Note: Surely this is long enough folks? ;)
‘I need a fag; does dad still keep his in his dinner jacket?’ I nodded numbly and Parker bounded up the stairs.
His hair was still the same, it wasn’t too long and it wasn’t too short, it was blonde, like my mum’s, I inherited my dark hair from my dad. He had tanned a lot more since he had left home all those years ago. My brother had sharp features and he was handsome like my dad, I didn’t inherit my parents’ looks. My mum was a model in her past life, and I was nowhere near model material.
Parker’s best feature was his eyes, I know people say that a lot but in his case it was genuine. They were an icy blue colour and from what I could remember, they seemed to light up when he was angry and illuminated his face when he was happy.
He came back downstairs and offered me one of his stolen cigarettes, I shook my head. Parker took off his jacket and loosened his tie as he walked towards the kitchen to get into the garden but stopped at the door and turned back to me, the butt of the cigarette unlit in his mouth. He beckoned to me with one hand and I followed, wanting to know what had changed that he had finally come back.
In the garden he fell back on to the grass and I perched on one of the garden chairs.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said tentatively.
‘Uh huh.’ He replied, lighting the cigarette and inhaling it.
‘Why did you come back?’ I asked, looking straight in his eyes. My question seemed to surprise him and he took the cigarette out of his mouth.
‘I was just about to get married you know, last month. Just down the road from here, thought she was the love of my life and everything.’ He said, ignoring my question.
‘What happened?’ I asked, intrigued about the past tense of his statement.
‘She was a bitch. Mind my French and all, but a few days before the wedding she slept with my best-man’s brother-in-law…in our house, while I was downstairs.’
I was hurt that I hadn’t been invited to my brother’s wedding, well almost-wedding.
‘You always did go for the wrong ones.’
He smiled at that and said, ‘wish you were there to tell me that before I paid a non-refundable deposit for the venue.’
‘Wish you were here these last seven years.’ I replied sharply.
He looked up at me at that and sighed, ‘I guess I deserved that, but I couldn’t put up with mum and dad anymore. You know we always had issues Jem.’
‘At least you had the option of running away.’ I muttered, looking away from him and into the hedges that lined our garden.
He took another puff of his cigarette and dropped some of the ashes on dad’s freshly-mowed lawn.
‘Is it still that bad? I’d have thought that they would’ve abandoned you a little less and started caring a little more. Looks like my leave taught them nothing.’
‘It taught me that you couldn’t trust anyone, not even your older brother. It taught me that the people you cared about didn’t really care back, so I stopped caring. I stopped trusting people, I stopped making friends. I stopped hoping that you’d come back and take me away from the silence and I just put up with it. They made me see a shrink for my introversion but there wasn’t anything a shrink could do; people change all the time, he gave up on me too, just like you.’
‘Fuck.’ He drawled out and shook his head. ‘I didn’t know I messed you up so bad, but I’m not sorry that I left. I’m just sorry that I didn’t take you with me.’
There was a moment’s pause as he took the last draw from the cigarette.
‘Do you hate me?’ he asked, not looking at me, probably scared of my answer.
I thought about it, did I hate him? Could I ever really hate the boy who’d made my childhood a childhood? ‘I used to, I loathed you. I starting wishing you’d come home and grovel for me to forgive you and in my dreams, I never did. I’m messed up, people think I’m two dimensional, and in some ways I am. Kids become 3D when their parents fill them up with love, but I’m like a deflated helium balloon. I was starting to fill up but then you left and all the love left me. I got used to the feeling one or two years ago. I don’t hate you, mum and dad neglected you. At least I had someone for a few years; you didn’t have anyone all along.’
‘I had you.’ He said, tapping my shoes and I looked at him and wondered if he really meant it or if he just said it to make me happy. With that he lay down in the grass and closed his eyes, minutes passed and neither of us said anything, I realised the conversation was over and went back inside.
I took my letter up to my room and wrote a reply to Tyler.
Dear Tyler,
I’m glad you confided in me, bottling things up can lead to implosions, I should know. I’m sorry that things didn’t work out with your girlfriend, maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. You’re right though, everything happens for a reason, and like they say when one door closes, another one opens so I’m sure you’ll find love elsewhere. Somewhere that the love is returned, and trust me you’ll be much happier when you find it. You’ll wonder why you were ever upset about your break up.
