Chapter 3
Chapter Three
JAMES
“Ican’t believe it’s almost that time again,” James’ mom said as she slowly climbed up the ladder to the attic.
Honestly, James also couldn’t believe they were doing this again.
“The time when you give me a heart attack by carrying unnecessarily heavy boxes down the rickety ladder?” he asked, as he climbed up after her.
“No, silly, the time where I have to kindly inform my adult son that he has to vacate the premises so I can have a steamy holiday evening with my honeys.”
“Oh god,” James groaned.
He stepped around their plastic skeleton and dodged past their Christmas tree to follow his mom over to the Valentine’s Day decorations in the corner.
They hadn’t always decorated for so many holidays, but since she’d gotten sick, his mom had really embraced “living life to the fullest.” For her, that meant any holiday that had decorations needed a full celebration.
Last year, they’d made each other Valentine’s Day baskets–like Easter baskets but a lot pinker and redder–and he’d cooked them a steak dinner with a chocolate cake for dessert.
Apparently, his culinary services weren’t needed this year, which was probably for the best because he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to finally celebrate Valentine’s Day with a partner.
He and his ex, Eli, hadn’t celebrated the one Valentine’s Day they’d had together, and they’d broken up long before the next one.
He knew it was a silly holiday meant to sell candy and cards, but it was also a sweet excuse to do something nice for someone he lo–
Liked.
He liked Leon. A lot.
There was no way he loved him, because that would be way too soon, and probably way too scary for Leon “The Bad Boy Who Was Actually Incredibly Sweet and Called James After a Tough Day Just to Hear His Voice” Rabinowicz.
Right?
He nearly tripped over a St. Patrick’s Day wreath and decided that falling to his death by taking a wrong step in their rickety attic was probably not the best idea. Then he would never be able to tell Leon he loved–
Er…he would never have time to fall in love with him?
Uh oh.
“Well?” his mom said, her hands on her hips in an uncanny mimicry of Hailey.
“Well, what?”
James opened the lid of a box and was immediately assaulted by cards, garlands, and streamers covered in that four-letter word.
“Can I have the house that evening, or do you need me to go to one of their places?”
James slammed the lid back on the box. “No, it’s fine, you can have the house.”
His mom often met Howard and Linda for dinner in the city after they finished work.
Linda lived on the other side of town in a small condo, while Howard lived out in the suburbs in a very nice house that was unfortunately a bit of a bear to get to.
James had visited his house at Christmas, and it was nice, but his mom had a hard time navigating all the stairs and courtyards.
James had noticed it was a bit of a struggle for Howard as well, but James had kept that observation to himself.
He was just grateful that the trio seemed to have chosen James’ house as their go-to place for holiday and weekend sleepovers.
“Yeah, of course, Mom, that’s fine. I’m very happy to spend the evening with Leon.”
“He seems like such a sweet boy,” his mom said for probably the tenth time in the past four days.
“He is,” James said, opening another box lid to find the pink Easter baskets they’d used the previous year. He held them up, and his mom actually clapped her hands in delight. “We’ll have to get you a third one of these, Mom.”
“Oh, I was thinking you’d want to use them for Leon. You could fill it with love notes and ticket stubs, or whatever it is you’ve got stored in that box in your room.”
“Uhm… It’s mostly bar receipts and takeout menus,” James said absently as he shut the box containing the baskets. “We’ve only been to see three movies.”
He should probably be embarrassed that his mom knew about the memory box he had of not just his and Leon’s relationship, but also of their friendship, but he wasn’t. She was part of the reason it had started.
At first, it was an accident. Now that his mom was doing better, they took turns doing the laundry based on who was free when a load finished.
Two loads in a row, his mom had been forced to fish out pieces of ruined receipts from James’ weekly hangouts with Leon.
She’d stomped–as much as his mom could stomp–into his room and reminded him to do a better job of emptying his pockets.
That weekend, he ended up tossing whatever detritus he found in his pockets onto his dresser before throwing his pants in the hamper.
When he started to accumulate a noticeable stack, he had swept them off the dresser and into a shoe box he had intended to throw away.
When James began developing feelings for Leon, the shoe box continued filling up, albeit a little less accidentally.
Once they’d officially started dating, he’d moved the collection into a sturdier box he kept on top of his dresser.
