"Honey, I'm home!" I giggled as I shut the door leading to the garage behind me. I entered our salmon colored laundry room and went straight through it.
This house that Shawn and I had bought a year ago was my dream house. It was two stories with a basement and perfectly rectangular with a typical roof. The exterior was painted light yellow with white trim and shutters. The interior is certainly hard to describe. Every room is a different style, with different colors, textures, and ambiance. The living room was a light forest green with white crown molding and had tons of Chinese stuff. I had even placed a baby bamboo in a pot in a corner of the room. One of the guest bedrooms was completely black and white. Our room was painted a deep crimson with gold-framed mirrors and Rembrandt carvings and sketches. The sheets, picked out by Shawn, were all different animal prints; one was leopard, the next zebra… it was certainly a chaotic room. My mom described it as a room out of whorehouse, which of course I had rolled my eyes at.
As I walked into our kitchen, humming "For The Longest Time" (by Billy Joel, of course. Who else?), I felt arms wrap around me from behind and a chin rest on my shoulder. "Hey," Shawn breathed.
I turned around in his arms. "Hey, how are you?"
"Perfect, now that you're here," he grinned. I giggled and kissed him.
"So, what's for dinner?" I asked. We rotated who was cooking dinner and tonight was his night. Shockingly, he was actually a pretty decent cook. Almost as good as me. Almost.
"Well, I know it's Monday night, but I kind of cooked up something a little special."
I grinned as he led me into the dining room. Two places were set with our best china, silver, and champagne glasses, with a salad in a bowl in the middle. A single red rose was placed on the place that I was assuming was mine. This was what I loved about Shawn. Spontaneity.
As I turned around to kiss Shawn, any thought of my problem with Taylor being my patient fled from my mind. We kissed passionately and when we pulled away, I saw Shawn grinning again.
"What?" I giggled.
"Why don't you go put on something a little more comfortable, huh?"
"Now where have I heard that before?" I laughed.
"Me?"
"Well, yeah. Anyway, I'll be right back!" I retreated to our room, trying to decide what to wear. After I had climbed the stairs and was at my closet, the phone rang. I picked up quickly. "Hello?"
"Hi dear, it's mother."
"Yes, mom, I know. No one else calls me 'dear'."
"Well I don't know! Maybe Mrs. Robins says that," my mom guessed, referring to Shawn's mother. I pictured her shrugging.
"Anyways, what's up?"
"Well, dear, I had a little chat with Diana the other day."
My face fell and my mood darkened at the mention of Taylor's mother.
"And?" I replied dully.
"Well it seems that for the past three months Taylor has been in rehab!"
"Uh-huh."
"And so we were chatting about it, and then she changed the subject to you and asked where you worked. So I said the LA Rehab Center and what do you know! That is where Taylor is. So I was hoping maybe you could drop by his room and talk to him."
"You told Diana I work there," I stated. So the whole thing about the three other counselors was bullshit. Diana had requested me!
"Well, yes, she asked and-"
"Yes I know she asked. Mom. Taylor is now my patient! Because you told her! God damn it," I muttered.
"But I thought you only deal with teenagers! I told Diana that."
"Well she must not of thought too much of it because now I have to deal with him."
"Oh, dear. I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, yeah. Well I have to go."
I hung up the phone, flustered and annoyed at my mother for ruining my evening. Looking back at my closet, I decided that I just wasn't in the mood to where what I had planned (something skimpy and sexy and black, of course), so I grabbed a pair of Shawn's boxers, a shirt, and some wooly socks. After throwing those all on I tramped back down the stairs and into the dining room. I found Shawn carefully preparing the salad and sighed. I really wanted to do whatever he wanted to do tonight, but I couldn't. My day had been so stressful and now the only thing that filled my mind was Taylor.
When Shawn had his back to me, I crept up slowly to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. Salad went flying and so did the spoons. "Holy crap!" Shawn yelled. "You scared me!"
I giggled and hugged him closer to me. "I'm sorry, sweets," I whispered.
"Yeah, yeah," Shawn muttered. He turned around and held me in his arms. "Who was on the phone?"
"My mother," I groaned into his chest.
Shawn chuckled. "What did she have to say?"
"Nothing important except, well, okay…" I pulled away from Shawn and tugged him into the living room. We fell into our oversized chair and I snuggled up to him. "You know how I only work with teenagers? Well there is this one patient at the clinic and none of the other counselors could help him. He's my age… Anyway, they assigned him to me. Guess who he is?"
