52. THE ONE WITH THE EMPTY HANGER
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
THE ONE WITH THE EMPTY HANGER
WestParkerComedy: Traverse City, let’s do this thing one more time. My mom’s gonna be there though, so make sure you tell her what a good boy I’ve been
HexedHeroine: Prettyyyy sure she knows better than to believe anyone who says that!
Comment reply: you say that like you know her?
I follow West to the parking lot behind the theater after we grab my bags out of the camper one last time.
We stop behind an old Bronco in mint condition.
The dark blue paint is shiny, like it’d been washed today, and there’s probably not a single scratch on the whole thing.
I don’t know anything about cars, but I can imagine this one’s worth a pretty penny.
West pops the back open, tossing our bags inside.
He pulls a set of keys out of his pocket and opens the passenger door for me first. I toss my backpack on the floorboard and hop in before West closes the door. The inside of the Bronco is just as clean as the outside.
West gets in and puts his phone on the dash, turning the key in the ignition.
I buckle my seatbelt and watch as he looks around, hands on the steering wheel.
He flexes his fingers and takes a breath before putting his seatbelt on too.
He glances over at me, hands resting in his lap.
“This was Micah’s. He and my dad rebuilt it together.
” The engine hums smoothly, warming up quicker than I would have expected for its age.
“He was driving my car the night of the accident.” West stares out the windshield.
“This is the first time I’ve been inside it since he died. ”
West keeps allowing me to be the person he shares these memories with, and it makes me feel like I’m important enough to let in, but I’m sure it’s easier to talk about Micah with someone who didn’t know him.
It’s not possible to rid West of his dark memories, but I can hopefully help them become a little less painful. “What kind of music did Micah like to listen to?” I ask, leaning forward to grab West’s phone off the dashboard.
He doesn’t stop me as I open it up, knowing the password within twenty-four hours of meeting him. West’s never once given me the feeling that he’s trying to hide anything from me.
I connect his phone to the upgraded Bluetooth sound system, looking back to him when I’m done.
West stares, all the hard edges of his face softening when our eyes meet. “There’s a Micah playlist on my Spotify,” he says.
It makes me smile to find it in his pinned playlists. He might not have been openly talking about his brother, but he hadn’t stopped spending time with him in the ways he could.
The first song to come on is an early 2000s emo throwback. I scrunch my nose and nod in approval. “Oh, so he has better taste in music than you… Got it.” I wink at West, who gently flicks me on the nose as I lean in to turn the volume up.
I lose track of how many songs we get through, but each one is better than the last. Neither of us can sing, and Frankie would be in her own version of hell, but that doesn’t stop us.
I know West’s parents raised them on good music by the varieties in the playlist. We go from 2000s alternative to 90s hip-hop, landing on some old classic rock in between.
The sound is crisp and clear, a small bump in the bass that doesn’t rattle the windows, but West still turns it down as we pull onto a winding road that leads to a small community of modest cabins sitting around a small lake.
The homes are spaced out enough not to be on top of each other, with long driveways I’d hate to drag a trashcan down. West pulls into the last one on the dead-end street, and I catch the reflection of the moon dancing on top of the water’s surface behind the cabin.
West parks on the side near a door we can easily enter through without having to haul our bags too far. He unbuckles and before I can do the same, he leans over and surprises me with a soft kiss. It ends too soon, my eyelashes fluttering open as I exhale through my lips once his are gone.
“Thank you,” he says, eyes lingering on mine. When he looks away and gets out of the car, I miss the intensity behind his stare.
He opens my door and grabs my backpack, tossing it over his shoulder, and hands me the keys. “I’ll get our bags if you’ll unlock the door. It’s the Michigan M key.”
I slide out of the seat and make sure I don’t slam the door behind me.
The cabin looks like something you’d see in the mountains, with dark wood and a porch wrapping around the front and disappearing on the other side of the house.
I find the light switch inside the entryway easily as West rolls my bag into the living room and I take a look around.
The dark wood on the exterior continues inside, but everything is different than I thought it would look.
I was expecting bears and plaid, with old furniture that would have stories to tell if it could talk.
West flips on some more lights, and the whole space comes into view. The cabin has definitely been remodeled over the last few years. The kitchen appliances are brand new, and the fireplace looks like it’s barely been used.
“My great-grandparents bought this land in the 60s, and then my grandparents finally built something in the early 80s. I practically lived here during the summers.” West tosses his bag on the couch—it looks like a fluffy storm cloud, and I’m instantly ready to sprawl out on it.
“My mom and her older sister remodeled it a few years ago.” He leans against the back of the couch, crossing his arms over his chest as he looks around.
I’m not sure what West’s parents do, but by the looks of the place, they can’t be doing too bad! It’s not a mansion by any means, but the finishes aren’t the cheap ones from Hobby Lobby. They kept the natural wood tones and complimented them with pops of white to brighten the place up.
“This was the party spot, wasn’t it?” I ask, picturing it perfectly.