His mom had noticed it in his room in December, when she’d helped him set up one of the twelve Christmas trees they displayed around the house.
“Well, whatever they are, I think that would be a really sweet surprise on Valentine’s Day,” his mom said. “You can still get him a gift and cook him a nice meal, but I bet seeing all that proof of how much you love him would mean a lot.”
James paused with his hand on the lid of what he was pretty sure was the third and final box. “I don’t…know about that.”
He tried to open the box, but his mom stopped him. “You don’t know if he’d like it?”
“I don’t know if I love him,” James said. At his mom’s very loud scoff, he sighed. “And even if I do, I don’t know if he loves me back, and that seems like a pretty intense surprise to spring on someone if I’m that unsure.”
At his mom’s stern look, he turned back to the box and gently moved her hand aside so he could open it. It was indeed the box he was looking for, full of candles, jars for candy, and decorative wall hangings.
“James…”
“Mom, I don’t think–”
“James Ryan Bigley, don’t you dare say that you don’t think you love that boy. It is practically leaking out of both of you. I had to scrub it off the kitchen floor when he left.”
James screwed up his face and glanced back at his mom. “Ew, what–”
“It was leaking right out of his eyeballs onto you, and the way you kept touching his hand and leg all throughout lunch, I’m surprised your hand didn’t slip on it,” she continued.
“Mom, what are you even saying!”
“I don’t want to hear any more nonsense,” she said, stooping over to pick up the, thankfully, lightweight first box they’d come across.
James mouthed the word “nonsense” to himself as he stacked the box of baskets on top of the heavy box in his hands and followed after her.
“Okay, so just to be clear, I’m not allowed to say that I’m not sure if I love my boyfriend?”
“Nope,” she said, as she shuffled past the Fourth of July throw pillows for the chairs on their front porch.
“Okay…and I’m also not allowed to say that, even if I do love him, I’m not sure if he loves me back?”
As his mom charged on ahead, she brushed past the Arbor Day fake tree, and it tipped precariously on the box it was resting on. Thank god, it didn’t fall. Neither of them had hands to catch it, and he didn’t trust the floor to hold up to a twenty-pound pot falling on it.
“Your anxiety about him returning your feelings is slightly more acceptable, but still nonsense, so I don’t want to hear it,” she said.
James followed his mom down the ladder and to the living room, where she dropped her box on the couch with a huff.
That rubber band ball of tension and anxiety in his stomach tightened, and he placed his boxes on the coffee table so he could crack his knuckles.
Leon wasn’t there to make fun of him for it, so he did it once on each hand and then started again.
His mom watched him, her expression making her look more like his sometimes-annoying roommate, not his mother.
His mother coddled and soothed him, while his roommate poked fun at him when he did something dumb, and sometimes pushed him when he needed it.
Right now, he didn’t really want to be pushed, though.
“Mom, I’m being serious. I don’t know how I feel, and I don’t really know what to do.”
Her face softened, and suddenly, she was his mom again.
“Okay, honey, I can be serious. Just because I don’t believe your anxiety is warranted doesn’t mean it’s invalid, so let’s hear it. What’s going on?”
Unfortunately, now that he’d been given the microphone, he didn’t really know what to say.
“You’re afraid,” she said, and it wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway. “That it’s too soon?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe that there is such a thing. I knew I loved Linda within the first two months, and that’s when I told her, too.”
Huh…that was news to James. “Oh, wow, Mom. That’s amazing. Did she say it back?”
She smiled peaceably and shook her head. “No, not right away. It took her a little while longer, but by Christmas, we were both saying it to each other.”
That meant that there had been around a month's delay between his mom saying it and Linda saying it back.
“Did you…feel insecure while you waited?”
She broke eye contact, but her brow furrowed in thought, not in stress, as she turned to open up her box on the couch. “No, not really, because I knew exactly how I felt, and nothing was going to change that.”
James mulled this over as he began unpacking his two boxes onto the coffee table, with some items spilling over onto the floor.
They had a lot more decorations than James had remembered, and it wasn’t until he glanced up to see his mom pulling items out of a shopping bag that he realized his mom had added to their collection.
He watched her pull out throw cushions and a blanket before asking, “What about Howard?”