11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Morrie
I woke up with a start at the sound of jingle bells ringing in my ears. Heart racing, I opened my eyes and stared around the room I was in, trying to find the piles of clothing and junk that meant I was safe at my apartment, but instead I was met with clean hardwood floors and a fireplace burning.
“Oh no,” I murmured, glancing around the room. The TV above the fireplace was on, some Christmas movie I couldn’t place playing the jingle bell noise that had woken me. I knew I was at Scott’s and that I’d been comfortable enough to fall asleep here was both unnerving and comforting. My stomach churned as I looked around the room again. It was a nice house, very well put together and tidy, but that wasn’t providing much comfort in my half awake state.
“Scott?” I called out to no response. I tried a different word, just in case he was being strict about what I called him or something. “Daddy?”
“Morrie?” he said, walking into the living room from the hallway to the right. “You’re awake.”
I nodded, heart still thudding and body shaking a bit where I sat. Reaching down, I found Mr. Starkey crunched between my body and the arm rest along with the reindeer Scott had given me. I pulled them out and pressed Mr. Starkey to my face, running his softness over my nose, lips, cheeks as I breathed into him.
“Are you okay?” Scott asked and I felt the couch dip beside me.
“Yeah,” I mumbled against my shark stuffy. “The jingle bells woke me up and I just didn’t expect it. It’s too clean in here.”
“What do you mean?”
I shook my head, unable to explain it because it was stupid to admit that I found comfort in things like books stacked in corners and clothing strewn on floors. “I should get going home.”
“Do you want to stay for dinner? It’s getting late and you must be hungry after that nap.”
“No, thank you,” I responded, needing to get out of this stiflingly clean place and into somewhere I belonged. I pulled myself off the couch and stretched, my neck aching and cracking. Sleeping propped up against an arm rest had apparently been a very poor choice of bed.
“Can I give you a ride home?” Scott asked.
“I can take the bus.” I wanted to take the bus. There was comfort in taking the bus back to my shitty apartment full of glorious junk and mess. As I looked at Scott though, I could see concern and disappointment woven into his features and I winced. “I would like to take the bus, this time. Maybe… next time you could drive me?”
His lips curled into a smile that made me feel warm inside. “Sure. Next time works. We still have a lot of Christmas things to do.”
“We do?”
“Oh yes. When is your next day off, brave boy?”
I flushed at the name he’d given me. I’d never been considered brave before, I had designed my world to avoid the things I didn’t like, living in the safe touch of a soft stuffy against my skin, but today had pushed me a little bit out of my comfort zone. It was terrifying and new for me to let someone take a bit of the control I craved to give up despite my inner urge to cling to it with gripped hands and tightened knuckles.
“I don’t work on Wednesday,” I suggested. “Do you?”
“I don’t have set hours really. Sure, there are times I need to go check out work being done on my buildings, but I can be very flexible.”
It hit me that I really didn’t know much about what Scott did for money. I assume he had lots given the state of the massive house I found myself in and the fancy car he drove, but I had no idea what it all was from. “What is your job actually?”
Scott smiled, nodding his head like he’d anticipated this question. “I own buildings. My family does, actually. Have you heard of the Malcolm Property Group?”
“Just on the note you left at my apartment.”
“We own a bunch of casinos and hotels across Canada,” he explained. “It’s a family company that my dad started a long time ago. I own some shares in the company as a whole, but I’m starting up on my own a little bit. I want to work with smaller buildings, more close to home.”
“Like the apartments.”
“Exactly. I want to renovate and revitalize neighborhoods. The world doesn’t need more casinos and hotels, but they do need safe, comfortable places to live.”
That was actually very honorable, though a pit opened in my stomach a little bit. “Are you buying my apartment?”
Scott hesitated before nodding. “I’m trying to. The current owner is taking his sweet time deciding though. I’ve submitted an offer to purchase yours and the one next door to yours.”
Caution rippled through me. I had watched the tenants of the apartment buildings around mine be evicted one by one by the old landlord who’d said that he wanted to renovate the buildings before he’d put them on the market for sale. “And, if you buy them, then what?”
“Then, I renovate them and make them safe and warm places for people to live,” Scott responded, speaking gently like he could feel my worry rippling in the air. “Are you worried about that?”
