Chapter 10
A/N: I own nothing. Also, I've been slowly updating previous chapters to reflect stuff we find out happens in the story.
The drive to my house is winding, a perfect tour of the many farms in this town. Remnants of the earlier rainstorm cling to the branches and the road, making them sparkle. Emily shifts in her seat and I wonder if the truck is uncomfortable for her. I personally find it reasonable, but it's really old.
We live at the edge of town so it takes nearly fifteen minutes to finally get to my home, indicated by shining lights. I slow down and turn on my turn signal when we finally get to our lengthy driveway.
"I'd hate to take the trash all the way down there on trash day," Emily says, breaking the comfortable silence we've fallen into. I nod vigorously, grinning. We've only lived here a couple weeks but so far I've managed to avoid that particular responsibility.
"I conveniently forgot yesterday and my dad had to do it. To be honest, I'm not sure how my grandma did it at all before we got here," I say. My grandma is definitely worse than she let on over the phone. I'm pretty sure she gave me the truck but she doesn't trust herself to drive anymore. Emily opens her mouth, then flicks her gaze to my new home and her jaw drops. I almost laugh at how similar my expression was when I first saw it. The house is exactly what my grandfather wanted.
"This house is insane," she says, her eyes wide and I feel a pang of empathy and embarrassment. I can tell that even though she doesn't say the words, Emily's losing her home to financial troubles and it feels a little like boasting about my dad's success. I really don't want her to feel uncomfortable here.
"It's my grandpa's dream house," I explain as we pull slowly up the driveway. I want her to know the home is a lot more than just a big house. "He designed it entirely by himself."
"He designed this?" she asks and I'm glad she's impressed. My grandfather impresses me too. Impressed me too.
"Yup," I say, trying to imagine seeing my home from Emily's perspective. "Architecture was his passion, even though he didn't get a formal education in it. He didn't live to see the Architectural Digest article about it, but he'd have loved it."
My grandmother sent me that article when it came out and we had it framed in our home. My old home, I think wistfully. I really do love this house, but it has no traces of my mother.
"Those are some windows," Emily says with a whistle.
"Yeah, the views are beautiful. Zero privacy though," I say, laughing. "It's a good thing we live in the middle of nowhere. The whole neighborhood would have seen my butt by now."
We reach the top of the driveway and I see that Joe's truck is already here. I pull up alongside it and press the button for the garage. I park my car in its usual spot outside.
"You're not pulling into the garage?" she asks and I shake my head as I turn the key in the ignition, thinking of the ridiculous conversation with my father.
"My dad won't let me park it in there. He got upset with my grandma because it leaked oil onto the superior concrete floors," I say trying to emphasize the absurdity of the argument with air quotes and an eye roll. The truck used to always live in the garage before we moved here. "Which is really rich coming from the man who would track sand around our old house like it was his job."
We laugh as we unbuckle our seatbelts and head inside. As soon as the door opens, Winston barrels into Emily, almost knocking her over in his attempts to jump on her. He rears on his hindlegs, placing his front paw on her chest for support as he licks her face. Emily laughs it off as she pets his sides over the missing leg, but I know he can be better behaved.
"Winston," I say and he backs up and sits down, his eyes swinging to me instead. We stare at each other for a few moments, his tail betraying his impatience before I smile at him. Winston launches himself at me and I just laugh, knowing that I haven't yet mastered this part of dog training. We follow the smell of pizza into the spacious kitchen that spills into the living room. Our dads are in the living room in full lounge mode, Joe on the leather couch and my dad in his white leather armchair, beers in front of the both of them.
'Hey girls," Joe says when he sees us. "How was-"
But he's interrupted by my grandmother. "You two took long enough," she says as she trots in from the balcony, cane clutched in her hand. She nods to the two pizza boxes on the coffee table. "The pizza almost went cold."
