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Miss you already .
Ricky reads Nini’s text and smiles to himself, pausing with his key inserted in his front door as he taps out a response.
I love you!
He realizes with satisfaction that it gets easier to say - and type - each time. He can’t stop saying it now. He’s got too much lost time to make up for.
He twists the key and pushes the door open. Dry heat races forth from the living room, battling against the December chill and settling over him as he sheds his jacket and tosses it over the back of the couch.
“Ricky? Is that you?”
He pauses and wonders if his mind is playing tricks on him because the voice is too high-pitched to be his dad’s, and come to think of it, it sounds exactly like his… “Mom?” he gapes as his mother rounds the corner and stops short, a cardboard box in her arms.
“Sweetheart, I didn’t think you’d be home so soon,” she says gently. Her smile is pinched and she hugs the box closer to her chest. “Did you have a good time at Nini’s?”
Anger and uncertainty flares within Ricky, mixing with confusion to form a heady and volatile combination. “What are you doing here?” he asks, feeling himself start to shrink away as she takes a step toward him. His back touches a stack of boxes, identical to the one in her arms, piled high like a sentinel beside the door. The tower teeters precariously for a moment before settling. “Where’s Dad?”
“Your father stepped out for a bit,” she answers softly, shuffling past him to stack the latest box atop the others. “I figured that since I was in town, I might as well come get the last of my things.”
Ricky snorts derisively. His mother’s face wavers but she remains silent, backing away from the boxes as if the stack, or perhaps Ricky, will attack her if she turns her back.
It’s a typical Lynne Bowen - or is she Lynne Whatever-The-Hell-Todd’s-Last-Name-Is? - thing to do. Combining business with pleasure. He starts to regret the excitement he felt when he first spotted his mother sitting in the audience. He starts to wonder if watching his onstage debut was even her primary objective to begin with, or if he was only ever a convenient excuse.
Ricky’s eyes pass over the living room as the December sun - deceptively bright for the frigid day outside - reflects off of dust particles that seem to hang in midair. All his life, there was never “his dad’s stuff” or “his mom’s stuff.” It was always just “his parents’ stuff.” Collective. Community property. His parents’ bed. His parents’ bathroom. His parents’ TV. His parents’ house.
The easily divisible things have already been split up. His mom took her clothes and his dad kept his. She took her desk and his remained in the office. She took the sewing machine and he kept the grill. She took the Camry and he kept the truck. But what about the indivisible things?
Ricky steps into the living room, his hand coming to rest on the side table. Outlines in the dust reveal the things his mother found important. The things his mother laid claim to. The little wood carving that spelled out LOVE. The small bamboo bowl that once held all their keys. The teakwood candles. The family picture from their trip to the Grand Canyon two summers ago. He wonders why she would need that, but he’s glad to have the visual reminder gone.
The coffee table books full of black-and-white cityscapes and dull architectural photography have vanished. He’s pretty sure no one ever opened them while they were there. They only ever propped up the TV remote. There is a ring in the carpet where she’s removed one of the floor lamps. The landscape painting that once hung on the wall is also conspicuously absent.
He wonders what he missed while he was at Nini’s. Did his parents go through the house, tagging things “Mike’s” and “Lynne’s?” Was it a negotiation? You can keep the coffee maker if you let me take the treadmill. Did they simply get into one of their infamous screaming matches until one of them inevitably gave in, repeating the process for every item in contention? Or did his dad simply roll over, leave the house, and resign himself to sacrificing whatever his mother wanted to take.
Ricky was never an item in contention. The question came up only once during the divorce arbitration, when the three of them sat down with his parents’ mediators.
“Ricky,” his mother’s mediator - Julie? Jackie? Janice? - had said in the condescendingly gentle, kindergarten tone she seemed to reserve just for him. “Lynne has agreed to let Mike buy her out of the house.” How generous of her. “The only question is what you’d like to do. You can stay with your father, or move to Chicago with your mom.”
