Part III. Years had been from home
—
December 18, 2022
Six years.
That's how long it takes before Annabeth finds herself back in her hometown, standing in the middle of the sidewalk watching the snow fall from the sky.
It's night, but the streets are lit up in the spirit of the holidays. She almost doesn't recognize this street with the hints of change that have overcome it, but it comes rushing back as she analyzes the buildings, tracing over each individual brick, looking at the downtown windows and stores she used to spend her days away in.
It's taken her all day to find her way here. Her plane landed this morning, and she'd spent the day with her dad's family, suffering through an awkward car ride to the house that she never felt truly welcome in. She didn't plan on coming home this year, just as she hadn't come since she moved away, but a lot can change in six years, so she ended up here anyway, doing everything she can to avoid this familiar street.
Annabeth is exactly twenty-one minutes away from the home she grew up in. She's twenty-four minutes away from her high school, fifteen minutes away from the grocery store she stole alcohol from after her junior year homecoming, twelve minutes from the place she tripped and scraped her knee, eleven minutes from the restaurant she doesn't like. She's seven minutes from the playground she used to play at when she was seven, running around on the mulch and whining to her dad when a chip of wood ended up inside her shoe. Six minutes from the ice cream shop that held her first date.
Twenty seconds from the bookshop where she fell in love.
She's been avoiding this all day. She thinks this is the reason she's avoiding this town for as long as she has. She moved on, made friends and studied and read and wrote. She never thought about a certain green-eyed boy. That was the only way she knew how to live.
The thing about pretending the person she fell in love with hasn't existed for the past six years is that the second she comes back, standing between the Methodist church and bookstore, she is just as heartbroken as when she first left.
Annabeth stands in place for five minutes, unable to feel the cold. She's wrapped in a black wool coat, hair tangling in the light breeze, and she finds she can't breathe. She calms herself, staring at the beautiful Christmas lights lining Hestia's. They blink slowly, a preset pattern, alternating a brilliant blue and red and green, and she wonders who put them up. She hasn't kept in contact with people from here, and she doesn't know who the bookstore belongs to anymore. She doesn't know the new wave of people who walk the street, the high schoolers living their very own coming of age movie.
She feels frozen in place.
The bookstore looks relatively empty from outside the windows. It makes sense, nearing eleven at night. She can spot a few people wandering around, and she can practically feel the warmth emanating from the place she used to call home.
Annabeth knows she should turn around.
She should go back to her dad's house, suffer through two weeks of tiptoeing around people she never really fit in with, the people who guilt tripped her into returning home for the winter. She should do anything else instead of reopening wounds that she spent years attempting to glue shut.
Instead, Annabeth walks inside.
It's exactly as she remembers.
The counter rests at the center of the store, unoccupied, and she figures whoever is running the shop that night is somewhere in the back. The lighting is yellow and flickers every few seconds, but it feels like home. The dark-stained wood looks more worn, but there are still as many leather bound books as ever resting upon the shelves. Her nerves are calmed by the familiar words of Shakespeare prose and Robert Frost. Of people from the past sitting away at typewriters so that today, in an age of technology, places like this can remain, places where inked words offer solace to calm souls.
Annabeth stands idle in the doorway, unable to move further.
There's a candle burning on the corner of the shop, vanilla and peppermint, and she remembers the many nights she's spent curled up in the corner with a book in lap, waiting for Percy to close. She'd always scold him, warning him he's going to end up with a Library of Alexandria if he's not careful, and he'd always tell her the joys of peppermint far outweigh the risk of flame.
It brings a subtle grin to her face. For a moment, she can breathe, knowing she's in the place she dreaded coming and things didn't immediately fall apart in front of her.
Annabeth moves further in to the left. Her fingers trace over the shelves, picking up on the chipping edges. She has to walk around a girl looking through a few of the novels before she can move back to the shelf. She winds up at the window she used to sit by, and she finds herself looking outside. A part of her wonders if she never left, would she still be sitting here, perched up on the counter with a new book every week? She's so distracted staring out the window, at the reflection of Christmas lights and remnants of the past, that she almost doesn't notice the quiet patter of feet until there's something brushing against her leg, and—
"Maisie," Annabeth laughs out, bending down to the cat nudging her ankle. Her heart warms at the gentle meowing, and she reaches a hand out to scratch her neck. "Hey, pretty girl. I've missed you."
It's as though the animal understands, looking directly at her and meowing in her face.
"You're so big," Annabeth whispers, letting Maisie's tail run through her hand. "How have you been, sweet girl? Causing lots of trouble?"
More content purring.
"I'm sure you are," Annabeth muses. "Wasting your days away sunbathing, huh?"
