“Anything I should look forward to?”
“Sure. We can play spot the inbred when we go into town,” Aberlour replied.
Oliver turned to him with a smirk.
“Found one,” he said, pointing at Aberlour.
“I’ll fuck you up, Darling!” Aberlour warned with a playful growl.
“Bring it, Dumber!”
Aberlour sprang over the kitchen island. Oliver was halfway across the living room by then, giggling as he turned to face Aberlour, wide-eyed and grinning.
They were off then. Like puppies chasing each other in a playpen, bumping into their littermates. Marcus yelled. JD clapped excitedly. Their shenanigans woke up Carlos, who’d been napping. Ghost chuckled silently as he watched from the couch, the grand winner of their tournament, holding the gargoyle of glory.
Aberlour finally caught Oli. He shoved him right out the front door of his house. The asshole tucked and rolled right out of the shove, laughing, his brow sweaty, his smile taunting.
Aberlour snickered, shutting the front door in his face for argument’s sake, but it was the end of the game, and they both knew it.
Oli came through the door a few seconds later. Aberlour handed him his discarded beer and they both sat down on the couch, grinning like idiots.
“So, what’d we miss?” Carlos asked, yawning as he stretched and shook himself awake.
“Nothing important,” Oliver replied, waving towards the gargoyle in Ghost’s lap.
“Congrats, dude!” Carlos smiled and gave Ghost two thumbs up.
Ghost petted it lovingly and smirked up at Oliver as Marcus whined that Ghost must have been cheating.
The little statue—which one of them had found somewhere in their world travels—had become their official trophy. It never stayed in the same hands for very long. They were always competing with each other. Usually it involved video games, but there was no real limit to how ridiculous their contests could get. Last year, Carlos had won it from Marcus in a “longest fart” competition. Oliver had refused to participate in that one. Aberlour had been laughing too hard to even try.
The gargoyle was an ugly little thing. Cheaply made and prickly to hold. It had been cast in rough concrete that made holding it in your hands uncomfortable unless you were wearing gloves. It didn’t matter, though. It was the ultimate prize. The unofficial mascot of Team Specter.
Aberlour fucking loved that thing.
Another fight broke out as Marcus argued the merits of winning at video games. Carlos proposed winning it back in a whiniest bitch contest, which greatly offended Marcus. JD nearly pissed himself laughing as Marcus shoved his finger in Carlos’ face and accidentally poked him in the eye.
Oliver merely shook his head, smiling at their idiocy, but when he turned, finding Aberlour gazing at him fondly, his smile grew into something else. Something even more familiar. A heartbreaking little smile that made Abe think of home, always.
They said nothing else about Abe’s parents, or Christmas, but they both knew the plan was set.
They’d be going to Aberlour’s for Christmas.
Chapter 4
November 2012
They said if you wanted to make God laugh, then all you had to do was tell him your plan. Aberlour had a feeling God was pissing himself with laughter now. The old adage had been proven, in a way that blindsided him.
They never made it to West Virginia for Christmas. Aberlour’s parents died in November, two weeks before Thanksgiving.
The rocking chair was empty. It sat all alone on a worn and faded braided rug. The same rug his mother had made from old scraps of fabric to stop his father from ruining her hardwood floors. It was his father’s rocking chair, but it now sat empty in the corner of the room. It was odd how everything changed, and yet so much stood still. His parent’s house was the same as it had always been. A simple colonial style house, sitting on a hill, overlooking the valley below. It sat, like all the other nearby houses did, on the edge of the woods where he’d grown up. Everywhere Aberlour looked—he found them waiting. Pieces of his parents lingering about. From the wilted flowers on the coffee table—a disgrace to his mother’s green thumb—to the empty crystal bowl she’d usually filled with salted caramels. Flowers and caramels. She’d had simple needs, his mother. Easily pleased. Easily loved. Together, his parents had kept a simple house, sitting on a simple hill, and made it into a formidable home, and now all that was gone.
Because a simple house is a home, but an empty one is just a memory.
“What’re you gonna do with all this stuff?” Marcus asked, his voice soft with understanding.
Aberlour shrugged.