His mouth had fallen open as he glanced between his parents, thinking it must be a cruel joke. Did they really need to ask? Stay with his dad, in the house he grew up in, surrounded by his friends, or uproot and start all over in a strange place with a strange mother. It wasn’t a difficult choice.
“It’s entirely your decision, Ricky,” his father had said. “We’ll respect whatever your wishes are.”
He’d wanted to bolt from the room, screaming that if they really respected his wishes, they never would have dragged him here in the first place to witness the burial of their marriage. Instead, he’d looked his mother dead in the eye and bit out, “I want to stay with Dad.”
His mother hadn’t flinched. She had only nodded, as if she’d been anticipating this. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He didn’t want another fight right there in the arbitrator’s office, but he’d also expected some amount of resistance from his mother. Just a half-hearted protest that she would like her son to come with her.
“Okay,” Julie/Jackie/Janice had said, fingers flying over the keyboard on her computer as she encoded his fate in the contract. And that was that. He was a line item in his parents’ separation.
“Ricky,” his mother says gently, lingering by the door and holding another box. How many of those does she have? And what will she leave us with when she’s done? “Todd’s coming with the rental car soon. Would you mind giving me a hand, sweetheart?” she asks, nodding her head in the direction of the stack, which reaches above her head now.
He takes a step toward her, throwing her a withering look but fully prepared to take the box from her hands. Then he stops. “I do mind, actually,” he says bitterly. “Start another stack or something.” He hears her exhale sharply as he pushes past her and makes for the stairs.
Ricky’s room is the only untouched room in the house. The only room that’s complete. He slams the door shut with more force than intended. The doorframe shudders and rattles like it's been punched in the teeth. He throws himself onto his bed and fishes in his pocket for his phone. In one fluid move, he removes it and plugs his earbuds in, immediately tapping into Spotify and blasting the first thing that comes up. His eardrums throb in protest as The 1975 bursts forth from his earbuds, drowning out the sound of cardboard sliding across hardwood downstairs.
He opens his texts and hesitates as his thumb hovers above Nini’s name. It’s a habit he never quite broke when they were broken up, and now that they’re back together, he’s slipped back into it as easily as remembering to ride a bike.
Hey. Having mom troubles.
He hesitates and debates writing more, but it would take paragraphs. She’ll know what he means, and she’ll probably call, and he’ll be able to elaborate out loud. He lets out a puff of breath, tosses his phone aside, and slumps against his headboard, clutching his pillow and fixing his eyes on a scuff on the wall opposite him.
His music is so loud that he misses the gentle knock at his door and the firmer, more insistent knocking that follows. Finally, the door eases open and he jerks his head in the direction, pausing his music as his mother treads lightly into the room.
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I knocked but I thought you might be asleep.”
For a moment, Ricky wishes he really was asleep. His mother has yet another box of things in her arms and he wonders if she’s come to clean him out, too.
“I found some stuff while I was cleaning out the basement,” she tells him, sitting gingerly on the end of his bed. It dips with her weight and she sets the box beside her. He hates the way she says it. Just cleaning out the basement . As if she’s doing some light spring cleaning and not boxing things up to ship to her new home, with her new boyfriend. “Thought you might like to see,” she smiles, rummaging inside the crate.
Ricky clenches his jaw and unclenches it, then clenches it again. He has no idea what she’s brought to show him, but he’s afraid of it.
“Take a look,” she slides a picture over to him and he recognizes it immediately. It’s him, in all his gap-toothed, seven year-old glory, wearing Mickey Mouse ears and receiving a hug from Minnie at Disneyland. It’s his mother’s favorite photo from that trip. It used to be his favorite, too. She would pull it out anytime that vacation came up in conversation, passing it around to anyone who would look and declaring that she’d never seen her son smile that wide. It’s not true. He’s smiled wider.
“Remember this trip?” she asks.
He nods slowly, clutching his pillow tighter to his chest. How could he forget getting his picture taken with his “first crush?” How could he forget one of the happiest family vacations of his life? He feels a wave of nausea wash over him, his stomach churning and threatening to push bile up to his throat. Whatever this walk down memory lane is supposed to be, it’s perverse, and he eyes the door while considering an escape.
