Beyond Eighteen(86)

Hey Babe. Wanted 2 tell U 2 sleep tight 2nite. I’m beat. I’ll call U 2morrow LUV U XOXO.

I wanted to text him back but saw that it was 9:00 p.m., which means 10:00 p.m. in Aspen. Suck it up, Wilson. Call him in the morning. I pushed my phone back in my pocket and noticed Joanie watching me.

“I’m sorry if I upset you or hurt your feelings,” Joanie sighed as she came over and grabbed me around the neck to hug me…tight. “You know I love your guts.”

“I know you do. I love your guts too,” I answered. We stood there a moment in an awkward span of a couple of seconds.

“I’m gonna crash in my grandparents’ bed,” I said.

“Do they have a TV?” Joanie asked quickly.

“Yeah, and satellite too,” I teased her.

“Well, then I’m with you! Besides, I’m not sleeping by myself,” Joanie whined.

Joanie and I pulled our suitcases upstairs and into my grandparents’ room. Yeah, I know they are gone, not coming back, but it just didn’t feel right to call it anything else. It wasn’t long before we had our teeth brushed, PJ’s on, and hopped into the soft, queen-sized bed, heavy with a stack of wool blankets topped with a hand-stitched quilted comforter. The same comforter I would fall asleep under staring at the different patterns of swirling floral prints and landscapes of places I wanted to visit in my dreams.

I pushed my feet between the cold sheets, noticing as always they weren’t the softest I’d ever felt, but they comforted me with their familiar aroma of Borax and Woolite, my grandma’s detergents of choice.

The weight of the wool blankets created a safe space for me to slip into; exhausted, I felt my skin surrender and mingle with the temperature of the cool sheets. J hopped onto the bed and wiggled her way in next to me.

“Slumber party,” she sang as she tossed and turned, adjusting her body to face me. Smiling, she pushed her brown hair back and tucked her hands between the side of her face and pillow. Her eyes danced back and forth, gleaming as she bit her bottom lip. I knew she wanted to talk about everything that had happened throughout the day, especially the conversations she had with Nick. That’s one thing Joanie always loved to do…talk about the guys she’d fallen for.

I mirrored her position. Dragging my hands over the side of my head, I pulled my tangled hair back from my face and tucked it behind my ear. Once I adjusted myself to be comfortable enough, I slipped my hands between my cheek and pillow.

Behind Joanie was the only covered wall. Plastered from floor to ceiling, mauve wallpaper hung with cream-colored flowers and paisley lace interspersed with chunky, ornate white flowers with pale pink centers, dark green leaves, and wispy brown stems. I remember when I was a kid, I used to take summer naps and I would lay here trying to untangle the stems from the dark green leaves.

“I love this room,” I said as my eyes danced behind Joanie.

“Me too. Remember the time when your grandparents went out and we heard scratching outside the dining room window?”

“We were so scared. We ran up here and hid under the covers,” I added.

“I was scared shitless. That was the night your grandpa came home and told us that story of the long-lost sailor who’d come looking for children home alone, scratching and knocking on the houses near the ocean,” Joanie sighed as she adjusted her pillow under her head.

“Oh my God, I’ll never forget how mad Grams was at him for scaring us. I think it was the first time you’d been here. He spent a couple of nights on the couch for that one,” I laughed. Of course I could laugh now, but in the moment…it wasn’t funny.

“Wasn’t it a tree branch rubbing on the house?” Joanie asked.

“Yeah, Grams made him prune it back the next day. She stood out there and made sure he cut back every branch that touched the house,” I answered.

We both laughed. It was refreshing to talk about old times spent with my grandparents. In some ways, it made me feel like they were still here.

“What about the time we huffed it all the way to Highway 1 to sell lemonade?” Joanie said as she laid back and looked up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, Gramps wasn’t too happy when the cops brought us home…without the wagon and the card table,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Dang, that was a lot of work to get all that stuff up to the highway. He was fuming when he took us back up there and everything was gone,” Joanie said, trying to hold back a laugh.

“Except for that crappy sign…it was the only thing—” I said, trying to swallow the giggle that was creeping up through my chest. I laid there trying to mimic my grandfather frantically tearing up the sign.