“No, dick,” he says as he merges onto the freeway after getting through the last of the airport traffic. “I kept it nonchalant. I said the same thing I said to you. I didn’t realize it was that serious. Apparently, no one did and the guy proposing was kind of a shock to everyone, including Whitney.” I feel his gaze trying to read my expression, but I try my best to appear unfazed by the news. “I can hear your thoughts bro, she’s happy. It took her a year to get over you.”
“And then somehow met someone and is engaged two years later?” My anger rises again at the thought of anyone touching her. Kissing her. Fuck. I pinch the bridge of my nose, willing the headache away that I feel coming on and wishing I hadn’t had two Scotch on the rocks on the plane. “I need to see for myself that she’s happy.”
I stare out the window as my thoughts drift back to the last time I returned home after being gone for a little over a year. The first time I saw Whitney since she turned eighteen and the first time, I saw her as a woman.
Five Years Ago:
After stopping by to see my mother, I went straight to Kevin and Michelle’s for dinner. Michelle was easily the best cook I knew and she always prepared one of my favorite meals whenever I returned. I walk into the house without so much as a knock and I’m hit with the smell of lasagna. Fuck. Yes.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Michelle comes bounding down the stairs and tackles me and wraps her arms around me tightly. “We missed you so much! How are you? You’ve lost weight.” She pinches my arm. “Were you not eating enough? I’ll send more food next time. You look good though! Except this hair. You need a haircut.” She pulls at my hair as she’s firing off her questions and comments a mile a minute in true Michelle Monroe fashion. “KEVIN!” she screeches before pushing her glasses up into her blonde hair. “Mason and Whitney aren’t here yet but they should be home shortly,” she informs me.
“Mason is coming home?” Their oldest child, Mason was in his final semester at UCLA and from what I’ve seen from social media and more than a few panicked texts regarding a flavor of the week’s missed period, I know that he’s had more than his share of fun so I am surprised that he’d miss out on one of his last weekends at college just to come home to see me.
“Of course. Well, I think just for tonight and he’s driving back in the morning. Whitney is at graduation practice but she should be home soon.” That was one of the reasons I’d opted to come home now, because both of my godchildren were graduating from college and high school and I wouldn’t have missed either for the world.