“Oh! And this!” his mother says, showing him a photo from Christmas Eve last year. He and Nini are huddled together, his arm around her waist, her hand on his chest and her head against his shoulder. The Christmas tree is visible in the background, trimmed in glittering ribbons. His mother always went all-out for Christmas. He realizes with a sinking feeling that the tree won’t look nearly that nice this year, if they even have one at all.
“I wasn’t going to show it to you because of…” his mother’s voice trails off. “But anyway,” she brightens, “you and Nini are back together now, and it’s such a cute photo…”
Ricky’s throat tightens and he has to force himself to swallow air while he simultaneously tamps down the anger that surges within him, hot and quick. She was barely around when he and Nini were together. Business trips, supposedly, but he knows better now. And she’d definitely been absent after he and Nini broke up. She has no right to comment on their mended relationship, as if she’d always been on the sidelines rooting them on. His fingers curl around his pillow and he feels it give under his iron grip.
“One more thing!” she says, reaching back into the box like it’s Santa’s toy bag, filled with macabre reminders of his past. “Look. Remember this?”
She produces a model locomotive, black and red with gold trim that’s chipped off in places. It’s a leftover from when he was five and obsessed with trains. Back in the days when he and Nini and Big Red and Kourtney would string together cardboard boxes in their backyards and squabble over who would get to be the train conductor. Except Nini, who always wanted to ride in the caboose because she liked the way the word sounded. Once upon a time, that engine and its accompanying cars circled a set of tracks around the base of the Christmas tree, bounding over the white cotton snow and blinking past gold-wrapped presents.
“Why are you showing me all this?” Ricky chokes out.
Lynne looks taken aback. “Oh. Well, I was hoping to take some of them with me. You know, as keepsakes. But I wanted your permission first.”
Ricky’s first thought is to refuse and snatch the box closer to him, guarding it protectively. The contents don’t matter to him anymore. The Christmas photo of him and Nini already exists on Instagram and he’d rather forget the pictures of vacations long-past. The train would just sit in his closet, collecting more dust. But his mother wants these things, and he wants to deny her the pleasure.
In the end, he can’t bring himself to do it. If the house manages to feel empty while still fully-furnished, he can only imagine how bare her apartment in Chicago must feel. Here, he has his dad. He has his friends. He has Nini. He can make more memories and his life will still feel full. Photos and mementos will be all his mother has when she leaves. The anger that heated his veins moments ago, burning white-hot in his chest, is gone, leaving only a hollow feeling in its wake.
“Sure. Keep ‘em,” he relents.
His mother smiles gratefully, and for a moment, he sees a hint of her old self. The mother who would rush to hug him when she came home from work, even when he insisted he was too old to be hugged by his mother. The mother who greeted each of his friends by name, even new friends she’d never met before. The mother who made pancakes on Saturday mornings and scolded him for drowning them in syrup, who sat across the table from his dad and laughed when he told her inside jokes that only they understood.
“I’m going to find a special place for them,” she promises him. “You’ll see when you come to visit.” There is a hopeful look in her eyes. He’s never agreed to visit her in Chicago. They’ve never discussed it, and truthfully he’s not sure he’ll ever want to see his mother’s life there - the life she’s made with Todd. He can only nod, and the sudden vibrating of his phone offers him the perfect excuse to leave. He snatches his phone off the mattress and cedes his room to his mother, leaving her sifting through the box of memories.
“Sorry I didn’t see your text at first!” Nini apologizes breathlessly before he has a chance to even say hello. “Mama C’s making gumbo and it’s an all-hands-on-deck affair. Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Ricky exhales, feeling his heart ease the moment Nini’s voice pours from the phone. “I think.”
“Why don’t you come over and tell me about it?” she asks, and he knows she’s not really asking.
“Are you sure it’s okay? I was just over…”
“I’m not the one asking,” she answers resolutely. “Mama D is.”
