Chapter Twenty-One
“THIS IS NICE,” Mom whispered from beside me.
“Yeah. Sure,” I agreed halfheartedly, albeit reluctantly, as we followed Maggie, Shady Acres’ Assistant Director, down the hallway and toward the facility’s gym.
Shady Acres was the definition of bright and friendly. The staff were attentive, affectionate, and accepting, and after witnessing one of the other residents have a meltdown in the middle of the cafeteria, I knew they were also patient. I knew that if he were to live here, they would care for Jake and do what was best for him, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced that living here was the right answer for him.
After my front porch conversation with Audrey, and all of that God talk, I’d hesitantly begun to think that maybe she was right, to a degree. What quality of life had I really provided him by trudging through each day? He knew I hadn’t been happy. He always knew my colors, whatever the hell that meant to him, and how could that not impact his mood negatively?
Jake trailed behind us with his headphones blasting his favorite Walk the Moon album. He studied every door, every room, with silent scrutiny, and I wished I could get inside his head to know what he was thinking and feeling. But his expression always remained neutral, unmoved, and that only added to my frustration.
“And here’s the gym,” Maggie announced, sweeping an arm into the brightly lit room packed with exercise equipment.
“Where does that go?” Dad asked, pointing toward a glass door on the other side of the room.
“That,” Maggie began, folding her hands over her middle, “leads to our indoor pool. Water therapy has been wonderful for some of our residents.”
“Jake never learned how to swim again,” Mom mentioned astutely.
“Oh, that’s okay! A lot of our residents don’t know how to swim. But,” she continued, “the ones who do, really enjoy it.”
Dad meandered around the gym, touching the bench presses and weight machines like he was checking for flaws in their quality. Then he nodded approvingly and looked toward me. “This is some nice stuff, Blake,” he said. “You should check it out.”
“I’m looking at it, Dad.”
“Yeah, but you could test it out. Make sure it’s good, you know?”
I snorted. “Yeah, Dad. Let me just do a few reps right now for you,” I replied sarcastically, but I walked further into the room to get closer to the equipment and make him happy.
While I’d always found it difficult to read my mother, I knew my father had not only been trying to make this easy on Jake, but on me as well. He knew it had taken a lot for me to open up to the idea, so every step of the way, he had sought my approval. From the bedrooms to the rec rooms, he’d always asked what I thought, if I liked it, as though I was the one moving in instead of my brother.
While I appreciated the rare effort, it wasn’t making it any easier on me. If anything, it made it harder, as I realized more and more that both of their minds had clearly already been made up.
“So, what do you think?” Dad asked, proving my point.
“It’s good, yeah,” I replied, brushing my hand along a barbell. “If Jake starts lifting weights, he’s gonna kick all of our asses,” I made an attempt at a joke, and Dad acknowledged it with a soft chuckle.
“Yeah, right? God help us.”
He sidled up to me, tipping his mouth toward my ear. “I think Mom wants to fill out the paperwork before we leave. But what do you think?”
The sinking sensation in my stomach was indescribable, but all I could do was shrug and say, “I don’t think it really matters what I think, does it?”
“Don’t say that, Blake. You know we care.”
“We?” I challenged, hardening my glare.
He smiled apologetically and shrugged, answering my question without words.
I sighed, forcing myself to climb down from my defensive anger. “Don’t you think you’re settling? There are other places. Hell, there are other options. And you’re, what? Just gonna dump him in the first one you check out?”
He flinched and I knew I’d gotten to him. My words had stung, and that hadn’t been my intention. “Sorry,” I began to apologize, but he shook his head.
“I’ll try to talk to your mother.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned to face the door and saw Jake. His eyes were fixated on me as he gripped his iPod in one hand and his headphones in the other. Furrowing my brow, I walked toward him and asked, “What’s up, buddy?”
He met my eyes with that knowing gaze of his. The one that never failed to irk me. “You’re blue.”
“Blue?” I furrowed my brow and he nodded.
“Blue. Like Grover,” he stated calmly.
I’d never been given blue before. I’d been so many colors of the rainbow, mostly leaning on the negative side, but never blue. It left me unsettled until I got in the car with Jake and my parents and looked it up on my phone.
Apparently, according to the internet, blue had many meanings, but what I repeatedly found was that blue was the color of intuition and support. The color of someone that others find help in. Someone very generous, in their time and otherwise. My heart thumped as I read, as I connected with the color more and more with every webpage I visited. It was such a vibrant, positive smudge on everything I thought to be me, but it clicked. It fit and it simply worked.
I glanced at Jake, sitting beside me in the backseat. He was drawing, a blue crayon held between his fingers. He circled the outline of a black figure holding a sword and shield, pressing the crayon firmly against the page.
I swallowed at my nerves, as I stared at his picture, and I asked, “Whatcha drawing, buddy?”
“You,” he replied simply, not bothering to look at me.
My snorted laugh was forced. “I don’t own a sword or shield. That’d be weird.”
“You don’t need one,” he answered, his tone flat as he circled the figure over and over again in blue. “Don’t worry, Blake. You’ll make it better. You’re brave and you’re a warrior. You’ll make it better.”
I smiled, reminding myself that my parents hadn’t filled out the paperwork yet, because of me. And even though my color of choice was typically black, blue didn’t seem like such a bad color to wear either.
***
“Blake! How are you? Everything okay?” Dr. Travetti asked, opening her office door to me.
“Well, Doc,” I began, entering the room and dropping myself onto the couch, “I guess that depends on your definition of okay.”
She sat in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. Leaning forward, she grabbed her clipboard from off the coffee table and suggested, as usual, “How about you start with how your weekend went?”
I tipped my head back against the couch and studied the ceiling in search of the best words to describe my weekend. Yet, even with thousands of words in the dictionary, all I could adequately come up with was, “Surprising.”
Dr. Travetti urged me to continue, as I knew she would, and I told her about the photoshoot, about how I had called Audrey and invited her to hang out while I had my picture taken. I told her how I then went out with Audrey, Cee, and Shane for dinner, making it the first double date of my entire existence. How I went back to Audrey’s place, shared another night of drunken sex, and had woken up to discover Audrey has a kid.