The Summer House

It was a little after 1 AM. My fingers were hurting from typing so much but there was just so much material I couldn’t afford to forget. I had everything down in detail – the fear of the climb, the feel of the dive, the unsettling but eye-opening thump in my chest when I came up from the lake. It filled fifty-four pages, and I could have gone on until sunrise.

I reached blindly for my cellphone as it began to ring, continuing to inch my way through a sentence with one hand. The typewriter let out a cheery ding at the same time I answered the call.

“Madeline? Can you come over, please? I just – I can’t –”

I peered quickly out the window, catching the chaos in the Urie lake house. Their windows were flooded in lights. Georgia was up on the third floor helping Brendon’s Grandma sit up on the bed while Brendon himself was running down the stairs between the second and first floor. I could hear him panting frantically into the phone, his footsteps echoing faintly in the background.

In an instant, I was on my feet and sprinting towards the French doors that lead to the back patio and docks. The cool night air settled over my skin as I took off into a run towards the house.

“Madeline, I can’t do this. I don’t – what do I do? I’m not – I can’t –”

“Brendon, calm down.” I tried to be the soothing voice of reason for him but I couldn’t find it in myself to keep the panic out of my own voice. The back door of his house swung open, hitting the wall before bouncing back in its place. Brendon stumbled out of it, running towards me at full tilt. I could see his pained features in the glow of the moonlight – his eyes squinted and glassy and his mouth twisted as if holding back tears. “You need to calm down.”

As we rapidly made our way closer to each other, his hand dropped from his ear and I could only hear his footsteps and heavy breathing on the line. I disconnected when he was several meters away, slowing down and intending to stop in front of him.

I was nearly knocked off my feet when Brendon ran full speed into me. His long fingers threaded themselves into my dark locks as his other arm wrapped tightly around my waist. I stood shivering for a stunned moment, listening to him pant and softly sob into my shoulder.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I cooed, finally snaking my arms around his neck. His sobbing lightened up minutely but he gripped me closer. “What’s going on?”

He shook his head but answered anyway through sniffles and occasionally sobs. “She’s getting worse! She’s getting worse and I don’t know what to do. Please tell me what to do, Madeline! I’m twenty-three and, goddamnit, how am I supposed to know how to handle this?”

“Brendon,” I sighed sympathetically, running my hand up and down his back in comforting cycles. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t handle this,” he cried, knees buckling. He took me down with him and we both ended up kneeling in the dirt. “She’s going to be gone soon and-and-and-and then what? What?”

This time I didn’t respond, instead assuming the place of the open ear and shoulder to lean on. He continued to cry into my shoulder, sometimes digging his face further into the crook of my neck until I could feel his eyelashes fluttering over my skin. His warm tears hit the skin of my neck and slid down into my shirt.

“I’ve never had anyone close to me die before,” Brendon whimpered, turning his face away from me. I sat quietly, rubbing slow circles into his back, trying to figure out what to say. How comical was it that the writer would lose her words in a time of need? “I can’t do this.”

“Come on, get up,” I sighed, nudging Brendon gently. He released me from his hold and slowly got to his feet, taking my hand and pulling me up with him. A chill hit the front of my body when Brendon stepped away, but I pushed it back and started towards the lake house with him still grasping my hand. “Georgia needs your help right now. Your Grandma needs your help right now. You may not feel like you can handle this, but you’re going to have to be there for her.”

Brendon was awfully quiet on our walk but as soon as we hit the back door he spoke. His voice was so hoarse and hushed that every other word was broken. “Could you stay the night?”

I nodded, crossing the threshold. “Of course.”

When the door closed behind us, I looked back up to Brendon and immediately wished we stayed outside. His sedated features twisted into agony again when he heard his Grandmother coughing violently upstairs.

-x-

“I made bacon and eggs,” I said quietly, flipping two eggs onto the plate in my hands and arranging the bacon so that it looked like a smiling face. I set the plate in front of him on the breakfast nook as well as a mug of coffee. “They’re sunny-side-up, I hope that’s okay.”