West chuckles, pulling his beanie off and running a hand through his hair. He tosses it on top of his bag. “You know it.”
Slipping my coat off, West takes it from me to hang up in a closet by the front door with his. “Your family looks huge.” I wander around the living room. Pictures of multiple different families hang on the walls, all with what looks to be a few generations each.
“This belongs to my mom’s side of the family.
” Joining me in the living room, West tosses a couple logs in the gorgeous stone fireplace, filling the cracks with kindling from a bucket on the ledge he sits on.
“She has two sisters and a brother, and between them there are nine cousins. Those cousins have about…” He pauses, closing one eye while he does some math.
“Twelve kids.” He doesn’t sound too confident, meaning there are probably more than that.
“My dad has two brothers with three kids each, and they’ve got probably another ten kids on that side. ”
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be part of a big family. I don’t have a lot of fond memories of my mom, and the ones I do have are usually because Grams was there to hold her together. When Grams died, I lost the only person who was blood to me that I had left to care about.
Frankie’s family took me in as their own, and I’ll be forever grateful for them and the love they showed me, but it was just us and her parents, mostly.
She was a surprise baby fourteen years after their second son, and her brothers were in college already by the time Frankie and I met.
“They won’t all be at Thanksgiving, will they?
” I hadn’t planned on meeting the entire family tree when I asked to stay.
West laughs as the fire takes off slowly, thick smoke billowing up the chute as it spreads. “No, you’re safe from a family reunion this time. A lot live out of state now, but we’ll still probably have about thirty people over throughout the day.”
There’s a picture of teenage West and his parents with the lake in the background. West’s arm is thrown over the shoulders of a boy a few inches shorter than him. It’s the first picture I’ve seen of Micah.
He has his mom’s dark hair but shares the same eyes as West and their father. Everyone’s smiling, their cheeks pink from what I’m assuming was a day in the sun. “Do you want kids?” I blurt, freezing in place.
Why the fuck would you ask that, you big, dumb idiot?
West’s voice is full of surprise, but he looks nervous when he answers. “Uhhh, yeah. Yeah, I do.” He nods at me, swallowing before he returns the question. “What about you?”
I’ve had this conversation once before with a man very different from West. He’d told me he’d love to have kids one day… When the right woman came around.
We’d been dating for three years at that point. My dumbass stayed with him for another two.
I’d never known if I wanted kids, finding myself worried I’d fuck one up like my mother did. Even though I’ve done everything in my life to prove I’m not like her, I still hold onto this thread of worry that I’m only one bad decision away from becoming her.
“I think so,” I tell him, while also holding onto the knowledge that I’m not getting any younger and statistically speaking, there’s a clock ticking inside my uterus with each passing day.
West’s shoulders relax some, and I know a joke’s coming by the way he smiles. It lightens his eyes and makes one dimple stand out. “What are you? Five foot seven? Five foot eight? We might have a chance at D1 athletes.”
It’s crazy his comment doesn’t make my stomach roll like it would have once. Instead, I’m trying to picture what our kids would look like.
Would they get West’s in between blond and brown or my natural dark hair? His blue or my green eyes?
I shoot him an apologetic smile. “Not if they get my phobia of balls flying towards faces at high speed.”
It’s not often I don’t think before speaking, and this time it sets West up for the comeback of a lifetime.
He lets out this deep, gratifying sigh. “But Joey baby, I’ve seen you take balls to the face plenty of times.”
I walked right into that one, and it still takes me by surprise. My jaw drops, and I gasp. “West!” Laughter follows, but he only chuckles with a smug smile.
“That one was too easy.” He bites his lip and watches me until I’m done laughing so hard I wipe tears from my face. “Come on, let me show you the rest of the house.”
There’s no shortage of bunk beds inside most of the rooms, and West points to a loft with a ladder West said Kell fell down and broke his wrist at fifteen. We end the tour in the master bedroom, its fluffy white comforter sinking around my backpack.
“So, for the video. I have an idea,” West says.
I raise my brow, apprehensive.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asks, stepping into my personal space. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he’s staring down his nose at me. “I’ve been trained by the best. If I can’t do it then I think that says more about my teacher than it does me.”
I shove him out of the room, and the laugh he lets loose on the other side has me grinning like a fool until I have to get serious and freshen up for our last shoot. It might be pushing midnight, but we can’t ignore this until later.
There is no later.
Just as I finish, my phone vibrates with a text.
West
Will you check and see if there’s an extra blanket in that closet?
I find the light switch hidden behind some hanging clothes in the dark walk-in, making it easier to thumb through hangers and check inside totes in the corner.
Me
No blankets, just lots of board games and some old clothes.
Turning off the light, my hand brushes against an unmistakable sleeve, making me pause. I gently pull it from the hanger, examining it.
“No way,” I mumble, a smile forming on my lips as my fingers slide down the white fabric.
When I return the hanger to the top rack, it’s empty.