I nodded, thoughts tumbling through my head all at once. Renovations meant evictions and I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t want to be homeless in the winter after struggling for so long to get a good, solid roof over my head. Well, solid enough. That brown spot had spread just a little bit more over the last few days. Still, it was my apartment and while I’d have loved to move to a better place, it was the best I could do with the money I got from my job. “If you buy it, are you kicking everyone out?”
“Yes and no. I plan to have the other buildings ready before I start working on yours. All of the tenants will be welcome to apply for a new apartment in one of the other buildings. I wouldn’t kick people out into the cold, Morrie. I hope you know that.”
“The other landlord did.” There had been people leaving in vans and trucks, carting their possessions away in boxes that flapped open in the wind. Some of the tenants had moved into my building, taking up all of the empty apartments, but there wasn’t enough for all of them. I’d felt terrible watching those who hadn’t been able to find a place they could afford throw items they owned into the dumpsters out back. One boy had stood for a long time staring at the building with a heavy backpack on his shoulders before he’d wandered away into the night. I had almost gone down to talk to that boy, to offer him a night or two on my squeaky futon while he found somewhere to live because I had recognized a sadness and an resigned acceptance in him that spoke to the part of me that had been shuffled from place to place as a child. Now that I was considering that I could become him, the fact that I hadn’t reached out to him curdled in my gut.
“I won’t,” Scott promised, taking a step close to me. “I promise you, Morrie. If it’s within my power, I won’t let people go without a place to live.”
Scott’s warm green eyes begged me to believe him and without a real reason not to, I nodded my understanding. If he managed to find somewhere for everyone to live, myself included, while he fixed up my building, that would be alright. I didn’t really want to live in a construction zone and I had the feeling it was going to be bad enough when he started on the buildings around mine that I didn’t live in.
“You sure I can’t convince you to stay for something to eat?” he asked, his lips curling into a small, relieved smile.
“No, thank you. I should get home.”
“Okay. You go get changed. Unless you want my help?” I shook my head fast as he chuckled softly under his breath. “That’s alright. You go and I’ll be right here when you get finished.”
Pushing myself off the couch, I carefully made my way down the crisp, clean hallway to the small spare room where I’d left my clothes in a pile on the floor. When I got into the room, I saw that they’d been folded neatly and placed on the small bed. It should have been a nice thing to see, but it prickled at me even more for some reason and I snatched them up, unfolding them and tossing them back down with a small, satisfied smile. I wasn’t sure why making a mess in Scott’s perfect house felt like relief, but as I slid out of the reindeer onesie and tossed it onto the bed in a heap, I couldn’t help but feel good inside.
I quickly pulled on my jeans and t-shirt, intending to head right back out of the room, but the onesie crumpled up on the bed drew me closer. It was such a nice gift. The best gift I’d ever gotten from anyone since I was little. My dad had always bought me presents when he was alive. It wasn’t uncommon for him to return home from a trip overseas and bring me back a suitcase full of trinkets and treats from whatever country he’d just been to. I stayed with my neighbor while he was gone, sleeping in the spare bedroom and going to school, wondering if every plane that flew overhead was my dad’s. When he’d come home, we’d spend hours sitting together building puzzles from countries whose names I didn’t even know and eating sweets from places none of the other kids at my school knew existed. One of the only memories I had left was sitting in the backyard munching on fresh apples from the tree he'd grown along with syrupy sweet balls of fried dough called gulab jamun from a recipe he’d picked up when he flew people to India. Before the plane crash, my dad’s job as a pilot had taken him so far away from me, but he had always returned and those were the best moments of my life. Sometimes, I still felt like I was waiting for him to come back, all these years later.
I picked up the onesie and held it between my hands, crushing the fabric against my fingertips and palms. Glancing back at the door to be sure Scott wasn’t standing there watching me, I gathered the soft, fuzzy fabric and gently rubbed it against my bristly cheek. I closed my eyes and let myself feel the comfort of it against my skin, moving it to brush against my lips. I had always done this with the things I had owned. Growing up, my comfort was from softness and warmth, not from people. When I was younger, it was stuffed animals and as I grew into a teen, blankets and pillowcases became my solace in a world that felt far too rough and dangerous. I knew it was weird though and that’s why I tried my best to hide it.
Skin satisfied, I carefully folded the onesie as best as I could and placed it on the bed. I grabbed my backpack off the floor where I'd left it, then made my way out to the living area where Scott was sitting on the couch, holding Mr. Starkey and the reindeer stuffy he’d gotten me. He looked up as I entered the room, his hair catching copper in the Christmas tree behind him and glowing like fire in the darkness. He was handsome, that much was true, though far more so with the brilliant Christmas lights surrounding him. I swore I could see his eyes sparkling as I walked over to him, hands that I believed could be gentle holding both stuffed creatures to me. I took Mr. Starkey and pulled him to my chest, eyeing the other one carefully.