Last night had been hard on everyone. Georgia had seen the toll it took on Brendon to see his Grandmother in such a weak condition, so she locked him out from entering the third floor. Brendon spent the night pacing, sniffling, and tugging at the ends of his brown locks. I tried my best to keep him from exploding but I could only do so much. Most of the night I paced with him, repeating that everything would eventually be okay. At 4AM, he collapsed onto the sofa and at 4:15 fell asleep across my lap. I spent the rest of the night wide awake and immobile on the couch.

Brendon looked up from the plate I set in front of him with a tired smile. “I like the hash brown hair.”

“Looks just like you,” I replied, sipping my coffee.

A brief silence settled itself around us.

“Thank you.” The sincerity that rang loudly in his tiny voice didn’t escape me and my heart clenched. When I met his eyes, they were glassy and filled with hope.

Georgia shuffled into the kitchen and I got up from my seat after giving Brendon’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Morning, Georgia. I made breakfast.”

“Did you, dear? Oh, that’s sweet of you.” I rested my hands on her shoulders and steered her towards the seat I had just vacated. Brendon smiled down at his plate again before cutting into the sunny-side-up eggs. I set Georgia’s plate in front of her with a cup of steaming coffee.

“Eat up,” I encouraged, busying myself with cleaning up. The clatter of knives, forks and mugs filled the room and I felt some sort of relief and comfort.

Georgia updated Brendon with his Grandmother’s condition last night, repeating that she was just fine but would begin doubling the pain medication to keep her sedated. I blocked out the rest of what she was saying, deciding that it really wasn’t much my business.

Halfway into scrubbing the frying pan, Brendon’s softly calloused hands rested over my soapy ones, and gently tugged the pan and sponge out of my grasp. “I can finish this,” he said, voice still hoarse from last night’s distress. “You can relax.”

“I’m fine. You had a rough night. I’ll just clean up around here and you can take a nap. You only slept for four hours.”

“And you slept for none,” he sighed, rinsing off all the soap.

“I would have been up anyway,” I brushed off, starting on the plates Brendon brought over. I looked over my shoulder and discovered that Georgia had already left the kitchen. Brendon grabbed the plate in my hands and blocked any access to the others. “Hey, what gives?”

He chuckled warmly, the sound resonating from deep in his chest. “I’ve never seen someone so insistent on doing dishes.”

I stuck my nose in the air and promptly yanked the dish out of his hands. “Well, you’ve never met someone like me before.”

He stood staring at me for a minute, watching me soap up the dish and run the sponge over it several times. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him grin. “No,” he murmured, looking back down at the frying pan he was rinsing out under the faucet. “I haven’t.

-x-

Days passed. The first few contained very little excitement, our mornings, afternoons, evenings and late nights spent mostly in companionable silence. Brendon’s daring little stints for me had come to a temporary halt, which was okay with me. When it seemed that the silence would last a while, he and I started gravitating towards each other in perfect synchronization with very little effort.

It started with small things, like getting into the habit of setting my coffee maker's timer to start ten minutes before the time I woke up because Brendon usually awoke twenty minutes before me, and it took him ten minutes to get dressed, brush his teeth, and make his way over to my lake house and into the kitchen.

Then it progressed to Brendon picking up and catering to my habits. By the time he’d get to the kitchen, the last drop off caffeine would drip into the coffee pot, and he could freshly pour himself a cup. Then he would pour me a mug and add two teaspoons of sugar, adding a half more than necessary because he knew that I liked my coffee a little sweeter in the morning. He would hold off on adding the cream until I was shuffling into the kitchen because he knew that it would cool my coffee to the perfect degree if he added it at that moment instead of adding it beforehand.