"Hmm… Let's see. Okay I have no idea."
"Worst possible person. I hate his guts."
"No!"
"Yup. And he's awful, Shawn! He won't cooperate. He's a depressed drunk and is saying that all of his problems are my fault because I broke up with him. I mean what did he expect me to do? Say that it was okay for him to cheat on me? Ugh!" I moaned. I buried my face in Shawn's chest. "I hate him."
Shawn ran his fingers through my hair and kissed the top of my head. "You know, sweetie, just don't worry about it. It isn't your problem out of work."
"I know, but work is… well… work and a lot of times it's hard to forget your patients, you know?"
Shawn nodded. He was a medical assistant at one of the hospitals while he was finishing his medical degree at University of California Los Angles. And so, I had expected him to know how I felt. Then again, he had never had a patient who was his ex-girlfriend who had cheated on him. Or one that he had been in love with, none-the-less.
"Well, baby, I don't know what to tell you," Shawn sighed.
I sighed right a long with him. "Well, do you want to go eat? It looks wonderful."
"Yeah."
We got up, hand-in-hand and strode into the dining room. The salad was already on plates with raspberry vinaigrette, I assumed, because that was my favorite. Shawn sat down and before I did, I smiled mischievously. "You go ahead and get started," I grinned and winked. "I'll be right back."
Shawn's eyes grew wide and he grinned, knowing my motives. I flounced through the kitchen and up the stairs into our bedroom. My eyes fell on my little black nighty from Victoria's Secret on first glanced. I grinned again.
Shawn and I kissed again. "Good night," he whispered.
"Good night."
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
I snuggled into Shawn's naked chest, hypnotized by his steady breathing. His fingers absent-mindedly brushed one of my damp strings of curls off of my face. Sighing contentedly, I glanced across the room at the window, waiting for sleep to overcome me.
The white linen curtains billowed out around me as I stood at the window. They were floor length, and I examined the light brown stain, wondering where it had come from. Our house was fairly new, built only four years prior. My mom, sister, and I were the first occupants.
My gaze fell outside again. I brushed my hands lightly down my thighs, hoping to get some of the sweat off. I was dressed in a vintage-type dress, light pink with hot pink and tan flowers. It went just below my knees with a criss-crossed chest and short sleeves that had been cut and hemmed down the middle of them. I loved my dress, the hot pink shoes even more. I was home from college at Stanford and my best friend, Anna, and my boyfriend, Shawn- who were also brother and sister- were picking me up in about ten minutes for a fancy dinner. Anna's boyfriend, Allen, was meeting us at the restaurant. ,p>As I watched for them from my second-story window, something else caught my gaze. Our next-door neighbors, the Hanson's, were returning home. The family was in one large clump, with the addition of my sister who was dating one of the brother's, Zac, all making their way towards the front door. One dirty blonde head was trailing after with a lost look in his eyes. He had no expression on his face; he was completely blank. It was almost as though he were a zombie. This lost child was my ex-boyfriend, Taylor.
I continued watching the family's procession. Walker, the father, was in front, laughing at the chaos he called his family. Grouped around him were the two older sisters, Jessica and Avery, chatting loudly, the littlest brother, Mackenzie, who was bouncing up and down, yelling at his father to hurry up so he could play his new video game. Diana, the mother, was walking alongside Mackenzie, holding the youngest daughter, Zoë, and laughing with her oldest child, Isaac. Zac and Serena, my sister, were behind them, holding hands and talking closely. I could hear all of yelling, talking, laughing, and general loudness through the window screen and smiled softly. I missed that family. They had become my own in the month that Taylor and I had fallen in love. But then he had cheated on me. And even though I was "always welcome" according to Diana, I had never become comfortable enough to even enter their yard unless it was to get my sister.
I looked at Taylor again. The slouch still invaded his usual confidence and there was no sparkle in his eyes. He looked up at my window directly and caught me off guard. We looked at each other for a moment, and then I looked away. I knew he was still watching me when Shawn and Anna pulled up to the driveway.
My eyes opened quickly. I was sweating like there was no tomorrow and breathing like I was hyperventilating. Shawn was still wrapped around me and I was not back in Tulsa, 19 years old, Taylor's eyes penetrating me. That had not actually been a dream, but a memory that had worked it's way into my dream. The clock read four in the morning. I was going to have to get up in an hour and a half. But when I tried closing my eyes, the only thing I saw was Taylor's deep blue eyes, lost and confused.