AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Landon busts out laughing.
I have to, too. “You know what? You’re right.”
She grins and wiggles across the booth seat to hug me.
Once Landon calms down, he says, “All right, Aunt Liv, spill it. Favorite color.”
“Mmm….”
I try to focus on the question and not what he called me, which reminds me of the one time he called me Annie at the party. It startled me to hear someone other than Rae say it, and I hadn’t been sure of how I felt about it, but I decide now that I wouldn’t mind if he said it again. I think he was just trying to get on Rae’s level, like every other time he’s spoken to her—likeIdo whenIspeak to her. So I appreciate it, actually.
Our server stops by for our drink orders. After she’s gone again, I manage to figure out my answer: “I like the color of storm clouds.”
Landon raises his eyebrows, intrigued. “Interesting.”
“Is it?”
“Ithink so.”
I shrug. “It’s just gray, really.”
“Noooo,” Rae interjects. She scoots out of our hug to color on her paper kids’ menu. “Storm clouds are all differentkindsof gray. There’s dark gray and light gray and middle gray and scary gray and not-scary gray.”
Landon crosses his arms as he nods at me. “That’s right. Listen to all those variations.”
Not for the first time this evening, my attention is drawn to his arms. They’re in plain view thanks to that sleeveless shirt, which means his tattoos are, too.
I think the ones he’s chosen are beautiful. The fact that there are so few of them makes me like them even more; it’s like he only wanted ink for things that really matter to him and not just whatever he thinks is cool. Black music notes spiral boldly down his left arm, nearly to his knuckles. Around his right arm, breathtakingly detailed silhouettes of trees sprawl from his wrist to his elbow, and the words‘BE BRAVE’stand out on his upper arm.
A loud noise sounds from the restaurant’s kitchen. I jump and switch my attention from the tattoos to the glass of water in front of me. I guess our server brought our drinks. I fix up my straw and then Rae’s while she continues to color her menu.
“…lots of different kinds of purple, too,” I tune in to her saying. “I like light purple. But I also like bright purple. Dark purple is okay. But you like black, Landon, and there isn’t really another kind of black besides black.”
“Are you sure?” he asks. “What about reeeeally dark black, like at the bottom of the ocean where there isn’t any light? And then there’s my shirt, which is kind of a faded black because I’ve washed it so many times, right?”
While they discuss every shade of every color they know—mustard-yellow and banana-yellow, sky-blue and blueberry-blue, pine-tree-green and Skittles-green—I think about the things Landon and I talked about at the party. I try not to stare at him while I do it, but no matter where I start out looking, my eyes keep sliding back to him.
The things he told me about his grandma really hurt my heart. She raised him the way I’m raising Rae, and he’s watching her lose herself…and there’s nothing he can do. I’ve never known anyone with Alzheimer’s, but I know how the disease works. I know that it only gets worse, that it chips away at a person until they’re no longer whoever they used to be. And I don’t know where outbursts like hers fall on the scale of severity, but judging from how Landon reacted to it, I’m thinking it’s past the middle.
Poor guy. I hope he really will talk to me the next time he feels overwhelmed. I can’t imagine what that situation is like. Well, I probably could, but just briefly picturing how helpless Rae would feel if she were watching me slip away like that…hell, it’s enough to make me want to cry.
“Liv?” I hear.
I blink my gaze to Landon’s face from one of his hands, the healing cut on which I’ve apparently been staring at. “Yeah?”
He has opened a menu. “Any idea what kind of pizza you want? Rae said she wants that little pizza off the kids’ menu, so we can get whatever we want on ours.”
He doesn’t appear to have noticed how much attention I’ve been paying him. Or maybe hehasnoticed and just doesn’t care. I’m sure he’s very used to catching people’s eyes.
I say, “I only ask that there are no mushrooms on it.”
“Yeah, no mushrooms for me either. Hmm….” He looks over the menu.
Rae chirps, “I want my pizza to be a cheese pizza! With extra cheese!”
“Good idea!” I tell her. “That’ll be yummy.”
Landon asks, “How about pepperoni and bacon?”
