I tighten my hand around her, giving her all the backing and solid support.
“Brandon and I have been dating.”
I think we both assumed we’d be met with yelling, but I think the silence is worse.
“Before you two say anything, know that I love you both. But these past two years have been hell for me. From losing Liam, and essentially losing you two because you chose to bury yourself in work rather than spend time here—withme and I was left to swim in a storm with no lifejacket. But one day, he came to the TapHouse and saw me. He saw what you two were ignoring. He saw the sad, he saw me fighting for joy, he saw himself, and over the last six months, I fell head over heels for him,” she tells her parents with a strained voice.
“Are we supposed to be happy for you? Support you?” her dad asks.
“Yes. At least that’s what Mom said when I told her I was seeing someone,” Angie challenges her dad who whips around to face her mom before turning his stare on us again.
“No,” he says, like it’s a final statement, and a thick silence hangs in the air.
“Greg,” Susan, Angie’s Mom, starts.
“No,” he says again.
She places a hand on his arm, and they share a look that only married couples seem to understand before she turns to us. “Your parents were our best friends, Brandon. And as a parent, losing a child is hard. But having your child date someone who’s connected to that loss is even harder. So you have to understand that seeing you two?—”
“You cannot be accepting of this,” her dad says exasperatedly, cutting Susan off.
“What is the other alternative? Huh? We forbade her from dating him and lose her regardless? Greg, we’ve already lost one child,” Susan’s voice cracks at the end.
His mouth opens and shuts like a fish out of water. “Well, while she’s still in school, living under our roof, she will not date him.”
Angie huffs out a sarcastic laugh. “I’m so glad you pay attention, Dad. Because I already finished school.”
“Well, you’re not seeing him while you’re living here. So unless you found another place to live…”
Angie and her mom suck in a breath. We knew this was a possibility, part of the worst-case scenario, but to know that her dad is firm has to break her heart.
“She can stay with me,” I speak up, directing their attention to me.
Her head whips in his direction, and I don’t miss the tears in her eyes when she turns back to me. I nod, giving her a soft smile. While this speeds up our timeline of forever, I’m not going to let them throw her out on the street.
She turns back to face her parents, the people she just got on solid ground with, and squares her shoulders. “I’ll be out of your hair in thirty minutes.”
There are moments when you feel like you’re floating outside of your body while in a crowded room, where you feel like every sound is muffled—that’s this moment. The walk up to Angie’s room is thick with loss, and when we enter, she acts on autopilot, moving to her closet. If we were under different circumstances, I’d make a joke about finally being in her room. And as I watch the girl I love begin to pack up her life, it hits me that for the first time in months, I’m back in the presence of the girl I met over the summer. Snapping out of it, I hurry over to her dresser and shovel out the clothes and toss them into her open suitcases. The sooner I get her out of here, the better.
Twenty minutes later, all of her clothes and shoes are shoved into three suitcases and two duffel bags. Angie looks around her room, and I notice her gaze snag on a dot of paint on the ceiling.
“I was in high school when I decided it was time to paint my room,” she begins, still looking at that dot with tears filling her eyes and a slight quiver on her bottom lip. “Icouldn’t drive because I was only fourteen. So during summer break, Liam took me to the paint store, and he was so gobsmacked by my choice in paint color. He tried to talk me out of it, but I was firm in what I wanted. I guess when you’re labeled the forgotten child, you do everything to shout that you matter. The paint was my version of doing that.”
I look down at her. Tears track down her face as she walks down memory lane. I take my hands out of my pockets and wrap my arms around her shoulders, holding her to me and giving her any sort of comfort.
“He got on the ladder after I said I couldn’t handle painting that high up. Wasn’t too big on heights back then, I’m still not actually. And I was in the middle of painting by the door when I heard ‘oops’ and looked over to see him staring at that spot. Liam said he would fix it before Mom even noticed. But then he went back to school, got back together with Kamryn, and never fixed his paint job.”
Her tears have soaked through my shirt as I kiss the top of her head. “Maybe he kept meaning to do it.”
She snorts and wraps her arms tighter around my waist. “My brother was a lot of things, but reliable and keeping to his word was not one of them.”
Those words hang and I realize how bad a brother he was to her. Not keeping his word, deciding that not being here was better than facing his problems, and not taking into consideration Angie’s dreams. And in a non-brotherly way, I silently promise to keep my word.
“Do you have everything?” I ask and press another kiss on the top of her head because it’s time for us to leave.
“Yeah,” she sighs, “I am going to miss my piano though.”
“We’ll get you a new one,” I say offhandedly.
