Chapter 33
COOPER
Being injured makes this trip back home a lot easier to schedule.
Production was somehow greenlit to follow me to surgery, and was still there when Amara picked me up. I was out of it on painkillers at the time, and I had Amara promise me that I didn’t say anything stupid that would end up in the TV show.
And now, she’s in the passenger seat of my truck as we head back to Rehoboth.
I knock my head against my seat.
We had to tell production that we were going, and of course, they were not going to miss an opportunity to film us in our hometown. Are you kidding me? Of course, they were going to do it. We knew that before we even told them.
They’re going to meet us at my grandfather’s house. Since we’re leaving in the evening, we told Natalia that we would come by tomorrow.
Amara looks uncomfortable next to me, her arms wrapped around her body like some kind of protective barrier.
“When was the last time you were back?” I ask over the low hum of the radio.
I watch her from my peripheral vision as she looks over at me. “After you left for college.”
Ouch.
“You haven’t been back since?”
She shakes her head, her curls lit up in the sunset. “Nope. Didn’t want to.”
I regret it the second I ask, “Why not?”
I see her eyes close. She sighs. “It didn’t feel like home anymore. I had my people in Maryland.”
It makes sense, but it hurts all the same.
I wish I had done a lot of things differently.
The rest of the ride is quiet, with Amara curled up, reading something on her e-reader, and my music playing softly on the stereo.
She only lifts her head when I pull onto the familiar stone road to my grandpa’s house.
I see production before I see the house.
With a groan, I pull up the driveway, cameras already on us. “Ready for this shit show?” I ask.
She doesn’t look like she is, but after a second to gather herself, she nods.
I turn into the small garage, pulling all the way in until Grandpa’s tennis ball hits my windshield with a soft thunk. Amara watches it thoughtfully, chewing at her lip.
Hopping out, I round the car to open Amara’s door for her. I take her hand as she turns, and she shoots me a thankful smile before getting down. She looks around, breathing in the air.
“Let’s get us inside and situated for the night,” I say, grabbing our bags and slinging them both over my shoulder.
We enter the house wordlessly. Amara trails right behind me, the cameras following our every move. I can see Edward standing back, making sure everything is going to plan.
The truth is, I haven’t been here in a long time, either. Not quite as long, but it’s been a while. Before my sister went through and emptied a lot of the rooms.
We were going to sell it. After all, it’s a lot of work to make sure that a beach house is kept up. The wind and saltwater are not exactly kind to houses.
But she couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. We couldn’t pull the plug.
So for now, it’s an empty house on the beach. We’re honestly lucky it hasn’t been broken into.
Natalia takes good care of it, checking on it every few days.
“It’s just like I remember, just—” I watch as Amara tries to find the words, her eyes searching every corner of the family room. “I don’t even know. The heart of it is gone.”
My chest tightens, tears stinging my eyes. Because it’s true.
This home used to be lively. It used to be filled with things from his time overseas. Things of Grandma’s. Things of my mom’s. Trinkets and evidence of someone who lived their life to the fullest in every single corner.
While there are still things here, it doesn’t feel the same. It hasn’t since the day he passed away.
I head into my bedroom, dropping our stuff. This is the only room in the house that has been relatively untouched, and it’s only because my sister told me it was my job to go through it all.
Actually, I think her exact words were, “I’m too old to stumble across a crusty porn magazine. If you want shit gone, get it gone before the house gets broken into.”
I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
There are shelves upon shelves of trophies from various sports. Grandpa loved watching me play and supported me until the day he couldn’t. He believed in me so much that sometimes I thought he was the only one who ever did.
When I was falling behind in school, he was the one who knew that I was smart enough to do well and got me tested.
When I was diagnosed with severe ADHD, he was with me as I got medicated.
I was told I had a combined type, where I can be a mix of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive.
It helped me a lot to know, but I was terrified, for some reason, that the medication would change me in some way.
But all it did was help me.
Unfortunately, I was then of the opinion that the medication would fix me, and I didn’t continue the therapy I needed to deal with the other ways that it hurt me.
My grandpa was a superhero.
Band posters have come untaped, half hanging off the walls, while clothes are strewn about.
If I looked under the mattress, I probably would find the porn magazine that my friend stole from one of the local gas stations. He had left it at my place, and I was terrified of Grandpa finding it.
I couldn’t throw it away because that would have increased the chance of him seeing it in the trash. I couldn’t take it outside the house, because what if someone saw me with it?
The only answer was to stow it under my bed with the weed I tried one single time, and hope for the best.
“It’s so weird being in here again,” Amara murmurs, looking around with her hands tucked in her back pockets. I watch her thoughtfully as she gazes around.
A box piques her interest, and she grabs it.
A cameraman bumps into the door, and she jumps. We had both forgotten they were there, just lost in this time capsule of a room.
She smiles. “Is this your old sticker collection?”
I blush. “I’ll be honest, I forgot I even collected them.”