Then it turned into things like leaving clothes at each other’s houses. The first time was when Brendon left his purple hoodie on the sofa after watching a feature on whales on The Discovery Channel and running home to check on his Grandmother. The simple act snowballed into him leaving his other sweaters, tshirts, and even jeans on my couch. By the end of the week, half of my laundry load consisted of his clothes, and half of his laundry load consisted of mine. It had gotten to the point where I walked in and found Brendon shirtless in my kitchen one morning, asking if he could grab a t-shirt from the “Brendon Section” of my closet because his closet was all out.

By the last day of the week, he was back to his cheery and occasionally shy self, and we both had a toothbrush in a paper cup in each others’ bathroom.

“Hey, Brendon? Can I borrow a shirt? I left my pyjamas at your place,” I frowned, rifling through my dresser and only finding a bunch of his shirts.

“What’s mine is yours,” he yawned, stretching out on the bed.

The clock on the nightstand read 10:43 PM. His Grandmother was so heavily sedated lately that she never woke up in the middle of the night hungry – her eating patterns were backtracking to normal again.

Brendon nuzzled his face into my spare sky blue pillow. “Take what you want.”

I laughed as I quickly changed out of my shirt and into his, making sure his eyes were covered by the pillow. My tired body fell into bed and I nudged his side with my elbow. “Thanks.”

He turned his face towards me and opened one eye, glancing briefly at the Third Eye Blind band tee I had chosen before closing it again. “Red is your color.”

“Only?” When he reopened the one eye, I arched my brow playfully.

“One of many,” he yawned again, shifting closer. “Now it’s your turn to turn off the light. So go.”

I barked out a laugh and turned my back to him. “No way, I did it last time. You do it.”

The bed shifted behind me and I knew he had rolled over onto his other side. “Guess we’re sleeping with the lights on tonight.”

“Seems so,” I said softly, yawning into my palm. “Goodnight, Brendon.”

Yet again, the bed shifted behind me, and the muted patter of bare feet on hardwood filled the room. The light behind my eyelids went out and I grinned to myself.

“Sweet dreams, woman,” Brendon mumbled sleepily, climbing back into bed. Then he did something that he hadn’t done before. He leaned over and planted his supple lips on my cheekbone before rolling over on the bed so that we were back to back.

-x-

“ ‘ Morning!”

I recoiled as Brendon chirped happily in my ear, steadily moving towards the coffee he had outstretched to me.

“ ‘ Morning,” I groaned, hopping up to sit on the marble counter.

“How’d you sleep?” The way he inquired made it plain that he was buttering me up to spring something on me. I decided to wait until I was caffeinated before asking about it.

“Fine. How’d you --”

“You know how I sometimes talk about Ryan and Spencer and Jon and Audrey?” he interjected excitedly, rolling up onto the balls of his feet.

I drank deeply from my mug, hoping the caffeine would kick in sooner so that our conversation wouldn’t have to be one-sided. “Yes.”

“They’re gonna fly over tomorrow and visit for the weekend!” he crowed, his loud voice amplifying off the surfaces of the kitchen. I cringed and buried my face in my mug again, downing the entire thing. I tried to be excited too, but it was 9AM, I was barely caffeinated, and he was yelling.

“Spencer called saying they were all gonna drop by since I told them about how Gramma was doing and how bad I was feeling about it. Ryan’s gonna use some of his vacation time and Spence doesn’t have any photoshoots scheduled this weekend and Audrey decided to close up the shop for the two days and Jon’s boss is flying out this weekend to Cabo with his mistress...” he trailed off, his eyebrows furrowed. “...which is kind of awful that he’s cheating on his wife like that but I don’t know his wife and it means Jon’s coming out here so it’s okay!”

The first thing that sprung to my mind when he fell silent was jotting down what he just said and showing him how to fix a run-on sentence. The second thought that sprung to my mind was that Brendon wasn’t going to be around all weekend, which dimmed my spirits.

For his sake, I forced out my best grin. “That’s cool. See? They make time for you.”

