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Later in the day, the snow picked up again, it looked like school would be canceled for yet another day. To me this was bittersweet. On the one hand I’d get to see what was up with Cody, but on the other, snow was just an endless reminder of Taylor and that awful day in March. After I had changed out of my pajamas and came down stairs they were all ‘frolicking’ in the snow. So as an attempt to distract myself I decided to watch a movie. I ran back upstairs to my secret movie collection that was hidden under my bed. You see, in my house we have more discs than we know what to do with and a little brother who will not put a disc back into the case to save his life. So as to keep my movies safe I got the best ones and put them in this lay-down shelf thing I made in woodshop last semester. I rummaged through the hundred-or-so movies and decided on The Breakfast Club. It was one Taylor and I used to watch religiously together.
About halfway through the movie at the part when they all get high and start confessing all their problems I started to cry a little. Watching it brought back memories of Taylor and I saying every single word along with the movie. I heard the door open and a collection of voices. I quickly wiped away my tears and pinched my cheeks to bring color back into them, I always got extremely pail when I cried. Melanie came and sat next to me, “I love this movie, can we watch?” she asked.
“Yeah, of course.” I said and there was an unmistakable crack in my voice.
“Paige, you okay?” she asked as Austin moved to sit next to her. He looked at me with a knowing look and whispered something in her ear. She looked embarrassed as if she was sorry she asked and just put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. The others had come to sit on the other sofas and chairs that filled the room, pretending not to notice our exchange. We all continued to watch the movie in silence, which was broken by our boisterous laughter at the funny parts, which was often. About ten minutes until the end of the movie I almost lost my composure right there, but instead I stood trying not to look suspicious and quickly escaped from the room. The closest room was Austin’s so I went in, shut the door, sat on the bed and cried. I t wasn’t sobs like it normally was just quiet tears.
But I guess they weren’t quiet enough. Austin came into the room and sat on the bed in front of me. He wrapped his arms around my shoulder and pulled me close to him. He held the back of my head, making soothing noises. “I just, I just miss her so much.” I wailed into his shoulder. “She’s everywhere I look! I can’t get away from her! I just want this to go away.”
“I know, I know, shhhhhhhhh,” he tried to sooth me but it wasn’t working. I hadn’t cried like this in 6 months, I guess I had reached my breaking point. I couldn’t pretend to be happy any more because in reality I don’t think I could’ve ever gone back to normal after what happened. The best I could do was pretend to be normal. I sat there crying into Austin’s shoulder for what seemed like hours and I realized the tears had stopped flowing. I guess I ran out of tears to cry.
“Hey, why don’t you lay down and take a nap okay?”
I nodded laying back on his pillows. He pulled the covers up to my chin. “I love you Austin, you really are the best big brother. “
“I love you to sis, just get some rest.” he kissed me on the forehead and walked out of the room.
I shifted to lay on my side and look out the window at the falling snow piling up on the ground. The sight calmed me down, brought my breathing and my heart rate back to normal. I fell quickly asleep, into a deep, totally dreamless sleep.
I woke around four to find everyone out in the snow once again, playing football. Yet again, I opted for staying inside. Around four hours later they were still in the snow goofing around, and I was getting bored and lonely. I decided I might as well go outside. By the time I was dressed and ready it was eight-thirty. I opened the door and walked right into a wall of muscle. “Woah,” it was Cody,” You might want to look up when you walk.” he teased, placing one finger under my chin, tilting my face up until I could see his.
“Ya, probably.” I said shyly.
“I’m glad to see you’re still alive, though. We thought you were never going to wake up.” He smirked.” You sleep like a dead person.”
Trying to change the subject from my weird sleeping habits I said,” Is everybody coming inside?”
“Nope, just me. I thought you might company if you were alive, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh, well then I’ll just stay inside then,” I said as I shrugged out of my magenta fuzzy north face.
“Well what would you like to do?” he asked. He said as he took off his coat and shook snow out of his shaggy brown hair. He attempted to yank off his boots, but it resulted in him landing on his butt.
“Here, let me help.” I knelt down and unlaced one of his huge, chunky boots and gently wiggled it off his foot.
“Thanks,” he said as I started to unlace the other one. It was almost off his foot, but got stuck. I gave one final pull and the shoe flew off his foot and straight into my chest. He started laughing and I couldn’t help but join him. I looked down and there was a big black boot print on my white sweatshirt.
“Crap! My mom’s going to kill me.” I was still laughing as I said this so there was no real fear behind the statement.
“Here give it to me. If I can get dirt out of white baseball pants, I can do it with a sweatshirt.” He stood and offered his hand to help me up. I took it,” You wash your own clothes?” I questioned.
