The room looks...different. Last time I was here there were little steamer trains on the wallpaper and a stuffed bear sitting on a tiny white bed. Now a bookshelf filled with thick, well-read classics stands beside a modern desk with what looks like a new laptop on it.
My grandmother, barefoot in her uniform of faded jeans and a Good & Green T-shirt, hovers in the doorway behind me, tugging at her reddish-brown braid as she waits for my reaction.
I move toward the full-sized bed and try not to look at the large black-and-white framed photos of LA on the slate-colored walls.
“We can change the colors, of course,” my grandmother says. “You always loved blue, so I thought...”
“It’s fine. I’ve got some cans of spray paint in my bag, so I’ll fix it.”
She twists her hands into her braid. Tight.
Look at that, I surprised my grandmother. “Grandma, I’m kidding. And I still like blue.”
She exhales and then brightens at my small gratitude, the first sign that the little boy she remembered isn’t completely gone. “Well, I’ll leave you to get settled. Dinner is at six.” From the corner of my eye, I see her turn to leave then hesitate. “Ethan?”
My grandmother’s tone is all but ordering me to look at her. I consider ignoring it. She hasn’t seen me in years, and size and inches are the least of the things I’ve gained since then. I’m still deciding when my cat pops out of my open bag and yowls at me. I rub the nearly bald patch on the top of his ancient head. “Hey, Old Man. You ready to stretch a bit?”
“Ethan, is that...a cat?”
“Well, it’s not a can of spray paint.”
Her expression says she doesn’t appreciate my humor at the moment. “Does he have a name?”
“Probably. I just call him Old Man.” I’d been rereading a lot of Hemingway at the time and when I found him on the beach losing a battle over a dead fish with a pelican, the name seemed fitting.
“You should have said something. We don’t have any cat litter. Or a litter box.”
I walk over to the window and push it up, then lift my cat onto the sill. “He’s fine. He’ll come and go as he wants.”
“No, that’s not a good idea. And food, we’ll need to get food. I can go to the grocery—”
“Grandma, we’re fine. I’ll take care of his food—I always do.” I take care of a lot more than just a cat or I did until my grandparents intervened, a fact my grandmother knows all too well.
She falls silent after that and when she starts eying my bag as though she’s about to unpack for me, I scoop Old Man up and move toward the door, forcing her to back up.
“I’m going to take him out back, make sure he knows the best places to crap around the pool deck.”
My grandmother’s mouth opens. But then she closes it, considering me. “Hmmmm,” she says.
“That’s it?”
“For now.” She retreats to the hall so I can pass with my cat. I feel her watching us though so I’m not caught off guard when she calls after me. “Oh, and Ethan? Don’t you dare spray-paint my walls without running the colors past me first.”
I laugh at the teasing smile on her face. Look at that, my grandmother surprised me.
The yard outside is blooming with bright, warm colors and the soft scent of the flowers my grandfather painstakingly tends. I’m not worried when Old Man takes off in murderous pursuit of a butterfly. After all the different places we’ve lived, I know he’ll find his way back to me.
I head farther down the smooth brick path that has replaced the gravel that I remember, beneath a trellis of dripping orange petals, to a bright oasis in an Arizona desert. I stop to pull out my notebook and nub of a pencil to sketch it when something else catches my eye.
It’s a credit to my grandfather that the flowers are what I noticed first and not the girl floating lazily in the pool straight ahead.
She’s on her back, eyes closed, light-skinned face lifted up to soak in the warmth of the sun as her wavy hair floats around her head. She’s humming but I’m too far away to make out the tune. There’s a dreamy half smile on her lips, an ease to her expression that I’ve never even imagined, much less experienced. It has me grinding my teeth before I can recognize the sudden burst of resentment that pulses through me.
But then she lifts one arm to skim her fingers across the surface of the water, and I see the scar on her forearm. I have its twin on my arm from when I let a girl talk me into playing catch with lit fireworks...
My jaw unlocks as her name, warm and radiant as the sun, drifts up from some buried place inside me. “Rebecca?”
Her head turns in my direction, her eyes, somehow bluer than I remember, going wide. “Ethan?” The huge, joyous smile she gives me has me catching my toe on the brick as I stagger toward her.
She strokes over to the side of the pool and lifts herself up to sit on the edge, leaving her legs to dangle in the water. “I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow.”
Of course, my grandparents would have told her. “Yeah, I—um, got here early.” With a mental shove, I force all my thoughts about why I’m here away and let my mind fill only with her.
She scoots down a bit to make room and urges me to sit beside her, leaning away the second I do, not because we’re too close, but so that her gaze can drink in every inch of me. I do the same, noticing the new curves hidden behind her simple navy two-piece. Her lower lip is fuller than the top and the prominent dimple on her left cheek flashes at me. Her hands, more graceful but with the same always-chipped polish, lift to tug at my hair. She quirks an eyebrow at the added length brushing my collar.
“It’s been a while since I cut it,” I say, feeling the need to explain in case she doesn’t like the change.
“I like it,” she says, as though she’s surprised by that fact. “I think.”
I laugh, ducking my head.
Her returning smile is soft. “It’s stupid, I know, but I kind of wanted you to still be thirteen.”
The age we were the last time we saw each other.
I don’t think it’s stupid at all. There were so many nights when I wanted to go back to that time with her. I guess it’s been the same for her. That’s the general line of my thoughts until her fingers drift to the stubble along my jaw and my breath catches slightly.
“This is really too much though,” she adds, grinning. “And what are you, six foot now?”
“Six-one,” I admit, like it’s a crime.
She bites both her lips. “I really want to hug you right now, but you probably don’t want to get wet—”
I wrap her in my arms, feeling the water from her swimsuit soak through my T-shirt, but more than that, I feel the warmth from her sun-kissed skin, the soft sigh of her breath against my neck. And her scent, that forgotten but familiar mix of sunscreen and honeyed sunshine. The ache in my chest relaxes.
When my arms tighten, her voice half breaks. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
I stiffen. I don’t want to think about the reason I’m here, but when I open my eyes, still holding her, I see the proof of how much we’ve both changed behind her.
She releases me and follows my gaze over her shoulder to the empty wheelchair on the other side of the pool.