"I got stuck at work," I lie, knowing Emily isn't ready to share that she's doing the list with her father. I give her a hug to help sell it, but Winston's already sniffing out my lie. I glare at him and he stops. "Besides grandma, the pizza probably went cold on the delivery driver's way out here."
Grandma smiles warmly at me before nodding in agreement. Emily hugs her too before sitting next to her father.
"This is a really great house, Mrs. Carter," Emily says and my grandmother laughs, the tan skin around her eyes wrinkling at the corners.
"Oh, not you too. It's all Blake ever talks about," she says. "Good thing my husband isn't here to hear this. His head would be too big to fit in this house of his."
We grab some plates and eat some pizza and the simplest thing has my dad regaling us with stories of the good old days again. Today, it's tomato sauce.
"What year was it, Joe? Tenth grade? The cafeteria incident?" Joe smirks, taking a swig of his beer. "Yup, tenth grade. It was lasagna day at the cafeteria and I sent a sauce covered brick of it across the room at Luke Price. It exploded all over his white shirt."
"All hell broke loose," my dad chimes in. "In an instant, food was everywhere. Kids diving under tables for cover, the lunch ladies barricading themselves in the kitchen."
He grins at Emily, touching her cheek. "Your mom hit me square in the face with a tuna sandwich before running off to a calculus class she was probably the only one to show up to. I think Joe fell in love with her right then and there."
"It got so bad in the cafeteria the police had to be called," Joe adds, all of us laughing. "The kid got carted off for a flying milk carton induced concussion."
I swing my eyes to Emily who is watching her dad with a mixture of love and hurt.
"It took the whole school two days to clean up the mess we made," my dad says, breaking my reverie as he wipes away a tear from all the laughter. "I'm pretty certain there's still a chocolate pudding stain on the ceiling."
"I almost killed you both," my grandmother adds, still doubled over. Joe and my dad finish off another pizza as they continue to tell stories like this one, some including Jules. Soon the plates rest on the coffee table, the laughter dying down, a single slice sitting in the center of a second box.
"We'll clean up," my dad says, reaching for it. "You girls can work on Blake's stuff. I got a bit of a head start today while you were at work."
"If you call unpacking a single box and watching T.V. a head start, I'd hate to see what the rest of the race looks like," my grandmother says, roasting my dad. I snort and we share a look of camaraderie.
As we head to the pile in the corner, I whisper, "I brought most of my boxes upstairs this morning. Didn't want my grandma to have to do it."
I grab the remaining three boxes in the corner labeled with my name. "Just gotta take these up." Emily holds out her arms and I hand her one of them. We head up the metal stairs and down the hallway. Winston follows me as usual, his nails clicking noisily on the floor. I push my door carefully open with my foot.
"I don't think it'll take us that long to get everything unpacked," I say over my shoulder. "I got a little done last night."
Emily steps inside and I watch her as she sets the box down before looking around my room. I see her eyes take in the string lights on the ceiling, the overflowing bookshelf, the large window without a suitable curtain. Her gaze lands on my row of plants.
"I got mostly cacti for a reason," I say. "Sometimes I forget to water them."
Actually, I can't remember the last time I watered them. They need water only every three weeks, so in some ways it's even harder to remember than my plants that needed more frequent watering, but those died too. I step forward, carefully inspecting them. I reach out to prod at the soil. "I think it's genetic. Unlike your mom, my mom had the polar opposite of a green thumb. One look at a plant and it dropped dead."
She laughs at that before moving her gaze to my drawings and paintings. She's looking at my architectural designs with interest. She takes a step closer, examining each one of them.
"Did you do these?" she asks, pointing in awe at one of them.
"Yeah," I say, hiding my glee at her tone. I peer at the small pile of boxes. "My easel is somewhere in here."
"You're insanely good," she says looking between Winston and his likeness sitting outside the one of my old home repeatedly. Winston confuses the looks for attention and he bounds over to Emily, his tail wagging in excitement. "Like, I have never seen anyone our age this talented before."
