Page 23 of A World Without You
“Down here by the stove because...it’s Thanksgiving!” Mom lets out a maniacal laugh, and I smile.
Somebody gets a bad burn every Thanksgiving.
“You’d think we never cook around here,” I remark, and Melanie quickly scoops me in her arms again. She cups my face as she pulls back from the hug. “Hanging in there?”
I let out a deep breath, smiling as I realize I’m already breathing better. The bitter tightness I’ve woken up with for the last several months is easing the further away I get from a life I shouldn’t have chosen.
“I’m happy to be here,” I answer.
“Good. We’ve missed you at Thanksgiving.”
“I know,” I murmur, then take a sip of coffee.
“For marrying such a family man, you certainly never got to see us much,” she remarks. It’s a loaded statement from the intel she’s received for years and years of my phone calls from the other side of the mountain range.
“Yeah, well, Graham liked his family better,” I admit, setting down the coffee on the counter.
“Such poor taste.” Melanie sighs, exasperated, then eyes me expectantly. “You aren’t going to mope around all day, are you?”
“Can I? I just got a divorce and forfeited everything in order to do so. I feel like that’s one hundred percent worthy of moping rights,” I say.
“Immediately, no.” Melanie has no sympathy. She’s been dealing with my “issues” with Graham since I first let myself realize them. “It’s your own fault you didn’t ask for the house or the property in the divorce. Hell, you could have taken half the dairy farm and become the queen of lactose. You could have really revamped a whole newGot Milk?campaign of sorts—you would have been good at that!”
I laugh. “No, my marketing days are over.”
“Says who?” She crosses her arms and looks me over.
“The last five years of my life. I have been applying for positions all over the area and am told the exact same thing: not enough recent experience. Hell, most people don’t even call me and swipe my résumé right into the trash bin, I’m sure.”
She groans. “Your wallowing is insufferable.”
I laugh as the sound of the doorbell echoes in the foyer and up the staircase followed by cheerful greetings between our parents and the Hollands.
“Hurry up. The Hollands are here, and I’ve been dying to see them!” Melanie says, turning down the hall and making her way down the stairs with a cheerful hello.
I unplug the curling iron, and leave it to cool on the counter, then take a picture of the socket with nothing plugged into it. Staring at my reflection, I note the burn on my cheek is deepening to the shade of red, but I choose not to care. Curling iron burns never hurt for long.
As I walk down the stairs to greet the Hollands, I realize I feel more like myself than I have in a long time. Maybe it’s the familiarity in the walls of my childhood home or the smell of cinnamon, butter, and thyme wafting from the kitchen, or maybe it’s the sound of Bennett’s voice as he crouches low to tell his daughter to say hello and tell everyone her name.
“I’m Josie,” she says. The “s” comes out with a lisp through her missing tooth.
“Oh, Olivia! It’s you! You look fantastic!” Shannon, the Mrs. of the Holland family, says, arms outstretched. Before I can say hello, I’m in her arms, with Clint hugging us as well.
“Holland group hug!” he says. Clint is one of the goofiest people I’ve ever met. He smells like pine and loves to shoutGod is good!at the most random moments. Meanwhile, Shannon smells like vanilla and laughs at everything, even if it’s not a joke. Wrapped in their arms feels like being wrapped in my childhood. They both smell exactly the same. They also greet me as if it hasn’t been years since I’ve seen them, and I didn’t go off on a five-year bender in a small town.
“It’s so good to see you guys!” I say.
Because it is. I’ve missed them. I may have screwed up the majority of my adulthood, but I wasn’t so bad as a kid, and they were my witnesses—my fans in the stands, my second parents.
When I’m finally free from their embrace, I spot Bennett, half-chatting, half-waiting to hug me. He looks so much older than he did the last time I saw him. He still has the same scowling-resting face he always had, but I know him well enough that it’s not his fault he looked like an angry kid all the time—it’s just how his face rests. But now he looks like a grumpy millennial exhausted by living through all nine once-in-a-lifetime world catastrophes.
But then he smiles, and the way it deepens his dimple and the way his light brown eyes glint under the entryway light looks exactly how I remember him. Just add a beard, some height, some muscle, and a five-year-old little girl clinging to his leg.
“Hey, stranger,” he says and I tuck myself into his arms, my head on his chest.
I have zero bad memories with Bennett. I have zero bad memories with his parents. When I hug him, his mom, and his dad, the only feeling I can use to describe it is safety.
And relief. So, so much relief.
