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 verynice 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 dresserbefore 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.