Brendon’s smile slightly faltered. “Me? You mean us. You think I never mentioned you to them, don't you? You're in like every email I send. They really want to meet you, and I said they would; Spencer especially. He keeps asking me to email more pictures of you.”

I shook my head and started to say something but quickly caught the last thing he said. “More pictures? What do you mean ‘email more pictures’? You mean you sent some? How the hell did you get any?”

“Google.” His pearly white teeth gnawed slowly on his bottom lip. Before I could ask Brendon why he was Googling me, he pressed on.“It’s not like I took pictures of you asleep or from the bushes outside your window or something. I just told them that I made friends with someone named Madeline Wright, and sent them a photo of you I found on Google. It’s the same one on the back of your Black Parade book so I thought you wouldn’t mind,” he explained sincerely. “I wasn’t going to tell them you were a famous writer, but Ryan’s heard of you, since he’s in publishing and all. He’s read all your books and kind of spilled the beans to everyone before I could tell him not to; I just had a feeling you wouldn’t want them to know.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” I refused politely, feeling the caffeine hit my system. My droopy eyelids steadily perked up. “This is a weekend for you to spend time with your friends. I’d just be distracting.”

Brendon’s eyes shined with innocence. “Aren’t you my friend?”

“Well, yeah—”

“Then please, have dinner with us tomorrow,” he begged, after lighting up at my incomplete response. “They’re landing tomorrow afternoon and we’re supposed to meet them at Andaluca at seven. It's that fancy shmancy restaurant in town that practically costs an arm and a leg to just drink the water. I normally wouldn't pick to eat there but they're all into that sorta thing, so I can deal. But if that's too much for you, then we can always eat somewhere else.”

“I really don’t think I should. I should be writing anyway,” I hedged, looking down into my mug.

“There’s a hot date in it for you,” he winked, grinning boyishly at me. My face reddened and I felt the same flutter I felt behind my ribcage when I resurfaced from diving out of the tree a week ago.

But the flutter immediately burnt out when Brendon continued speaking. I thought I even felt the butterflies drop dead and hit the walls of my chest. My eyebrows knitted towards the middle of my forehead in confusion. “Spencer was asking if you would consider it to be a date. Like, a blind date. Sorta.”

He looked so hopeful that it physically hurt me.

I resigned and slid off the counter, padding into the living room and shaking off the shockingly unpleasant feeling. “Fine.”

“Hey, you won’t be alone. Think of it as a double date, with two third wheels.”

I raised a brow as I collapsed into the sofa. “Who’s the other couple?”

“Me and Audrey,” he said simply, falling onto the couch beside me. “But she doesn’t know it. She has a boyfriend in Vegas and I just have a weak spot for her. I don’t know. Like a crush. I just have this thing for her a little bit.” He blushed and grabbed the remote off the coffee table, flipping through the channels at a pace that gave away his nerves.

“That’s cute.”

He shrugged but kept the smile on his face. “She’s a really good friend so I don’t want to try anything on her and mess up our friendship. I’m not that great with relationships, but she’s sort of the closest thing I’ve got, even though it’s pretty one-sided.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” There was a ring of contentment in his voice as Brendon draped his arm over the back of the couch and casually let it fall over my shoulders. “That’s not weird, is it? I mean, I have a crush on a friend, which I treat as more than a friend even though she doesn’t realize it. She thinks it’s just because she’s the girl in the group that she gets the special attention, which is okay with me as long as she’s okay.”

I wanted Brendon to shut up at that moment, a desire I thought I would never have when it came to him. I always liked talking to him so it disturbed me when the thought abruptly appeared at the front of my brain.

“Hey, Madeline?” He nudged me into his side and I instinctively looked up, snapping myself out of my upsetting reverie. “Can you remind me to stop at the bank when we go to town today? I gotta withdraw some money to cover for mine and Audrey’s dinner tomorrow.”

I couldn’t explain it, but I suddenly felt like childishly locking myself in my room.