“Well, yeah, I mean you have to learn at some point.” He held his hand out for my sweatshirt and I gave it to him. I looked down and realized that I only had a thin camisole on. I looked up expecting him to be staring at my chest, but he had already turned around and walked into the laundry room. That was one of the things I loved about Cody. He had no teenage boy instincts. He respected women, and in no way objectified them. And that is extremely hard to find in a guy these days. I leaned against the door frame of the laundry room and watched him work on my sweatshirt. When he was done he said,”There, it’ll be good as new in about an hour.”
“Great, but what are we to do until then.”
“Are you sick of watching movies?”
“Na, not yet.” we walked upstairs and into the playroom.”You pick the movie.” I gestured toward the two bookshelves full of movies. He walked over and started studying all the titles. In the mean time, I ran to grab another sweatshirt from my room. When I came back Cody was trying to decide between Space Jamz and Cats don’t Dance two of my favorite movies from when I was little. He held them up to me, “Which one?”
“Space Jamz” I said.
“Okie dokie,” he went over and popped the tape into the VCR and we both went to sit on the couch. We sat closer than we normally would, but not close enough to where we were touching. He turned to look at me, “Hey I meant to ask if you were ok. Not from this afternoon, but his morning, with Kyle. I couldn’t tell if you were just acting like you were happy that you got to yell at him.”
“No, Im fine, Im glad I got to say all that stuff to him. He needed to learn that he cant get away with crap like that.”
“Well you’re right, but just wanted to make sure you were ok.”
“Thanks for being so concerned, but really, I’m fine.” I placed my hand on his shoulder as I said this. He moved a little closer to me and we went back to watching the movie.
It was nine o’clock and they were still in the snow, with no sign of coming in any time soon. I looked out the window behind me and watched them play for a minute. “Do you think they’ll ever come in?” I asked.
Cody turned to look out the window with me. “Why do you want them to.”
“No, not really.” I smiled as I turned to look at him. I scooted a little closer to him. He stretched his arm up and behind my head. He ran his hand over the shades, closing them as he moved his arm to rest on the back of the couch.
Instead of watching the rest of the movie we talked. He told me all about the funny stories from his classes at school. Like how one time, Austin fell asleep on his desk and the teacher pulled his desk out from under his head and he fell on the floor. We talked about all the fun times we had at all the out of town baseball tournaments. When you really thought about it, I had spent a lot of time with him. Austin plays baseball all year around, and in the Summer he plays on a traveling team, so we went all over the place. At first I hated it, but as I got used to it, it became more fun. All my friends were jealous because I got to hang out with a bunch of guys all Summer and had begged me to take them along. But I never would the baseball was my thing, and I didn’t want to share it with anybody else. Then we started talking about high school, he asked how I liked having Austin at the same school as me. “Its actually kind of nice.” I had told him. The only thing I didn’t like about high school was geometry. He offered to tutor me, and I gladly accepted his offer. “How do you like going to a coed school?” he asked remembering that I had gone to an all girls elementary school.
“It’s different. The one thing I do miss is not having to look nice in the morning. Now I have to fix my hair, put makeup on and its really hard to do that when you’re not a morning person. “
“I know it’s so time consuming, do you know how early I have to wakeup to put my makeup on?” I died laughing at this.
“You know, you’re a lot of fun to be around” I said.
“You too, I really like you.”
“In what way?” I asked hoping to get the answer I wanted.
“In everyway, especially this way,” he placed a finger under my chin and tilted my face up with the softest pressure. He put his lips against mine and he was kissing me. I had never kissed anyone before, everyone always says when you have your first kiss you just know what to do. I never believed them until today. He lips were gentle against mine. It was sweet and lingering on my lips.”Especially like that.” he said pulling away. I sighed,”Was that your first kiss?”
I got worried,” Could you tell, was it that bad?”
“No, no, not at all. I could just tell.”
“Oh,”
“You sound upset,” his face fell.
“No, no, God no! that was great, I don’t know I really like you, but I just cant act on it.”
“Well I like you too, so what’s the problem?”
“Austin,” I looked at him and I could tell he knew what I meant.
“Oh,” was all he said.
“Exactly,”
He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and was still. I looked up at him, he had his thinking face on. I leaned back into his arms and waited .”I figured it out,” he snapped his fingers.
I looked up at him,”Huh?”
“We just wont tell him. It’ll be our little secret.”
“Would you be willing to do that? Beacause if you don’t want to do it, don’t just do it for me.”
“Of course I would do it, you’ve known me long enough to know that I don’t do anything I don’t want to. I especially don’t lie.”
“I know,” he laughed and squeezed my shoulder. I couldn’t help but lean back into him.
“Cody!” Austin called from downstairs. Cody kissed me on the forehead and took off down the stairs.