After the jet landed in California, we were led into a black SUV. I guess Charlie hired some movers to move my stuff out of my house since I refused to go through all of it. I couldn't pack up all of my things and admit to myself that moving to California was permanent. The movers had packed up all of my stuff while I was at the funeral, so Charlie said that everything was already at his house.
Once we got into the car, Charlie started driving and I realized how awkward this was going to be, neither of us knew what to say, so I leaned back and closed my eyes. Wishing that this day would come to an end. I mean, I just celebrated my mother's death. How is that okay? It's not. It's sick. And if my Cousin Timmy and his dad didn't practically drag me out of the house this morning, I wouldn't have gone.
Eventually, I fell asleep in the comfy seat for what seemed like hours but was only about ten minutes until Charlie woke me up. I sat up to see that we were parked in front of a cute middle class house. It was two stories with a large garage attached to the side. Classic white paneling with a light wooden front door. Very ordinary looking.
I hauled myself up the pathway behind Charlie and into the house. I could smell the ocean from here, so maybe we were close. I guess that was cool, I'd always liked the beach. The walls were a light brown color with a black leather couch and a big TV mounted on the wall. Through the living room, there was an unused dining room with an unused dining room table. I could tell that nobody used it because there was stuff piled on top of it, covering the surface from corner to corner. Manila folders, pens, loose papers, coats, books, and old dishes were splayed across the table.
Going through the dining room, that spilled into a kitchen that also looked helplessly abandoned. The cupboards were a boring wooden color with bronze knobs and the fridge was bare and a boring white. There were knockoff generic paintings scattered around the walls, but that was it when it came to decorating.
This house was the complete opposite of my house in Indiana. Our walls were covered in colorful paints and murals. Personalized murals. My name was sprawled out in the hallway and my mother's name was written along a wall in the living room. These walls were blank, emotionless. Our kitchen was clean and alive, Mom always cooked, she loved cooking. We rarely ever went out to a restaurant. Our counters were a red wood and none of the knobs matched. Our fridge was hidden under a layer of magnets and good grades with pictures of friends and family. This kitchen was generic and unused, with carry out menus laid out along the counter. Our dining room table was clear of anything, we ate at the table every night for dinner. We also had a huge chandelier that my mom found at a flea market a few years ago. The lighting in this dining room was flat, and it had no attention. Nobody lived in this room, only passed through it.
From what I can tell from the bottom level, this house was nothing but a house. Not a home, just a boring, monotonous house.
However, when I looked out one of the windows in the kitchen, I could see an amazing view of the beach that turned into the ocean. I could smell the ocean from out front, but I didn't realize that the house was right on the beach. I smile crept its way onto my face, my mom would love the view, even though she was more of a snowbird. I stared out the window for a while until Charlie's gruff voice interrupted me.
"Your room is the second door to the left, bathroom is across the hall," he said, causing me to look away from the window and turn towards him. "I figured you would like to decorate it yourself, so I didn't do much to it. Here's a card, it has $100,000 on it for whatever," he added quietly, I could hear the awkwardness in his voice as he reached into his wallet and pulled out a debit card, handing it to me.
"$100,000 dollars?" I gawked. "Like with five 0s?"
He just nodded. "If you need help moving things around, let me know."
I forced a smile onto my face because, even if he did leave me and my mom those many years ago, this has to be hard on him too. Just randomly being forced to take in a teenage girl. A girl that he never even wanted in the first place. And I'm sure with my piercings and bad attitude, I looked like a troubled girl. Which I wasn't, I just liked the way they looked, that doesn't make me a bad person or a difficult teenager. "Thanks." I said and before going up the stairs that were in the living room, I turned and faced Charlie once more. "And for what it's worth, I'm not as bad as I look."
I turned and trotted up the stairs with my black ankle boots thumping on the wooden surface. Following his directions, I opened the second door on the left in the, unsurprisingly, boring hallway of white walls and doors. The room only had a bed in it and everything was just plain white. I was excited to see to large sliding glass doors on the wall, though, and eagerly moved over to them. They led to a small balcony that overlooked the ocean. I could hear the waves crashing from where I stood. Everything seemed so peaceful out here and I felt guilty for feeling at peace right now. My mother just died a week ago and I'm enjoying the sound of water? Ridiculous. I sighed before hurrying back into the room and locking the glass door behind me.
I looked around the room and a million ideas of how I was going to design this room ran through my mind. The room was a little bit on the small side, so I could go for some kind of bunk bed thing. There was a huge open wall so I could paint something on it or put something up right there. The glass doors needed drapes and so did the windows. I just stood there, excitedly thinking about the endless possibilities.
Designing this room will help keep my mind busy so that I don't drown in my grief and I'll feel close to my mom, as painting and decorating our home was something that we'd always done together.
I found the bathroom and cleaned up before going back downstairs where Charlie was sitting on the couch, watching one of those shows where they auction off those storage garages.
"Are you hungry?" he asked me when he turned and saw me standing at the bottom of the stairs.
"No, not really," I said quietly. "But I really like the room," I refused to use the word 'mine' because it wasn't my room. My room was in Indiana, with my mom, in our home. It wasn't here in California, with my supposed dad.
"Good, I'm glad," he still sounded so awkward, like he had absolutely no idea how to talk to me. I felt like a foreign object being forced into a place that I did not belong, like a splinter.
"Yeah, so I'm just probably going to head to bed, I've had a really long day," I told him, turning to go back upstairs. Even if it was only six in the evening, I just wanted this day to be over. And the easiest way to make the day end is to sleep.
