The Summer House

“Hey, are you hungry?” Brendon asked, poking his head out of my kitchen. He had come over two hours ago, stating that he couldn’t sleep and that his Grandmother was so heavily sedated that there would be no problems being away. When he had shown up on my doorstep he looked on the brink of cracking, but simply claimed that he had spotted some of my houselights still on and wanted to check up on me. I thought it best not to ask. “Do you want me to make some dinner?”

I checked the time on the clock beside me, seeing it was way passed the time for it to be considered dinner. I had skipped the meal and sat myself down at my desk as soon as Brendon and I had parted for the day.

My hands fell flat on the desk and I turned in my seat to face him. “I’m okay. You don’t have to.”

“Well,” he looked over his shoulder into the kitchen and scratched the back of his neck. “I sort of already made dinner...”

I couldn’t stop the smile that slithered across my mouth. “Thanks.”

“Figured you’d be writing all night and forget to eat.” He waited until I was beside him before returning to the kitchen. On the counter was a roast chicken and a bowl of mashed potatoes; way too much to devour myself despite how good it looked and smelled. Their delicious, heart-warming scents wafted around the kitchen and my stomach clenched.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I told him, watching his cheeks redden. I rubbed my sore fingertips as I watched him bite his lip again and avoid eye contact. “I can’t eat that all.”

“Don’t be silly,” Brendon laughed, suspiciously flustered. He ran a shaky hand through his uncharacteristically neatly combed hair. “I’m eating half.”

Once we were settled around the counter, Brendon spoke again with a nervous cough. “Thanks for helping me with my Grandmother last night.”

I shook my head, swallowing the bite of chicken I had in my mouth. “You don’t need to thank me.”

“But I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate it and that it means a lot to me.” He paused and looked down at his plate, pushing around a spoonful of potatoes. “My friends in Vegas were usually too busy to help me take care of her. I understand why, of course; that they have jobs and things to worry about. But so do you and you still make time to help me out so I just wanted to say thank you. No one has really made time for me before.” By the end of the final sentence, Brendon’s voice had trailed off into a quiet murmur.

I merely smiled, hoping that I could convey all that I couldn’t word into that simple gesture. His eyes brightened when he looked up, and the sincere moment that passed between us slowly diffused as we resumed eating.

I giggled at his face when I jokingly told him dinner needed more ketchup.

-x-

“Mom, why are you yelling at me?”

I looked away from Brendon as he answered his cell phone, pretending to busy myself with reading the label of a can of chicken soup.

We hadn’t slept all night. After our late dinner, we stuck around the counter drinking overly sweetened coffee and talking about awful sci-fi flicks we had seen in our lifetime. The sci-fi flicks progressed to horror films, then somehow to romantic comedies, which surprised me when Brendon had carelessly mentioned plenty that most men would be too ashamed to admit watching. When we moved to the living room, he spotted my buddy raccoon waddling across the floor and flipped out, grabbed a pillow off the couch and readied himself to whack it outside, all the while yelling incoherently about rabies and the great outdoors. When I explained that the raccoon was semi living with me, he threw me an odd look, and I braced myself for the synonyms for ‘crazy’ that he would throw at me. Instead, he laughed and called me ‘one of a kind’ before dropping the pillow back onto the sofa. I hid my unexplainable blush by pretending to go back to the kitchen to refill my coffee.

“I know I haven’t called but that’s because I’ve been busy. I’m sorry. I’m really tied up right now with everything. It’s not easy taking care of Grandma.”

I wandered over to the bread isle, filling Brendon’s cart as well as mine. He followed beside me, pushing his buggie around and pausing whenever I paused. He gave me thankful smiles and nods whenever I added something into his pile, occasionally pulling silly faces at me while he listened to his mother’s rant.

“I’m grocery shopping right now with Madeline,” he answered absently, pulling the hood of my sweater over my head and pushing me into a rack of taco kits. He stifled a laugh by biting on his fist when I growled and shoved him away. An apology was mouthed to me before he pulled my hood back down and ruffled my hair. “Madeline who? Uhh...”

I turned to him and made writing motions in the air.

“What? Flop...py?” I slapped my palm to my face and Brendon sputtered nervously into the phone. “No, mom, I'm kidding! I mean, uhh...”

I spelled my last name out in the air again, hoping he would catch it.

“Wright. I mean, Madeline Wright. That’s ironic,” he muttered at the end, looking pointedly at me. I shrugged and picked up one of the taco kits I had knocked into and deposited it into my cart. I was confused when Brendon reached in and put it back on the shelf, shaking his head at me.

“Gotta be fresh,” he whispered, pressing the cellphone to his chest for a second before putting it back to his ear. “Yeah, yeah, I’m listening. Yeah, Mom, the writer.” There was a two second pause before Brendon spoke uncertainly into the phone. “Hello?”

My eyebrows sloped upwards.

“I think she just hung up on me,” Brendon said, bewildered.

“Gotta love Moms.”

“I think she fainted,” he elaborated, a look of realization crossing his features. “Oh man, she’s a fan of yours.”

I scoffed. “No way.”

He merely nodded then glanced at the shelf behind my head. “You wanted tacos right? Let’s get fresh ingredients. The kits taste okay but nothing beats fresh tacos.”

“I’m not sure I know how to assemble that.”

Brendon smiled down at me and winked. “I got you covered.”

-x-

“Madeline? Are you watching or what?”

