First of all, thank you to my reviewers. Your feedback means a lot to me. I finished this chapter earlier today and had originally planned on editing and posting tomorrow, but I felt like getting it up sooner so I just gave it a quick proofread a few minutes ago. Therefore, I would like to apologize in advance for any typos and grammatical errors. I tried to catch them, but some undoubtedly got by mean. Also, there's more narration than I would have liked, but I was trying to give you guys some of the background so I apologize for that as well. Now, I can't think of anything else I have to say so on with the story.
Chapter 3:
Kelly stood in her kitchen, getting ready for tonight's dinner. Looking around, she went through a mental checklist of where things stood. Brenda and the Silver family would be here in a few minute. The chicken parmesan was cooling and waiting to be put on a platter. The pasta was sitting in the colander while the sauce was still being warmed up. And the garlic bread was in the oven with two minutes left on the timer. Sammie was in the living room playing with the train set he had gotten from the Sanders for his birthday and Silver was in her room studying. Everything was in place.
Dinner was a tradition started by Kelly, the Silvers, and the Sanders nearly two years ago, after Brandon had been transferred from the hospital to the long-term care facility. After a few weeks, their friends had dispersed to get back to their own lives. After six weeks in the hospital, Brandon was sent to the Beverly Hills Nursing and Rehab Center. After nearly two months, the Walsh clan had made the painful decision to leave. Jim and Cindy would come down one week a month. They wanted to spend more time in Beverly Hills, but it wasn't that simple. Brenda would come home whenever she could and had tried to seek more and more work in LA since the accident. The rest of the gang did what they could, checking up on Kelly on mainly through phone calls and visiting occasionally. She routinely heard from Dylan, Andrea, Clare, Noah, and even Valerie. Although she expected the latter woman's actions were more out of love and respect for Brandon than any real concern for her. Regardless, the situation left David, Donna, Steve, and Janet as her primary support system, not counting her recovering alcoholic mother and teenaged sister.
The Silvers and the Sanders did everything they could to be there for Kelly, constantly checking in on her, trying to cheer her up, and rearranging their schedules so that someone could always spend time with her if needed. They would bring her food, watch Sammie whenever she asked, and were always an ear to listen or a shoulder to cry on. It didn't take long for this to transform into a weekly dinner as a way to try to bring a sense of normalcy back into Kelly's life, and it did that. Their weekly dinners were the only time when Kelly really felt like things were okay. The three families and their kids would meet one night a week for dinner with hosting duties rotating between families. Brenda joined them whenever she was in town. Originally, it was on Friday nights, but when Kelly began visiting Brandon every Sunday, dinner was immediately moved to Sunday evenings so that they could make sure she was okay. Then a few months ago, David and Donna's six year old daughter, Olivia, began taking a dance class at 4 o'clock on Sunday so dinner got moved to Monday. The dinners had been good for her, and Kelly knew that it was just one of many things that they had given her over the past two years. Really David, Donna, Steve, and Janet were the only reason she was here today. She got up every morning and lived for her son, but it was the four of them who had made that possible.
The sound of the timer going off pulled Kelly from her thoughts. Grabbing the oven mitts, Kelly pulled the garlic bread out of the oven. At the same time the doorbell rang, startling her.
"Damn it," she cursed as her finger slipped and she burned herself. Running her hand under water, she called out "Silver, can you get the door please?"
"Hey guys," Kelly heard Silver say as she opened the door. "Kel, everyone's here."
"I'm in the kitchen," Kelly called back as she rummaged through the kitchen looking for a bandage.
"What no hug for your sister-in-law," Donna joked as she entered the house.
"I saw you the other day," Silver said as she moved to embrace the woman.
"Something smells good," David said as he headed for the kitchen.
"That's normally Steve's line," Kelly called out as she finally found a band aid. "I really need to clean out these drawers," she mumbled to herself.
"Yeah well he's not coming," David retorted.
"Silver, look at Brenda's hand," Donna said excitedly as the teenager broke from her embrace.
"Oh my God!" Silver yelled as she saw the ring on Brenda's finger. "When did that happen?"
"Saturday," Brenda answered. "And before any of you guys ask for details, I promised Kelly I'd give them over dinner."
"Speaking of dinner, you guys want to help me put everything on the serving plates and bring it into the dining room so we can eat?" Kelly asked since Silver and the adults had entered the kitchen.
"Sure," Donna replied as she started taking the garlic bread off the baking sheet.
"Hey, where's my niece and nephew," Silver asked as she looked around for David and Donna's two children, Olivia and their three year old son James. "I haven't gotten to see them yet."
"In the living room," Brenda answered while pouring the sauce on the pasta. "It looks like your other nephew is busy showing off the new train set."
"Kids, dinner's ready," Kelly called a few minutes later as she brought the chicken parmesan into the dining room.
"Mommy, Sammie's train set is awesome!" James exclaimed as the kids entered the dining room. "Can I have one?"
"Your birthday's in a few months sweetie," Donna replied. "Why don't you ask when it gets closer? Meanwhile I'm sure you can play with your cousin's."
"Hey James," Kelly said. "Steve and Janet gave that to Sammie. Ask them to get you one for your birthday."
Once everyone was seated, Kelly and Donna put food on their children's plates and cut the chicken into bite size pieces while everyone else served themselves and started eating. Finally, the women served themselves.