“God, you had so many. Seriously. How many do you think are in here?” She opens the lid, tossing it on the bed next to me before placing the box on top of it. “There’s got to be hundreds in here.
“Just one of the random things I fixated on,” I chuckle.
She nods, picking up a small, blue-and-yellow oval sticker. “Like I never understood why you had to keep your Chiquita stickers on your bananas.”
“They’re cute! I liked the blue!”
She hums, looking through the stickers until she finds the one she was clearly looking for.
“Is this one from when your grandpa forced us to go vote together?”
I nod, the memory burned in my brain. He was so excited about the 2008 election and wanted us all to come with him.
He even talked to Amara’s parents about it.
They voted somewhere else, but he wanted to make sure they were okay with Amara coming with us.
He wanted us to be involved in one of the most historical moments in American history.
Amara’s parents were voting later that night, and she was annoyed that she was then sucked into going twice.
Grandpa had given me his sticker, now weathered and worn with time.
“And this one was from when the ice cream shop was doing that deal,” she mutters, naming all the ones that seem familiar.
And then she stops, looking at something in her palm. “Oh no, did you find the dirty ones?” I wince.
“No,” she says. “But are these…”
She lowers her hand, showing them to me.
I don’t know what to tell her.
The truth.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “They’re the stamps from your letters.”
She counts them, her shoulders slumping. “You read all of them?”
“Every last one.”
Amara sent them nearly every month, even long after I stopped responding.
It’s how I knew how hurt she was before I was even drafted to Baltimore. How I knew that I shouldn’t reach out.
How I knew that there was likely no way that I ever actually talked to her ever again.
When I stopped responding, the letters started off upset. Then curious. Then they got angrier and angrier, until she told me she never wanted to see my face again.
I deserved them. Who the hell just drops off the face of the earth without a word? How could I possibly explain to her that I couldn’t bring myself to form words for her?
Amara deserved better.
She sighs, putting the box down. Her eyes meet mine, and I almost fold right there.
I’m ruined for this woman. But the pain in them let me know that we’ll be having a conversation about this. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow, but at some point, this will come up again.
For another hour, the two of us go through the house, talking about the memories we care to share with the world.
When there’s one that we don’t want out there, Amara would tap my arm, or I’d touch her waist. To anyone on the outside, it looks like affection.
To us, it’s a quiet, polite way to tell the other to shut the hell up.
“Is this your sister’s room?” Edward asks.
“We’re not going in there,” I say firmly, and when Edward raises a brow, I add, “Those are her things, and she’s not in this show. There’s no reason to invade her privacy.”
He seems to accept that, but then points to another room. Amara’s head whips around to watch me, her eyes wide.
“Neither of us is going in there, either,” I tell him. I usually have really great patience for Edward, but something about the pushiness here is pissing me off.
Amara yawns. “I think we’re done for the night,” I tell him, and when he opens his mouth to argue, I repeat myself.
They retreat begrudgingly.
When I see the crew pull out of the driveway, I let out the breath I was holding. “Thank god,” I groan.
“Yeah, I’m going to go get ready for bed,” Amara says, grabbing her things. She’s across the hall in a second, opening my sister’s door.
Only to stop in her tracks.
“Um, Cooper?” she asks.
“Yeah?”
“Did your sister say that she cleared her room out?”
I come up behind her, peering in.
There’s nothing.
No trace of anyone living in this room.
But more specifically, no bed.
Curious, and slightly panicked for Amara’s sake, I peek into my grandpa’s room.
Empty.
I don’t have time to process how I feel about it, because part of me is thankful. But in this moment, I’m more worried about where Amara is going to sleep.
“Did she really only keep one god damn bed in this place?” I sputter, pulling out my phone.
I angrily hit my sister’s number.
“Hey, bud,” she says, a little too chipper.
“Did you tell me that you got rid of all the beds in this place besides mine?”
There’s a snort on the other end of the line. “I didn’t tell you that. But kinda figured you’d catch onto that when I begged you to come clean out your room.”
“Are you fucking with me right now?”
“Cooper, why would I keep my stuff or grandpa’s stuff in a house that no one lives in? Remember what happened to the Robinsons? They had a beach house they left untouched, and it was broken into like, at least a dozen times, before they realized what was happening.
“I just wish you had warned me before we got here, is all,” I seethe.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. Ya’ll are fine. Sleep on the floor if you can’t be an adult and sleep in the same bed.”
She hangs up the phone before I can retort. This is starting to feel a little more intentional.
I turn to Amara, tossing my hands up. “I’m not sure what to do, but I can sleep on the floor,” I assure her.
“No,” she says firmly. “Sleep in the bed with me. Natalia is right. We’re adults.”
I can’t quite decipher the emotion in her eyes. Whether they’re nerves, or anger, or sadness, or a mixture of it all, I’m not sure.
Or maybe it’s just that she’s simply tired.
“Okay,” I agree softly. “We’ll sleep in my bed.”
You’ll be fine, I tell myself.
It’s not like you’ve been wanting this your whole life.