Page 82 of Worth the Fight

With the next exhale and a gentle push, the door swings wide, and the smell of fresh paint greets us. When she doesn’t move, I squeeze her hip, gesturing her forward.

She steps over the threshold, and the old floors creak just like they always have, but they look different now. The grayed dusty wood is now buffed and stained. The entire house is a mix of old and new, a mix of who we were then and who we could be in the future. Old and worn, yet strong. She moves into the front hall and pauses, slowly spinning around as her head tilts back.

“It was a drop-down ceiling,” I tell her, following her into the house and closing the door behind me. “Didn’t realize how high they were until we knocked them out.”

She looks at me briefly, and her eyes are flushed with tears. She then moves into the kitchen. With the two main walls taken down, it's an open concept now, which I hope she likes. She rests a palm on the marble island that separates the cooking area from the seating area, sliding her fingertips along the edge as she moves around it.

“I haven’t picked out a kitchen table yet,” I point out, gesturing to the empty spot in front of the bay window. “I’d like something big, something I could maybe host my family with someday.” Or big enough for all the kids that we have, hope to have, someday.

She stands in front of the fridge, the plastic that still wraps it crinkling under her touch.

“It’s one of those fancy ones that can make three different kinds of ice.” I know she prefers smaller crushed ice for her ice water, but she likes thicker cubes for her iced coffee.

This one even has a storage for large almost-lacrosse-ball-sized ice orbs, and I don't know what she would use them for, but I thought she might like it. I could see her using them for fancy lemonade or iced tea on summer nights.

I reach over, flicking on the overhead light to illuminate the room, and her eyes dart up to the chandelier. It isn’t something I would have ever picked out myself. It’s a mix of wood and metal, in the shape of a drum, and I was surprised how good it looked once we hung it up. Just like the rest of the house, it’s a mix of old and new, and it looks like it belongs there. “Harper picked that out. I laughed at first when she showed it to me, but I have to admit, it looks good here.”

She nods once, then looks over at me, and her gaze falls past my shoulder, toward the room that was once a small parlor that led into the den. She rushes past me, her speed picked up, and I know what she's focused on.

I suck in a breath, watching as she bypasses the now living room and goes to stand in front of two dark oak French doors. The glass is frosted, but not all the way. You’d have privacy but still be able to see movement behind the doors and the sunlight shining through in the early morning.

Her hands reach out, taking both knobs in each, and I can hear her shaky exhale as she turns the knobs, pushing the doors open to reveal the room.

The room is designed with her and only her in mind.

She moves to stand at the center, her arms wrapped across her stomach, and I approach her cautiously, carefully choosing the next few words, because I know they will matter. I get close enough to her that I can smell the scent of her perfume, and the silky strands that stick out from her bun tickle my nose when I breathe in. “When I started to remodel the house, it was first a project to help with my sobriety. I needed something to focus my energy on, my restlessness. I had left you that first voicemail the day I convinced my brothers to help me with this place. I told them that I wanted a place of my own. I wanted somewhere Ivy could spend her time that wasn’t always at the main house with my parents.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. Her gaze is locked on the long barre that stretches the length of one wall and the oversized windows that line the entire wall as well.

“There were times I wondered if you’d ever answer my phone call. And I had made peace with the fact that maybe you never would, and having this house, knowing I could live out the rest of my years here with the memories of us to keep me warm? That was enough to keep me going through those early months.”

Some nights, I imagined a life where I grew old, alone. Ivy will grow up and eventually move away, and it’d be just me and this old house. I could sit on a rocking chair on the front porch and sip my coffee, watch the sunrise each morning, and recount all the memories made on this property.

Falling in love with Mags. Hiding out here as teenagers. Holding her on the front step when her grandpa died. Lying with her in the fields as we watched the clouds pass. Her shrieks of laughter carried across the grass.

Soon, Ivy will move out here with me, and I’ll get to watch her learn to run all over the floors in the house. I’ll teach her to play ball in the same fields Mags and I played. Maybe I’d hold her on the front step when some asshole kid breaks her heart for the first time.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this sooner, Mags. It wasn’t ever my intention to keep this from you. But when it started, I had no idea if I’d ever hear from you again, let alone get to a place where we are now. And I think…” I trail off, tilting my head back and looking up at the ceiling tiles. This is the only room in the house where I had custom tiles installed. I didn’t plan it, initially, but when I saw these white ones that had this diamond floral pattern, it reminded me of something Mags would have danced under while in Paris.

I had hoped that maybe she’d be here in the future, practicing in this room, and when she looked upward, it’d make her smile. “I think if I told you I was remodeling our house, I was mostly worried about two things. For one, I was worried you wouldn’t care, that it wouldn’t make a difference to you, and that all the memories we have here were for naught. My other fear, which surpassed any other thought, was that I was worried it’d make you homesick. I was worried you’d sacrifice your future, your career, out of guilt, or nostalgia, or something.”

I hear her sniffle once, and I reach to grasp her shoulders, twisting her to face me. Hot, fresh tears are falling, staining her cheeks, and I pull her to me, pressing her face to my chest.

“Can I tell you my vision for this room?”

She nods against my chest, pulling back, but not before she uses the fabric of my sweatshirt to swipe her face dry.

Once she’s done, I turn to the corner, where a rickety lawn chair sits. “I imagined this as your space, your private room. You could dance in here, read, just have quiet time if you needed.” I sit on the old lawn chair in the corner. “I imagined a big oversized comfortable chair right here. You could sit on it with a blanket and a cup of coffee, or I could sit on it and watch you stretch and dance.” She finally cracks a smile at that, and my heart sings.

I stand, the lawn chair folding and collapsing under my abrupt movement. “We could put anything you want on this wall. Bookshelves, pictures of Paris, your family, I’ll buy you a fancy painting, whatever you want. Or we could line it with mirrors and add specialty lighting. And over here…” I move to the opposite corner, but before I can show her that it would be the perfect spot for a plant, she gasps, rushing over to the barre to run her hand over the end of it.

The L + M that I carved in the outside railing eleven summers ago was still visible. Most of the railings were rotted, but not that one. I was able to salvage it, sand it down, and brush a few layers of poly over the letters to solidify them forever. The railing became the perfect size and length for her barre.

I installed that barre with so much hope flooding my chest. I installed it before we saw each other that day at the rehab center. She was still mad at me, and we were still rocky. I held so much goddamn hope that one day I'd have her back, and one day she would see it. Those initials began to serve almost as inspiration—no, motivation. Maybe to not give up on trying, to not give up on us.

She runs her hand over the letters, just like she ran her thumb over them that day when they were first fresh. “I wanted to leave it as exposed as possible. But I was worried that if I didn't cover it with something, the letters would get worn away.” Once Ivy starts walking more, it would be the perfect railing for her to hold on to as she practices her steps. I was worried what her little hands would do if curiosity got the best of her, and she started to wonder what the L + M meant. It kept me up at night thinking of her little fingers picking away the letters.

If anything happened to that carving, it might have broken me more than anything else I’ve experienced.