"Thanks," I say, warming all over.
"Is that what you want to do?" she asks me.
"Pretty much," I say nodding. "I want to go to school in New York. Or California, maybe, to be close to the beach. Get a degree in architecture. Do what my grandpa never got the chance to."
I lean back, thinking about my grandfather and how he wanted me to go to Cornell. I think at the time, he was hoping that I'd move closer to him. If only he would have known that I would one day be living in the house he built. "We used to FaceTime and talk about it a bunch, especially when the house was being built. He'd show me pictures of cool buildings and send me floor plans in the mail. Trying to teach me the way he had learned. Really sucks I couldn't spend more time in person with him before he died."
I shrug and smile tightly at her. "Anyway, what about you? What are your plans postgraduation?"
Emily freezes, saying nothing for a few seconds. I think about Claire's comment and wonder if I could convince her to apply to UCLA or Cornell. Or maybe she'll want to go to the Culinary Institute in New York. That wouldn't be too bad, I think to myself.
"I don't know. I guess I-I like baking," she says eventually. "Which is a start. Secretly, I think the one thing I do want is to get out of here."
"Why couldn't you?" I ask as I take the tape off one of the boxes. Going to school in New York would be perfect. Not too close, but not too far. Emily looks away and shrugs.
"I don't know. There are a lot of reasons, I guess. I mean could I leave my dad here alone in Huckabee?"
"Would he want to be the reason stopping you?"
She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. She puts her hands on her hips. "I thought we were here to unpack your stuff, not my problems."
I laugh, chucking the ball of packing tape at her. She swats it away, with a grin. We peel off the rest of the tape and start to unpack the boxes we brought up. Emily sits on the floor, handing stuff to me to put away, one of my Spotify playlists playing softly in the background. "If I Could Write," by Sam Phillips plays as I organize my desk. It feels weird having basically a stranger see every item you own, but I suppose if I had to pick someone to do it, I'm glad it's Emily. When "Alaska" by Maggie Rogers comes on, I hum along, moving my head to the beat as I put away my clothes. I see Emily pull out my pile of pictures at the bottom of the box. They're my favorite ones, the ones that'll eventually go up around my room to remind me of the friends and family I'm leaving behind. I smile, sitting down next to her close enough to feel the heat radiating off her leg. We flip through pictures of Jay and Claire and my heart pangs with the memories I'm leaving behind.
"These are my friends, Jay and Claire," I tell her when we land on a picture of us outside Wailua's. "We would always get shaved ice at the spot down the street from my house on Friday afternoons after school. It's pretty big in Kauai. The tourists thankfully don't know about this particular spot. You flavor it with syrups and real fruit and stuff."
I flip to the next picture, showing off Jay's master creation. "This is Jay when we all skipped school on his birthday and went kayaking," I say, handing her a picture of Jay on a kayak. Jay had fallen into the water fifteen minutes after that picture and I'd gotten a sunburn that lasted a week. "And Claire on the back of his bike on the way to a Valentine's Day dance our school has every year."
I hand her a picture of Claire, beautiful in her yellow striped dress she had taken hours to pick out. Claire had been particularly nervous about the length of the dress, but she'd looked radiant all night and Jake's eyes traveling up and down her legs hadn't lied.
"Do you miss it?" Emily asks, breaking me out of my reverie.
"Yeah," I admit, thinking about everything I've left behind. "I miss the sand and the sun and the water."
I let out a long sigh. I shrug, squinting at the picture of Jay and Claire on the bike. "And my friends and family most of all. We did everything together. Feels kind of impossible to picture a senior year without them. My grandma back there is doing a lot better than grandma Carter though."
"Is that why you moved? Because of your grandma?" I shift, leaning my head against the wall.