"Oh, okay. Goodnight."
"Night," I mumbled, going back up the stairs and into the bland bedroom after finding a red shirt at the bottom of my suitcase to sleep in. It was really big on me, so it draped over my thighs like a dress.
Once I washed up and got dressed in the bathroom across the hall, I noticed two other toothbrushes at the sink. That was odd, there was an extra tooth brush. It was kind of weird, but I shook it off. Maybe he likes options, or he had bought one for me, even though I'd brought my own.
I moved the comforter down and slid inside it like a hot pocket and closed my eyes, but I knew that I was far away from sleep. The light that was seeping in from the large glass doors weren't the problem, I can sleep in the brightest of hours any day. It wasn't even the TV noises from downstairs that was preventing me from falling asleep.
It was the sickening feeling in the bottom of my stomach that was keeping me awake. I never thought it was possible to feel so incredibly homesick. I felt like a five year old at her first slumber party, only I couldn't call my mom in the middle of the night to get her to come pick me up. I couldn't call anybody. Anna still wasn't speaking to me (for unknown reasons) and I couldn't even look at Ricky anymore. I wasn't going home the next day, either. I was never going home again. My mom wasn't waiting for me to return because she wasn't even there. My mom was never going home either, she was gone. Just gone. Forever. Gone gone gone. Forever.
The more I thought about it, the bigger the pit in my stomach grew. And the bigger the pit grew, the more I wanted to throw up. I swallowed hard and tried to supress the nausea, taking a drink of water from the glass on the nightstand in an attempt to ease my stomach.
Once my stomach was settled, I had no intentions on sleeping. I just wanted to talk to somebody. The only person I could think of was my cousin, Timmy. He was about my age but him and his parents lived far away, so we never saw each other. However, I saw him at the funeral and he was really supportive. I just needed somebody. Anybody.
I picked up my phone and ran through my contacts, praying that I had Timmy's number in my phone. I let out a sigh of relief when I found his name and immediately pushed the call button with a loud sniffle, not even trying to wipe the tears away from my face. They were bound to fall at some point.
I heard the line start to ring and again, I willed him to pick up the phone.
"Hello?" He answered on one of the last rings.
"Are you busy?" I asked with another sniff, cuddling the comforter up to my chin to feel a little bit less alone.
"Paisley?" He asked.
I nodded but knew that he couldn't see it. "Yeah," I finally mumbled a response.
"No, I'm not busy. What's wrong?"
"I just- I don't want to be alone. I'm sorry, you're the only person I could think to call."
"I'll stay on the phone for as long as you need," he assured me in a soft, warm voice. "I'm here for you. What do you need?"
I just cried into the pillow with the phone on my ear. "I don't know, just tell me about your girlfriend," I pleaded with him. "Just talk."
"Her name is Kari," he told me. "And she's really great."
He continued to talk about Kari and how they get along great and he told me that he took her to a Taylor Swift concert. "I think I'm the only guy whipped enough to go to a Taylor Swift concert," he joked at one point.
I laughed, even though I was also crying.
He kept talking about his whole life while I just cried. Most of the time, I didn't know what he was saying, I just needed to hear somebody's voice with me while I cried. He never mentioned my mother or the move or Charlie, he knew I wouldn't want to talk about any of it, I just wanted to cry. I wanted somebody to know that I was crying. Maybe that sounded strange, but it made me feel less alone. He didn't try to tell me that it was going to be okay or that I just had to stay strong. I've heard it a billion times this week and I didn't want to hear it again. So I sat there for probably hours, listening to Timmy tell me everything about his life.
"This Christmas, I think my dad wants us to go to California for a vacation type of thing, but I think we need snow for Christmas. I mean, what's Christmas without snow, right? But my mom said that I could bring Kari if I wanted to, but of course, she wants to spend at least some of her Christmas with her family, not just at the beach with mine. So I think we're going to do Christmas at home and then New Year in California." He rambled.
"Maybe you can come visit me." I sniffled, finally able to talk after a long time of just listening.
"Yeah, maybe," he added. "Do you like it there?"
"The house is on the beach," I said, my voice heavy with waves. "And Charlie, he's nice, I guess. But he's not ready to be a dad. But that's fair, I suppose because I'm definitely not ready to be his daughter. I can't really be angry right now, though. I'm just too exhausted to deal with the runaway dad issue, so I'm just shutting it out for now. He gave me a hundred grand to decorate my bedroom. How insane is that? I feel like he doesn't know what to do with me, so he's just throwing money at me."
"Really? So he's loaded?" He joked.
"Yeah, he is."
"So what are you going to do with the money?"
"I haven't decided. I'm thinking purple, but I'll do all that later," I said, hoping that the tears were finally done for the night, since I was becoming exhausted and I just wanted to sleep now.
"That sounds good, you'll have to show me if I come and visit. Knowing you, it has to turn out amazing."
I let just a small smile appear across my lips. "Thanks. Well, I'm finally tired so I think I'll free you of having to talk to me."
"It's not any trouble, okay? Call me whenever you need to talk, got it?"
"Thanks, Timmy," I sighed.
"Anytime, cuz," he laughed in an attempt to lighten the mood.
"Goodnight," I said before hanging up the phone. I put it on the small nightstand beside the bed and closed my eyes, hoping that I could just fall asleep.
"Goodnight, mom," I whispered right before I fell into what I hoped would be a dreamless sleep.
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Edited on 7/20/2020