“Do you want to take him home? He is yours, Morrie.”
I almost reached out for the reindeer, but stopped myself at the last minute. It was fresh and clean, brand new like everything else in Scott’s home. Though I was certain I’d take good care of it at my apartment, I couldn’t picture it in among the rest of my things. It felt wrong, somehow, to take this beautiful gift and bring it to my garbage apartment. “Can he stay here?”
“He certainly can. Should he go under the tree to wait for you?”
That was a good place for the reindeer and I nodded. “His name is Blitzen.”
“Not Rudolph?” Scott asked, standing up and carrying the stuffy to the tree. He placed it beneath the branches where we’d lay on the floor together, then came to stand beside me.
“Blitzen.” I’d always liked that name best of all of Santa’s reindeer and even though the stuffy had a red nose like Rudolph, my brain insisted he was called Blitzen.
“Blitzen, it is.”
With a nod, I made my way to the door of the house and dropped my backpack to the floor as I slid into my shoes. When I picked it back up, I carefully put Mr. Starkey inside. I zipped him up safe, then grabbed my coat from the hook. Once I was ready to go out into the cold to catch the next bus, Scott came to join me.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked.
“I did, thank you. That was… different. Nice, but different for me. Thank you for the presents.”
“You’re very welcome. Can I see you Wednesday?”
I hesitated, eyeing him carefully. “Do I have to be little all the time when I’m with you?” I wasn’t sure I wanted that. I only needed it sometimes and I was never sure what the day would bring me. I hadn’t lied before when I said I wasn’t a 24/7 sort of little, I just needed it to take the edge off of being an adult when things got hard.
“We didn’t really talk about that, did we?” Scott smiled, shaking his head at himself. “I got too excited when you were coming over, I forgot to bring that up. What do you need, Morrie?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, I don’t feel like I need to play with toys and snuggle stuffies, but when I feel it, I feel it hard inside me.”
“What if we just went with the flow? Maybe, we have a word you can use to tell me how you’re feeling inside?”
“A word? Like hare or tortoise?”
“Kind of,” Scott smiled. “But this word would tell me you want to be little. Like when you want to play and let go of all of the adult things for a while. What do you think?”
That could work. If I had a word to tell him what I needed, it would take a lot of the guessing off the table and I had the best word. “Blitzen.”
“Blitzen?”
I nodded, glancing past Scott to the tree where my reindeer sat nestled beneath the branches.
“Okay, Blitzen, like your reindeer. If you tell me Blitzen, that means you need time and space to be little Morrie.”
“What about the other times? Sometimes I don't want to be little, but I still want… someone.”
“Oh, if you think I’m interested in you just because you’re little, you are so very wrong. Morrie, I like you. All of the parts I can see and I’m sure even the parts I don’t know about yet. I’d like us to keep getting to know each other, even if you aren’t little all the time.”
I was floored. Nobody had ever told me that. The one Daddy I’d had had wanted me to be little all the time, to come to him with all of the problems and forget I was an adult with real responsibilities. This felt different, and that difference felt okay inside me. Scott smiled, knowingly.
"How about a goodnight kiss?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at me in question.
"A kiss?" I nervously licked my lips, feeling my beard brush against my tongue.
"Hare, if it's too much, remember?"
I nodded, butterflies in my stomach as Scott stepped closer. I anticipated him grabbing me, pulling against him and forcing his lips onto mine, but he simply stood there in front of me, hands at his sides. Scott leaned forward, closing his eyes and carefully pressed his lips against mine, sending a small thrill down my body. I kissed him back, reveling in the feel of his lips on mine for a few short moments, before he moved back.
"Not so bad?" he asked.
"No," I replied, a bit dazed as my stomach did cartwheels inside me.
Scott smiled, reaching out his hand and holding out his pinkie finger to me. A surprised laugh burst from my lips as I realized what he was waiting for. Raising my own hand, I wrapped my pinkie around his, like we were two little kids on the playground making a pinkie promise. He gave my finger a short squeeze before letting me go.
“Thank you, Morrie.”
“You’re good at tortoises, I think.”
“I have all the time in the world for a tortoise like you.”