"Yeah, she hasn't been doing so well since my grandpa died. And my aunt Lisa lives way closer than Hawaii, but still too far away to check up on her regularly." Lisa lives in Ohio, but it's still a four hour drive and my cousins are ten and four, which makes it even harder. "Plus, I didn't want to feel like I didn't spend enough time with her, you know? Like I did when my grandpa died. I think my dad felt the same."
There's a loud bang from somewhere down the hall, Joe and my dad up to no good. "That and I think he wanted to be close to her when I go away to college." I stand up and stretch. We hear another bang followed by some laughter, the two of us smiling at each other. "It'll probably be a good thing for your dad when you head to college too. Not sure about anyone else though. The two of them together might just bring about Huckabee's demise."
She nods, but doesn't respond as she continues looking through the pictures. She turns one to me where Stella, Claire, Jake and I are standing at the top of a cliff, ready to jump. "Did you jump off this?"
"Yeah," I say as I stoop down to look at it closer, my eyes flicking up to meet hers, now thinking of the list. I grin. "You ever been cliff jumping before?"
"Blake, that's like asking if I've ever robbed a bank or solved pi." Emily looks back at the photo and I know she's thinking about the list too. I can see fear mixed with excitement in her chocolate brown eyes. I look at her, confused.
"I always remembered you as the adventurous type," I say. "Sledding down that huge hill backward, chucking snowballs at those teenage boys that were being jerks, trying to blow up Santa."
"First of all, the last one was all you," she says, raising her eyebrows at me. "And besides, cliff jumping is more than just being adventurous. I'm way too afraid of…"
Emily's voice trails off. "Heights?" I finish, now full on grinning.
"No," she says shaking her head.
"Like, what's on the list. Like, we should probably go cliff-jumping so you can check it off the list?" I ask. She opens her mouth to object, but stops herself.
"Okay, fine. It has to be a small one though. I don't want to break my neck or anything."
"Medium and you got a deal," I challenge, holding out my hand. She stares at it before letting out a long huff of air and shaking on it.
"Fine. Medium. One jump and then we're done." I pause, mid-shake.
"Just one little detail. Are there like cliffs around here?" She laughs and pulls away, looking at the picture again.
"There's a bunch of lakes and creeks around here. I'm sure we can find something," she says. I hadn't noticed that, but maybe they're just on the outskirts of town. I turn my attention back to setting up the easel as Emily puts the photos away. I jump when there's a knock on the door, Joe's and my dad's heads pop inside, appearing stacked on top of one another.
"Em, we gotta head on down the road," Joe says. "I've got work in the morning."
I look at my phone and see that it's almost ten. Wow. The hours with Emily completely flew by. That's a good feeling in a summer I was so sure I'd just be watching the seconds tick away in.
"Thanks for the help," I say when they leave us to break down the empty boxes. "I'm sure it wasn't exactly the most entertaining night."
She shrugs as we shuffle off down the hall, each carrying an armful. "Honestly, it was the most enjoyable night I've had in a while." You haven't seen anything yet, I think to myself. We drop them off in the living room, all the boxes reduced to a flattened pile of cardboard. I'm surprised my dad and Joe actually unpacked stuff too. As we say our goodbyes, I breathe in the smell of Emily again, the scent of vanilla invading my nose. As they head to the door, Winston mimics my feels by drooping his tale and looking at Emily with droopy eyes. I pat him on the head in comfort.
"She's coming back, man. Don't worry," I say, more for Emily than for him. I want her to know that I want this, that I like this. Winston takes the comfort by wagging his tail.
"See you," she says to us both and Winston wiggles at her words.
"Medium cliff, Em," I remind her. "Or else it doesn't count. We can't half ass any of these."
I want to do this right with her, to make her feel what I feel when I cliff jump. Maybe she'll feel like we're living on borrowed time too and want to do everything before it's too late.
"Might as well find the biggest one in Huckabee," Emily says and my body hums with excitement as I grin at her. I'm going to take that as a challenge. Looks like I have some research to do.