Almost reluctantly, Rex climbed the stairs to the second storey of the house, then a separate staircase that led to the attic. In the left corner of the room stood a few large boxes that he needed to finish, but after that, he’d be free.
He made easy work inspecting the largest boxes. Each of them contained baby clothes and some of the toys he and Amy left behind when they spent summers at the house. He pulled a worn-down action figure from inside and smiled, wiping away the dust on his face with his thumb. If Rex thought hard enough, he could still hear the way Amy would make him play with dolls despite their sizeable age gap. He always made an exception for her, but only after Nana encouraged him to spend time with her.
“She’s the only sister you’ve got,” he said aloud, thinking back to her favorite phrase. “You better cherish her before it’s too late.”
He tossed the toy back into the box and scooted it aside, squatting down to open the smaller one beside it. Beneath albums and albums of photos of her as a child up until she was in her eighties, Rex found an unmarked leather book. He flipped through it curiously, and when he began to read it, it was obvious this had been one of Nana’s journals.
Amongst all of her other hobbies, writing was something the woman had done frequently. Not a night went by that she hadn’t put her thoughts on paper, retelling her day to a book that no one would ever read. Well, no one other than Rex.
Most of the book appeared to be quite uneventful, but as he approached September, he realized where he was in time. His parents had just split, and though Alan always hated it, Nana Bailey had taken him and Phoebe in. The entries grew noticeably longer as Rex continued to read, and rather than giving general overviews of her day, Nana Bailey dug deep.
She spoke about Alan like she had faith in him. No matter how terrible he was, she’d always yearned for him to make the right decision. It both incensed Rex and shattered his heart that she never lost hope in Alan. No matter how many times he fucked up, she was always there to cheer him on and tell him to do better. Make better decisions.
“I just don’t want Rexy to see any of this,” she’d written sometime in August. “He’s not that old, but I can see it on his face. He may not understand all the details about Phoebe and Alan’s situation, but he knows something is wrong. Watching his parents fight can’t be good for him, I don’t think.”
Rex stopped reading and looked away, flooded with memories of the shouting matches his parents got into. All the nights Alan had shown up at Nana’s home, drunk off his ass, demanding that Phoebe give him back his son. The times he cried in his mother’s arms, begging her to go back to Alan and not understanding why she wouldn’t make the family whole again.
He understood now. She’d fought for years to keep things together, but it was Alan that had ruined everything. He had a knack for that the same way Rex did.
“I’m worried that if they don’t figure this out, Rexy won’t ever get to see what a healthy relationship looks like. They say that can happen when a child witnesses a nasty divorce. They get so used to fighting and anger that they think love is like that. The only thing that could break my heart more than what Alan’s done is if Rexy suffers from it too. I can’t let him think love isn’t real, or that it means always being hurt.”
“Nana,” he whispered, pressing his fingers hard against the aged pages of the journal. He traced the cursive letters, grounding himself. But that wasn’t what brought his emotions past the point he could control them. It was the rest of the entry, the way Nana Bailey swore to herself that she would spend every second of every day showing Rex what love looked like that had him dotting the pages of her diary with his tears. How she went into detail in nearly every entry about all the ways she’d do it. Spending time with him and Amy. Taking him down to the library and reading for hours with him. Making sure he knew that he would always have her heart.
He’d always been blind to it, or assumed that was just what grandmothers did. They spoiled their grandchild rotten because they didn’t have to be around them at their worst. But not Nana. She’d been there through it all, every bitter fight and broken dish, determined to show him that it was all worth it.
It wasn’t all bullshit the way Rex had assumed. Maybe his father was incapable of seeing it, but Rex could see it perfectly. He knew what love looked like. He knew what kind of sacrifice it took. The strength needed to promise someone that no matter how rough the future for them might get, they would bear it all together.
All she’d wanted was for him to find love, to find someone to care about the way she cared for him, and he’d utterly, royally fucked it all up. Rex considered himself relatively intelligent, but in this particular moment, he felt so goddamn stupid.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Amy like muscle memory. Just like he assumed something was wrong whenever she called, Amy answered the phone with a wary, “Rex? What’s wrong?”
“I need your help, Ames. I screwed up really fucking bad.”
Fifteen
“So, let me get this straight… He didn’t tell none of y’all why we’re over here so goddamn early in the morning?” Omar asked.
“No! All he told me was that he needed my help, and to call everyone else up and see if they were willing to help too.” Amy seemed just as confused as the rest of them. Rex couldn’t blame them. He’d been a bit vague when he told Amy that he needed her help. All he’d said was that he’d screwed up with Jordan and desperately needed to fix the situation. That was more than enough for her, given how invested in their…relationship she was. Well, what relationship they’d once had.
Rex hadn’t been able to sleep a bit since he’d found Nana’s journal, his mind racing with all the ways he could fix this. He spent nights tossing and turning, and his nightmares were all about Jordan rejecting him each time he tried to apologize. It was clear that he had to do something big. Something to show Jordan that he saw how wrong he was, how confused he’d been. It was a stupid mistake, leaving him like that, and now he was willing to jump out of a plane without a parachute if it meant earning his forgiveness.
That was why he carried two giant handfuls of flyers outside to his front porch where all of his friends were. Omar looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, as well as Amy, Lana, and Charles, but Gloria and Madeline were dressed to the nines. Of course, the two morning birds would show up looking as beautiful as ever.
“There he is,” Amy said. “What the hell took you so long? I’m out here having to play damage control for everyone. Omar’s pissed,” she said in a hushed voice, looking over her shoulder.
“Omar’s always pissed,” Rex replied, raising his voice so the man could hear.
“Damn right. What are we even doing, man?”
“Well, Madeline told me that Jordan said Meet Cute Club was on hold indefinitely, and I’m not going to let that happen. It’s my fault that he gave up hope on it. I ruined it when he and I…” He struggled to find the words, but thankfully—or unluckily in Rex’s case—Amy seemed more than happy to fill in the gaps for the others.
“When he and Jordan broke up.”