"Annabeth?"
She jumps at the voice behind her. She doesn't need to turn around to know who it is.
When she looks, she finds Percy staring at her, exactly the way she remembers. He looks older, and she knows she does too. They're twenty-four, and everything has changed, but he's still there in this bookstore, a white button down with his sleeves rolled up like he's been working all day, a pair of jeans he's probably had for years. He's holding a stack of books, presumably one he was going to put away before he saw her.
He stares at her, expression dazed and in disbelief, and—
Confused.
"You kept the cat."
Percy tilts his head, brows furrowed in confusion. He shifts his hold on the books. "I kept the cat," he confirms. "You're…in East Aurora."
"For Christmas," she explains. She grabs Maisie in her arms, painfully aware of Percy's eyes following her every move as she stands. "My dad wanted me to come home, and I figured…"
"It's been six years."
His words are sharp, though not particularly angry. They're almost accusing, asking how she has the nerve to show up after never having properly said goodbye. The reality is that she couldn't say goodbye because she knew she needed to leave, and the moment she knew it would be her last time seeing him, she might have changed her mind. She couldn't let that happen, so she didn't say goodbye. He didn't seek her out either.
"Yeah," she says, choosing to focus on the cat so she doesn't have to look into his sea-green eyes. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
"Yeah, it has." He blinks at her, expression unreadable. And then, "Can I help you with something?"
"What?"
He looks around cautiously. "Is there something you need, or was this meant to be a friendly reunion?"
Annabeth bites her lip. "I was just walking around, and I thought I could stop in for a second."
"At midnight?"
He's still confused, maybe a little hurt too. Still, she spots hints of his lips quirked up. "I'm sorry," she says. "I can leave."
"I'm not asking you to leave," he promises. He sidesteps her to place a few of the books back on the shelf slowly while glancing at her hesitantly. "Did you just get in today?"
"This morning," she tells him. "It's been a long day with my family."
"I can only imagine." He slides the last book in his hands into an empty slot on the shelves before turning to her. "Tired of them already?"
He remembers all the times he used to find her here to escape the wrath of her family. They never did get along, and even six years is not enough to mend the irreparable.
"It's going to be a long two weeks."
And it's awkward. He doesn't say anything for a moment, eyes trained on her She had initially feared him asking questions, but it's worse that he doesn't. It feels like he doesn't care, like she's not an important part of his life. She isn't, at least not anymore, but it hurts her to remember it.
"Well," he nods towards Maisie after a few seconds, "you've always got here to hang around. I'm sure that one would love having you around."
"I'm surprised she's not a warm meal yet."
Percy shrugs, reaching out towards the cat. "After you left, we got along better. I was the only person really around anymore. Besides, I couldn't cook her when she attracts so many customers pawing at them through the window."
"A business investment."
"She really is," he laughs, scratching behind Maisie's ear. "I mean it, though. You're welcome to hang around here."
How could he possibly know her like this? How could he know she already left the house to gather her thoughts before she fell apart? How could she have had a love this thorough and thrown it all away?
"Maisie's really missed you," he says. "After you left, she was miserable for weeks. Wouldn't let anyone touch her."
"It looks like you took good care of her, though."
"Oh, for sure. She got the most expensive food that took up way too much of my paycheck, and she gets to lay around all day. I'm sure she was hoping you'd come visit." He locks eyes with her, and she thinks something goes unsaid.
And suddenly, she feels guilty. She knows the only place they've seen each other are in the little screens they carry around. They're nothing more than an occasional like of an instagram post because anything more than that hurts too much. She should have told him she was coming back. She shouldn't have shown up like this.
"I've been so busy," she tries, though it's a lame excuse. They both know it.
Percy reads through her instantly, just like he always has, but he doesn't say anything to call her out. Instead, he says, "LA keeps you on your toes, I'm sure."
"Oh, yeah." She feels stuck, back to the shelves that dig uncomfortable into her spine. The silence that fills them is awkward, and she wishes he would say something to ease the tension except there's nothing to say because she's the one that got them in this position, so it's her turn to say, "I'm sorry for just showing up. I didn't know you even worked here still, honestly. I just thought I would stop in for a second, but—"
"You're fine, Annabeth."
Her mouth shuts.
"You can go wherever you want," he says. "This used to be your home."
Something about the words used to be stings. She used to find comfort here, but it's long gone, along with all the relationships she'd built. She's standing in the same place, and everything changed.
Percy's lips quirk up. "Cat got your tongue?"
"Haha," she unfreezes. "I'm thinking."
