Page 8 of Between Brothers

We hugged quickly and I smiled, “I’ll see you when I see you,” I agreed and she let me go. I stepped aside to let a couple of our regulars in the door and ducked out past them as Melody greeted them and led them to a table with a couple of menus she snatched from beside the register. I stood outside watching for a minute and had to smile. She fit seamlessly into the diner and had become a good friend, for all that I didn’t see her too much outside of work.

I got into my tired, old Volkswagen Golf and started it up. I carefully drove myself home realizing about half way there just how tired I really was. I should have gotten a lift, but then again, I really didn’t want to accept a lift from the night cook. Not that there was anything wrong with him. I just knew that it would have led to small talk, and I just was plain out of any ability to deal with people anymore. At least until after I showered and slept, and not necessarily in that particular order, either.

I pulled into the long driveway and went right past the house around back, parking alongside my studio my dad had built. It was a one and a half story, converted two car garage painted yellow with white trim, just like our house. It had a loft with a bed in it for when I worked late nights and was closer than the walk to the house. I’d rather climb the seven rungs of ladder or so than the twenty steps up to the second floor and my real bedroom.

I dragged butt out of my car and went to the studio’s door, unlocking it and letting myself in. I loved it in here. It was full of windows and light. I shut and locked the door behind me and I nearly dropped my keys and purse right there on the floor, I was so tired. However, my mother never would have done that no matter how tired she was after a shift, so I didn’t either. I shuffled my aching feet the several feet to my left and hung the purse that’d been stashed under the seat of my car neatly on the coatrack. I pulled my ID and tips from my pockets and stuffed them unceremoniously in the open zippered top of the small black bag as my one concession of wanting to just not care and be messy.

The keys went on the small hook set into a board by the coat rack, well out of the reach of any of the panes of glass set into the door to the outside. Straight ahead of me was a closed, white paneled door that led into the bathroom my dad had put in here for my mom.

This had been her studio for painting long before it’d ever been mine for stained glass. She’d died of breast cancer when I was fifteen, it’d been just dad and me ever since. When I had said I was ready to use the studio for my passion, my dad had spent every evening and weekend for over a month redoing the interior of this place so it fit me, insisting that mom would have wanted it that way. I knew he was right, still, it would have been nice to keep some of her in here.

I flipped on the bathroom’s light switch and half thought about showering or drawing a bath, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I barely had it in me to drag a toothbrush across my teeth before hauling myself up out of my hunch over the white porcelain pedestal sink. I stared at myself in the oval mirror on the wall and was almost disappointed to see I didn’t look at all how I felt.

I felt like I should have deep, dark, circles under my eyes but nope. Instead my mother’s face, only younger than I remembered it, stared back at me. I pulled the elastic holding the end of my braid together off and set it by the tap handle at the top of the sink. I unwound the thick, dark strands from around each other until I was left with a foaming wavy mass framing my face. My unremarkable brown eyes bounced over my lightly tanned face, picking out slight imperfections and flaws every which way. I sighed and shook my head, closing my eyes for a moment before turning back to the door. I only opened them to see where I was going and once I knew I was well clear of my reflection.

I made beautiful things with glass, but I wasn’t what anyone would consider beautiful myself… well, except for my dad, but I was pretty sure he was biased. I kicked out of my shoes at the bottom of the wood ladder set into the wall by the bathroom door and relished the cool, polished cement floor under my sock covered feet.

Oh god, that felt so good against hot, sore feet. I couldn’t even begin to tell you. The only thing that felt better was the lovely stretch the round rungs of the ladder pressing into my arches gave them. It felt so good, I simply stood on the bottom rung and bounced, getting in a deep stretch that was to die for.

I climbed the rest of the way up into the loft above my bathroom that had just enough headroom for me to stand up straight and not have to worry about cracking my head on a ceiling beam. There was just enough room up here for a quaint bedroom setup. I had a queen sized mattress and box spring on the floor, which I had up against the spindled railing overlooking the studio and next to it, I had an old apple crate turned on its side for a nightstand. A corner desk and chair were in the one corner that had just enough to have walls on both sides. The entire rest of the one wall opposite the railing was taken up by paned windows and gauzy curtains, facing into tall, thick, lilac bushes that separated our yard from the next door neighbors.

I crawled out of my pants and just kept on my shirt and panties before crawling into bed. I reached for the bedside apple crate and pulled down the medicine bottle, taking out one of the anti-depressants inside and popping it onto the very center of my tongue. I dragged down the bottle of water I kept beside it and took three giant swigs to make sure I’d washed it down all of the way. As soon as I set it back down, I keeled over; dragging the blankets up over me. I gently pulled the carefully crafted paper orchid from my finger and set it on the edge of the crate so I could stare at it. All of the rest of Blue’s creations hung from fishing line, dangling from the beams above my bed so all I had to do was turn onto my back and stare up at them.

Every flower and bird I could imagine hung above me. One for every visit he’d made to the diner, whether he and Cell sat in my section or not. I loved them all, so very much, and still wondered how he had ever learned to fold paper so delicately or beautifully. I was too shy to ask, but it was one of the things I looked forward to the most about going to work. A few had come here and there in the beginning when they stopped showing up to my shift, but then nothing until they’d been there last night.

Doesn’t mean he didn’t make them for you, it might just mean the night waitress never passed them on…I told myself for the thousandth time.

I closed my eyes and just breathed, Blue’s words echoing back to me…

I see you.

I believed him. I also believed that he deserved much better than me with my burden of sadness and low self-esteem. I was damaged goods and no man wanted any part of that. Especially not one as hot as Blue. I sighed and took one last look at the paper creations suspended above me before I closed my eyes for the last time, cuddling down into my bed. I pulled the blankets over my head so I was swallowed by the dark and wished so much that I were a whole person. Normal, like everyone else, but that was likely an impossible goal to reach, even with the medication.

God, I hated being depressed.

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