Chapter 12 #2
“Oh, I get it,” Kekoa said. “Mom always just went with the ‘I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’ jokes, which got old by the time I was a teenager.
Sometimes it felt like there was a huge chunk of her life that I wasn’t able to be a part of, which sucked.
The stories she did tell were always entertaining, but even then I felt like there were pieces missing, like she was redacting sections as she told it. ”
“The curse of being part of a military family,” I said.
“My dad has a bunch he can’t share either, and you’re right, there are times when it does suck.
I thought when I got older the whole 'I can’t talk about it' line would change, but there are times when Dad and Mr. Pepsi will be talking about something and I’ll walk in and the whole conversation will just shift directions, leaving me to wonder what I missed.
It’s hard when I share everything with him. ”
“Everything?”
“I don’t get into all the sordid details, but he’s the one I go to for advice, and whenever anything big happens in my life, like meeting you, he’s the first one I call.”
“I can see where that can make it hard, knowing there are things he can’t share even if he wanted to, though I suppose that all parents keep secrets from their kids, even when they’re grown.”
“True. I just wish it didn’t have to be that way.”
“Or you could think of it as a blessing,” they said. “I always thought my parents were cooler than superheroes. I wouldn’t have wanted to learn something about one of them that changed my opinion, even as an adult.”
The way they said it, especially the part about being superheroes, took me back to my childhood and the way I’d firmly believed there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do.
Maybe they were right. Maybe there was no harm in not knowing.
Maybe there were even things my folks couldn’t tell each other.
I’d never even considered that. Things heard couldn’t be unheard, so until someone invented a form of brain bleach that didn’t kill off brain cells, maybe it was time to curb my incessant curiosity and busy myself with decorations and my mates.
“Any thoughts on what we should pick up for dinner?” Kekoa asked once we’d paid for our purchases and loaded the Jeep.
“The Panglao Pub”
“Panglao, that’s a food, right? I know I’ve heard that word before.”
“It means crustation,” I explained. “Which is exactly what we’re going to pick up, a whole heaping roasting pan filled with steamed, boiled, and broiled crustaceans that we can sit and pig out on when Lani gets home.”
“Yum!”
“Exactly,” I said. “Fortunately, it’s on the way home.”
We had to drive past the very club Aunty Ina had mentioned during our conversation.
What was left was a charred pile of beams and concrete that scarcely resembled the vibrant place it had once been.
Yellow caution tape blocked off the lot and the building next door, which looked to have experienced external charring and damage to the windows on the side closest to the club.
I wondered if the heat from the blaze had shattered them.
Our Panglao special was waiting when we arrived, and judging from the number of cars in the parking lot and the line of people waiting to place their orders, it was a good thing we’d called ours in, or we’d have had a hell of a wait and not nearly enough time to pull off the surprise we had in store for Lani.
At the house, we took the divide and conquer approach, with me getting things put away in the kitchen while they sorted out the decorations after positioning the plants we’d picked up.
The bay windows were the perfect spot for the hanging ones, while the standing ones were ideal brackets for the entertainment center.
They truly breathed new life into the space.
If it wasn’t for that infernal couch, I’d have been looking forward to spending time hanging out in there.
We’d purchased clear hooks that could easily be stuck to the walls and moved or removed with ease.
Kekoa’s idea, not mine. I’d had a box of small nails in my hand when they suggested we use something less destructive.
Less permanent too. The stuff that kept the hooks from falling off reminded me of the blue tacky goo my siblings and I had used to hang our posters back when we still lived in military housing.
I just hoped it worked better than the old stuff did; after a while the posters had wound up sagging and rolling down the walls at the most inappropriate times, like the middle of a rushed make-out session.
A Metallica poster had landed on my then boyfriend’s head, and apparently laughing was not the proper response.
Who knew? Needless to say, he wasn’t my boyfriend for very long after that.
Now I had a mate who happily whistled as they stood on a chair and positioned the hooks first, then took stock of the light we’d purchased, including several strands of SpongeBob ones.
“What are you doing?” I asked as they rearranged them a second time.
“Putting them in order to make it easier for you to hand them to me,” they said. “We don’t have a lot of time left before Lani gets home. There’s no way we can get it all done tonight.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I think we can get this room done before he arrives,” Kekoa said. “We can stash the rest of the decorations in your workshop and surprise him a second time by decorating the bedroom tomorrow.”
“I like that,” I said. “I think Lani will too. He loves surprises as long as he doesn’t have to organize them.”
“I can only imagine.”
It truly took a team effort to position each strand of lights and wrap the planters containing the elephant ears in garland, but working with them, I wasn’t hit with the pangs of melancholy I’d been nailed with the last time I tried to decorate.
Instead, I found myself singing along with them and the carols that spilled from the smart speaker, laughing at some of the funny Christmas stories shared on the music channel we were listening to as we brought our aquatic holiday theme to life.
With the way they’d layered the lights and alternated between twinkling and non-twinkling, the walls shimmered with teal and aqua, answering the question of why they’d dug so hard for those colors while passing on the more traditional ones.
They’d slipped in a few strings of silver lights too, just three, but they truly did enhance the feel in the room as they shimmered.
Twice I cracked my shin on the wooden frame of the couch and toyed with the idea of dragging it out to the curb after the second time.
The three of us couldn’t even sit on it comfortably.
The only thing that stopped me was not having anything to put in its place or a reasonable excuse for not letting Lani do it when he threatened to evict it months ago.
And speaking of Lani, his headlights illuminated the window, and I caught Kekoa’s hand and hauled them close, excited to see our mate’s face when he saw how we’d spent our day.