"Oh, god," he teases, but he doesn't push her. Something clatters to his right, and he looks over at a girl who'd dropped a book before he winds up with his attention back on her. In that split moment that his eyes aren't on her, she looks him over, perplexed by how different he looks. He really does look older, though not in a bad way in the slightest, and it makes her realize just how much she's missed. Six years of memories and scars marking his skin, of smiles and cries and everything in between she's no longer a part of. She always thought it would be her to grow up with him. "So, how have you been?"
"Busier than I would like," she says honestly. "A lot of writing."
"I'm shocked."
"Right? Who would've thought a writer would write?"
Percy laughs softly. "Anything else happen in the last six years, or is that it?"
And a lot has happened in the last six years. She thinks he already knows that.
"Nothing all that interesting."
"What a shame," he says, amused and very clearly unbelieving. His eyes linger on her left hand placement on Maisie's back, and something tells her he's not focused on the cat. If he has any other questions, he doesn't voice them.
"What about you?"
"Nothing changes here," he quips. "I went to school for a bit, but never finished. I've worked here full time for a few years now."
"You're a brooding librarian," she teases.
"I'm not sure how brooding a librarian can be," he says. "Is it still a librarian if the books aren't being rented out? People have to actually buy them."
"I never bought them."
"You were an exception."
Annabeth lets the cat fall from her arms, but Maisie doesn't go anywhere, choosing to circle Annabeth's leg and brush against her lovingly.
Breaking up is never fun, but she thinks it's a million times worse when the reason for it isn't because they fell out of love. The emotions never disappeared, but she did.
"I should probably go," she says quietly, pulling her coat tighter around her, though she feels too warm. "I don't want to bother you while you're busy."
He blinks at her for a moment before pointedly looking around the empty bookstore and back at her with an amused grin. "I'm incredibly busy. Barely have time to breathe."
Annabeth laughs, and he pushes himself off the bookshelf.
"I'm stuck here for another half hour, but if you want to wait around, I can walk you home."
It's a tempting offer.
It's an impossible situation. Here she is showing up six years after she left. She left because she needed to breathe, and she couldn't do that here, but she left everything crumbling behind her, and now he's offering to walk her home, except she can tell in his eyes that he doesn't mean it. She knows him well enough to know that he would walk her home without a second thought, but she can see in his eyes that he doesn't really want her to say yes.
There's a lot for him to think about, like his ex showing up in his bookstore and holding his cat like there's not an ounce of time missing between the two of them when there is.
"I'll be alright," Annabeth says, eyes looking at the book beside his head because she can't bring herself to look at him. "Hopefully I still remember my way home."
"Are you sure?" he asks. "I don't mind."
"It's a quick walk," she says. He analyzes her for a second, and she wants to know what's running through his mind, but his face is unreadable.
"Okay," he relents. "Let's do something while you're here, though. Just let me know."
She bends down to say goodbye to the cat, but at least this time, she has intentions of coming back. "I will."
He doesn't follow her to the door, choosing to watch her leave from the counter. He waves with a kind smile, and she's glad that he's distracted by a customer ready to pay so that she doesn't have to walk away knowing his eyes are on her back.
She takes her time walking home, even though the cold starts to make her ears ache. The upside to a small town is people tend to go all out for the holidays, and it's been a while since she's gotten to stare at the twinkling lights. Even when she looks up, she can see the stars that almost live up to the Christmas lights, which is something she doesn't get when she's in LA. The brilliant lights capture her attention, and for a moment, she feels like she can breathe. She's treading a line of uncertainty, of how two weeks with her family is going to go, of how she is supposed to act around Percy, if she should even talk to him.
By the time she makes it home, she realizes another thing she's missed. The freedom of walking around at night and being able to go places without having to worry about looking over her shoulder every two seconds is refreshing, and she doesn't want to walk through the front door.
Still, she knows her dad's already going to have questions of where she went off to as though she was still in high school, so she pushes the front door open and is hit with the vanilla-scented warmth of a home that was never really hers.
Annabeth is happy to find that they're not waiting up for her, and she lets herself slide her coat off and warm up in the dark. The living room is pretty in a fake pristine way, white and gold glittery lights on an expensive tree, white couches with Christmas themed pillows that people weren't really meant to use. It's exactly what she thinks of when she imagines a picture perfect family, and it's exactly the reason she never fit in here. She never wanted a family with a nauseating sense of self rooted in what others thought of them.
She sits on the couch for a moment, staring at the lights on the tree, and she wonders how she could feel so much colder here than in the arms of the person she left six years ago.
Well.
'Tis the damn season.
do let me know what u think xx ch 4 tomorrow (maybe) (if i remember to post it)