I flipped over a page of the book I had in my hands, eyebrows furrowing as I read the carefully crafted words. It was one of mine - the first book I wrote, in fact – about a young woman who spent her whole life exacting revenge against a group of sinister, soulless men called The Black Parade. Brendon had picked up a copy of it at the bookstore in the morning while we were in town getting groceries, claiming that he wanted to read my work and get to know the strange inner-workings of my mind. I merely scoffed at his enthusiasm but felt touched that he wanted to take the time to read what I had to say.

“I’m watching,” I assured absently, thumbing through the book to my favorite parts. I stopped at the page where wolves were tearing graphically into the young woman's flesh, admiring my own creativity back then. Brendon’s smooth voice rained down on me as he called for my attention, eventually resorting to annoying tactics when I failed to pay him any.

“You’re not watching,” he whined childishly. “Watch me!”

I tore my eyes away from the macabre novel I had been so proud of publishing, focusing instead on Brendon, who stood shirtless at the top of a lush oak tree.

"Brendon, get down from there! You'll hit the ledge, crack your skull open, and die," I warned, sitting up on the dock. A mild pang of anxiety inched its way into my system as I eyed his footing on the branch.

"You sound like that guy from that movie with the girls," he mocked, lowering his voice and doing his best impression. "'Don't have sex because you will get pregnant and die!'"

I snorted and rolled my eyes; I knew just what movie he was referencing. "No, I don't. And that's not even relevant. Get down from there!"

He laughed and beamed before summer salting into the patch of water beside me, effectively soaking half my body and part of the book in my hands. The chill of the water in comparison to the summer heat made me shudder and curse.

Brendon surfaced seconds later with a broad grin on his full lips. "Did you see that?"

"Pretty hard to miss," I grumbled, pushing my wet hair off my face. “That’s not what I meant when I told you to get down from there.”

"Try it," he urged, climbing up onto the dock and holding out his soaked hand. When I refused to take it, he stepped behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist to haul me to my feet. The water from his body soaked into the back of my t-shirt, setting off yet another shiver. "You gotta try it. I demand you do. C'mon!"

"I'm afraid of heights," I frowned, stumbling as he nudged me towards the tree he just jumped out of.

"Cool. I'm afraid of clowns. And ghosts."

"That has nothing to do with the situation," I protested, stumbling again when he pushed me forward.

"Neither does your fear of heights." When I began to argue, he raised his eyebrows and clapped a hand gently over my mouth. "Look, there's a first time for everything. Consider this another helpful experience." I shook my head and he huffed. "Being afraid of everything will get you nowhere. And you're a writer. If you want to write, you're gonna have to face some things you don't really want to. Which means doing some things I tell you to do," he added in jokingly, walking towards the large tree. He got down on one knee and clasped his hands, palms-up, in front of him. Brendon's eyebrows rose again expectantly. “Think of the fans.”

I bit my lip and slowly made my way over, feeling the sweat surface on the back of my neck and shoulder blades. I wanted to tell him that I most likely had no fans aside from his mother, but it felt like my voice box had been gouged out and replaced by a metal scrub brush. My fingers shook as I gripped Brendon’s shoulder and reached towards the highest branch I could stretch for.

When my foot was in his palms waiting to be boosted up, he lightly ran his thumb over the tight skin of my ankle. "I'll be right here okay? And if all goes wrong, then we can have sex, you can get me pregnant, and I'll die."

I laughed against my will and held my breath as his arms sprung me upward. It took a lot of effort to climb the tree and even more effort to not throw up when I accidentally looked down.

Just as he promised, Brendon was hovering around at the bottom, smiling encouragingly at me with his lopsided and ridiculously wide grin.

I could feel my heart beat faster and faster. Each branch I heaved myself onto kicked my heart rate up a notch and made me sweat even harder. I should have been embarrassed about how much I was struggling, but I couldn't find it in me to focus on anything other than not falling prematurely out of the oak tree.

"This is crazy," I cried nervously once I reached the top. By then my hands were trembling and my shin was a little bit skinned from the times my foot slipped off the bark. My knees were shaking hard enough to compromise my balance. "Brendon, I don't want to do this anymore."

"You're doing great though," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun as he peered up at me. He eyed my fingers, which were digging into the bark of the tree. "All you have to do now is let go of that branch you're abusing and jump."

"Brendon --"

"Madeline, I'm right here. Really, it would be pretty hard to miss the water. You can do it. And remember what I said if anything goes wrong? Sex and die, Madeline. We’ll have sex and I’ll d--"

The next thing I knew, I was swan-diving into the lake, feeling the wind rush passed my face and blow my dark hair back over my shoulder. I distinctly remember the way my heart slammed into my chest as if the world were ending, before kicking around wildly in the confines of my ribcage. I thought my heart was going to burst from the fear. I thought my lungs were going to collapse from the overwhelming freedom. My fingers caressed the cool air that passed by and, for a moment, I felt absolute.

When the lake embraced and engulfed my tiny body, the feeling didn't disappear. Not immediately, anyway. I let myself be suspended underwater for a few seconds, losing any sense of direction, any sense of right or wrong, before swimming back towards the sun.

When I resurfaced, Brendon was on his knees at the edge of the dock, a look of relief washing over his unconventionally handsome features when I broke the water. He beamed, chocolate brown eyes sparkling and plump, pink lips twisting in a proud smile.

And somewhere to the left of my chest was a pleasantly surprising flutter.