I see your point on the individual aspect of each relationship though but there have been love stories since the very beginning of the human race, some glorified, some tragic and some that people will never know about, so how many love stories get that chance to be different? It’s not intentional planning that makes a love story different, its circumstances. Besides, some people wouldn’t know romance if it hit them in the face and knocked them unconscious, they only know the romance they see in movies and so that’s the only way they recognise it. A relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be different to someone else’s; it just needs to mean something to both of the people in it.
Where do you get the time to do such strange things Tyler? That story of yours made me laugh out loud; I can only imagine it and chuckle over my imagined scenario. Hats off to you, I’ve never been that embarrassed.
Gaston was wrong; he didn’t need a degree in women to understand Belle or to even try to. He didn’t try at all, that was his fault, and he assumed that what he was doing was right. He should’ve at least tried to see it from her perspective? You can’t force love and that’s what he was trying to do. He wanted Belle and he wanted her whether or not she reciprocated his feelings. That’s wrong isn’t it? At least the Beast realised his errors, because of Belle, and because of her love for him. You can’t force someone to love you, that’s not love, that’s compromise.
Get well soon!
Let’s not talk about revision, it’s killing me.
Jem
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re very competitive.
When my parents came home that night I kept waiting for the inevitable shouting and arguments but it never came, instead there seemed to be an air of tranquillity around the house as though all members of the household were at peace with each other. Instead, I was surprised when my mother came into the room and told me to get dressed; Parker was taking us out for dinner.
He took us to a restaurant where he had reserved seats for us; the staff seemed to recognise him and were especially attentive towards him. It was a fairly new restaurant, I hadn’t been here before but I knew it had a reputation for being on its way to becoming one of the best.
My mother and I sat on either side of Parker, and my dad sat opposite him, though my mum had the conversation flowing I noticed that my dad wasn’t saying much at all. I gently knocked him on the knee and he looked up at me sharply, I gestured towards Parker and my dad cleared his throat. My mum faltered mid-sentence and we all waited silently for what old man Michaels had to say.
‘Well, I’m not going to draw it out with a speech, but I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided…’ he looked Parker squarely in the eyes and his face relayed no emotion so it was impossible to work out what he was about to say.
‘Welcome back, son.’ My dad finished, winking at me.
I felt the whole table sigh in relief and suddenly, my mum wasn’t the only one talking anymore. Nobody talked about why Parker was back or what he’d done in the last four years but they talked about the times before he left, what he was doing now and his plans for the future.
Towards the end of the meal a waiter came over to us and whispered in Parker’s ear, the rest of us looked on, wondering what was going on. My dad pulled out his credit card, assuming that Parker’s card had been declined but Parker held up his hand.
‘Just a small management problem, nothing to worry about.’ He said pleasantly as he got up and left with the waiter.
‘What just happened?’ My dad asked; a look of bafflement on his face.
My mother and I shrugged but when Parker returned he had a grin on his face.
‘I’m surprised you guys didn’t realise earlier, didn’t you see the name of this place when you walked in?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied, ‘Michel’s, one of the best restaurants around town, the waiting list is crazy.’
‘Well genius, ask me how I got a table tonight?’
‘How did you get a table tonight?’
He pulled out a card from his jacket; it said his name, phone number and contact details.
‘Parker Michaels’ I read, ‘funnily enough, I did already know that.’
He sighed tiredly but by now my mother and father had already worked it out, my mum screamed happily and my dad smirked. ‘Will somebody tell me what’s going on?’ I asked, still not understanding.
‘Welcome to Michel’s, ‘one of the best restaurants in town’, one of my restaurants.’
‘You’re Michel?’ I asked in disbelief.
Parker shook his head, ‘No, I’m a Michaels, Parker Michaels. Michel is French for Michael.'
So evidently Parker had made it to the big time, I was happy for him, he'd turned his life around completely.
My dad reached into his dinner jacket and pulled out his packet of cigarettes. I waited for him to realise that there were some missing, and I waited for him to accuse Parker of being a thief, just like he used to. He didn't though, he just shrugged it off and excused himself from the table. It looked like things were really changing at last.
When we got home it was late and for the first time, in a long time, I fell asleep straight away with a smile on my face.