"So details," Kelly looked squarely at Brenda as she bit into a piece of garlic bread.
"Well," Brenda began once she had swallowed. "I told you guys it was Saturday. I had slept in and when I got up, Dylan was in the kitchen putting stuff in a picnic basket. I was a little confused because I don't have a picnic basket here, but he told me that he gotten up early and gotten up early and gone out and bought it. That should have gotten me thinking that something was up, but it didn't so I told him I wanted to shower before we went anywhere. We wound up going to the beach which made me laugh because only in LA can you have a picnic on the beach in February. The beach was where we had out quote unquote first kiss after getting back together this last time. Dylan had packed salads and sandwiches and chocolate cake for dessert. The pieces of cake were different sizes, and when we got to dessert Dylan kept insisting I take the bigger one even though I didn't want to. I gave in, telling him that I wasn't going to finish it. When I was about half way through, it my fork hit something hard. I wanted to stop eating figuring that something was wrong with the cake, but Dylan told me to just eat what I could around the hard spot. I thought it was weird, but at this point, I was finally beginning to suspect that something was up so I did. That's when I noticed something shiny in the cake, which was of course the ring, and I'm not going to tell you exactly what he said because that's private."
"How romantic," Donna sighed.
"It was very romantic," Brenda smiled. "Although its hard to believe that after all this time and a few breakups, Dylan and I are actually getting married."
"Well you know what they say," Kelly said. "Third time's the charm. Just look at David and Donna and me and Brandon." A wave of sadness washed over Kelly as she thought of her husband and how he wasn't here with them celebrating his sister's engagement.
"Yeah, but technically it was more than three times for all of you," Brenda replied, thinking of the short-term breakups that had often characterized her friends' relationships.
"Things like Emma and David's drug problem don't count," Kelly retorted.
"Do you have to bring that up in front of my kids?" David asked. "I'd like them to think I'm perfect."
"Sorry, but even they can't be that blind" Kelly teased.
"Is everything okay?" Donna asked as she noticed a change in Brenda's demeanor.
"Yeah. Of course," Brenda lied.
"Bren," David pushed.
"It's nothing," Brenda replied.
"You know you can tell us," Kelly pushed as well.
"Okay," Brenda gave in. "I guess I'm just feeling guilty."
"Why?" Kelly was confused.
"Because of when and how Dylan and I got back together," Brenda admitted.
"Huh?" Silver asked.
"Dylan and I got back together about two years ago," Brenda began. "After Brandon's accident, Dylan was there for me. I leaned on him a lot. I think that we had both known that we still loved each other, but we had also accepted that we were two different people at two different places in our lives and that we wouldn't be getting back together regardless of whether or not we wanted to. Then seeing Brandon like that and what Kelly was going through made us realize just how precious time and love are. We realized that when you have something special and when you want something, you can't just put it off or let it go, which is what we had been doing, so we decided to give our relationship another chance. I'm grateful to have Dylan back. The problem is that at the same time, I can't help but think that without the accident, maybe we wouldn't be together, but everything and everyone else would be okay." Brenda looked guiltily at Kelly.
"It's okay," Kelly said as she wiped a tear from her eye. "If I can't be happy and with the man I love, I'm glad that you guys can be."
"Mommy, why you so sad?" Sammie interjected.
"It's nothing sweetie," Kelly said. "It looks like you and your cousins are all done so why don't you take them back into the living room to play. Okay?"
"Come on guys," Sammie said energetically as he ran back into the living room.
"Why don't we talk about something less depressing," Donna said once the kids had left the room. "Guess who was just promoted?"
"Congratulations big brother," Silver said, knowing that Donna was self-employed.
"Thank you," he replied. "You are now looking at the new Director of Music for all of Twentieth Century Fox. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to be doing, but I won't be putting together soundtracks for specific films anymore."
"Maybe you could use your new found power and connections to get Brenda some film roles," Kelly half seriously requested.
"Hey," Brenda pretended to be offended. "I don't need help getting jobs. Besides I would much rather be on the stage than in movies."
"Yeah, but if you did movies, you could spend more time in LA with us," Donna informed her.
"Depends on the movie," Brenda replied. "We'll see, but if I do decide to do movies, I won't need David's help."
"So Donna, what's been going on with you?" Silver asked her sister-in-law.
"Not much. My spring line's almost ready to be shipped out," Donna had successfully transformed her fashion design talents into three boutiques in California, two in LA and one in San Francisco, as well as an exclusive deal with Macy's to sell her clothing line (in addition to the boutiques of course).
"How about some dessert?" David asked.
"Again, that's normally Steve's line," Kelly joked.
"And again he's not here," David laughed. "But seriously if we don't get to dessert, you ladies will just sit here and talk all night."
"Okay, I'll go get it," Kelly got up and headed into the kitchen.
Sorry if the ending seems kind of abrupt. I had gotten through everything I wanted to and figured that I could see an episode ending like this so I went with it. After the first chapter, I told you guys that missing pieces were intentional and would be explained with time. Well, I'm ready to start filling the blanks in with a little tidbit from the Brandon and Kelly story in the next chapter. I hope to start it in the next few days, but you could always try to motivate me to start it sooner ; ). Have a good weekend everybody.