we probably won’t be hungry until the evening anyway.” Kat replies.
“Good,” Rafe sighs in relief, it clearly being something that he’s been worrying about.
“Don’t worry, you’ve got this,” I hear his dad tell him quietly, and I smile.
They may be grown-ass men now, but support from your parents never gets old and never stops reassuring you and making you feel better.
The rest of the evening is spent answering the various questions that the parents ask, which mostly center around whether we’re okay and if the three injured ones are feeling better and healing okay. You’d think that they’d ask about our work or how we’ve managed to afford all of this, considering our ages range from twenty-one to twenty- three, but they instinctively know better. They know that there are things that we can’t answer, and because of that, they also know that if they do ask a question and we say that we can’t answer, instead of it creating more questions, the subject is just dropped.
That’s one of the things that is the absolute best about them, they understand.
Of course, the parents, being who they are, insist on helping to tidy up and clear up before we all sit down in the front room and just catch up.
Rafe
“So, when are you guys heading off?” I ask my Mom and Dad, and then add, “Did you sell the house?”
“Yeah, when we told you, we actually already had an interested buyer, but we didn’t want to risk jinxing it and have them pull out, so we didn't say anything,” my Mom replies.
She’s always been a bit overly suspicious when it comes to things like that, not in the sense that she believes in anything like ghosts or that sort of thing, but that she’s always very careful about what she puts out into the world, afraid that if she says the wrong thing, it could negatively affect her or something that happens in the world. There’s nothing wrong with that, but she has sometimes taken it a step too far, and that’s when things can get a little bit dicey.
Dad smiles as he wraps an arm around her and gives me a knowing look that has me suppressing my smile, “We’re actually planning to head out as soon as we get back from here. The RV is all packed up and ready to go and currently parked on Rob and Jenny’s driveway.”
“Did you sell everything?” I ask curiously.
“We sold as much as we could, and then anything that we just couldn’t bear ourselves to part with we’ve put into a storage unit in town. Serendipity will always be our home base; it’s where our best friends are, and it’s where we raised you. We’ll most likely settle back there again, but we’ve wanted to road trip the country for decades, and now seems as good a time as any before we get too old.” Dad replies, while my Mom just smiles up at him, looking excited.
“I’m really glad that you guys are doing this; just stay in touch, okay? I will come and look for you if we don’t hear from you for a while,” I warn them because it’s true if we go months without any contact with them, I’m just going to assume something happened.
What they don’t realise is that before I come looking for them, I’ll use all of the power and skill at my disposal to find them first, and by that, I mean that Pete will use his extensive skills and knowledge to find them digitally so that we either know they’re okay and are just not communicating or we know where their last location was so that we can find them.
Mom smiles, a certain glint of knowledge in her eye as she says, “We know, don’t worry, we’ll stay in contact.”
“If no one has heard from us in three weeks, then you come and find us,” my dad adds seriously, and it’s one of those times when it becomes evident that they know more about our careers than they let on, just from listening and putting the pieces together themselves.
“You got it,” I reply, taking a swig of my beer.
“I’m looking forward to meeting all of these people that we’ve heard so much about,” I hear Marc say, and my parents and I tune in to their conversation.
Atlas smiles, “Yeah, they’re all pretty unique.”
Ever bursts out laughing, making my heart stutter at how beautiful and carefree she looks in that moment, “That’s an understatement.”
When the parents start to look a bit wary, Luc chuckles and says, “What she means is that you’ll certainly be entertained by them. They’ve all become our family, and you’re going to love them.”
“We know, it was pretty clear from the way that you all spoke about them,” Kat smiles softly.
“I’m really glad that you guys have managed to find your chosen family, like we did,” Jenny adds.
I like that, our chosen family. I wouldn’t change our blood family, at least not the ones that are currently in this room. Luc’s parents, Riot’s parents, and actually Riot’s aunt, too, I’d change them. The reason why I include Riot’s aunt in that is that she did the bare minimum when he was a kid, she looked after him, and she did show him love, but not as much as he deserved; he got more from the other parents, and I’m so fucking glad of that.
She’s also checked out now; he’s twenty-two, and she seems to think that means that she doesn’t need to be involved anymore, and that makes me angry. I can see the disappointment on his face every time that she doesn’t show up, and I once again find myself incredibly grateful for the other parents because they don’t let him feel like that for long; they give the same amount of attention and love as they give their own kids and he soon forgets.
The way that his aunt treats him still pisses me off though.
For the rest of the evening, we talk and laugh, but it’s not too long before the parents are saying that they need to get home and that we need to get some rest because we’ve got a big day tomorrow.
It’s such a parent thing to say that we’re left with massive smiles when we say goodbye.