His face relaxes into a smile. “Well I can’t argue with Mama D…”
Nini opens the door before Ricky even rings the bell, enveloping him into a tight hug that threatens to pull him down on top of her. When she pulls back, her dark eyes search his, trying to verify whether he’s truly alright. He isn’t sure whether he passes inspection or not. She takes him by the hand and pulls him toward the stairs, frighteningly strong for her small stature. He’d forgotten how strong she is.
Mama C appears in the kitchen doorway, brandishing a ladle. “Dinner’s in twenty,” she says. “Don’t be late.” Her blue eyes twinkle as they settle on the curly-haired teenager, his hand still joined with Nini’s. “That includes you, Ricky,” she smiles.
“That’s fucked up,” Nini says when Ricky is finished relaying the afternoon’s events to her. She doesn’t apologize for her language, and he can’t find it in himself to even pretend to defend his mother.
“The worst part is that she didn’t even tell me, you know? No heads up or anything. She was just...there. Packing stuff up.”
He rests his head in her lap and she runs her hands soothingly through his mop of curls. The comforter is still wrinkled from where they lay earlier that day, cuddling and half-watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower , pointedly ignoring the YAC acceptance letter lying just a few feet away on her desk. The bowl of popcorn - filled only with unpopped kernels now - still sits, streaked with butter grease on the nightstand.
“Do you really think that’s the main reason she came?” she asks. Somehow, she can’t see Ricky’s mom making the trip out to Salt Lake City primarily to get her belongings. The divorce revealed a lot of unsavory things about Lynne Bowen - about both of Ricky’s parents, really - but Lynne isn’t a monster, and everything Nini knows about her says that she wouldn’t miss her son’s opening night for the world. Bringing Todd along without asking was a drastic mistake. Not telling Ricky that she was planning to take the last of her things was another. But it doesn’t change the fact that from what she could tell growing up, she was always a good mom to Ricky and a generous hostess to their ever-expanding group of friends.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Ricky says quietly, and Nini lets the comment stand without challenge. They fall silent, her hands threading through his hair as he shakes his foot anxiously, causing the mattress to vibrate. She hopes her moms won’t get the wrong idea downstairs.
“Nini?” he peeps, and she looks down at him just in time to see the first tear streak down his face, rolling off his cheek and terminating somewhere on the comforter beneath him. Her breath hitches, and she feels the pressure building behind her eyes because the look on his face is so shattered and vulnerable. Pain has always been a difficult thing for Nini to see. Ricky’s pain is unbearable.
“What is it, love?” she asks softly, dipping her head and allowing her dark hair to fan in front of her face. He doesn’t need to see her cry right now.
“I just… Do you think my parents ever loved each other?”
Her smile is full of remorse and she shrugs helplessly. “I’m sure they did, Ricky.”
It’s not the answer he was hoping for. Love - true love - is supposed to be permanent and all-encompassing. It isn’t supposed to fall apart and leave nothing but half-empty houses and ghosts in the dust. He loves Nini. He feels it in every layer of his skin, in every muscle, in every bone. And if his parents once felt that way - if they once felt that same love in their bones - then it means that love can be torn apart. The idea terrifies him. He’s nearly lost Nini before, and getting her back has only made him fall in love with her more. Losing her now would leave behind less than just half a home. It would leave him half the person he is now.
His eyes meet Nini’s, and he can see plainly that she’s crying with him. It only makes the tears come faster, and soon his vision is blurred to the point that she’s little more than an amorphous shape: the tan of her skin melding with the cobalt blue of her sweater to form a puddle before him. “I love you,” he whispers, as if he might break into pieces if he speaks any louder. “And I don’t want to lose you.”
“Ricky,” she lets out a watery exhale. “You couldn’t lose me.”
“I almost did once,” he squeaks. “Because I was stupid and scared, and I didn’t want to take a risk by saying I love you. But I love you, Nini. I do.” His gaze slides towards her desk and the unsealed acceptance letter that sits on top of her laptop, waiting to be answered. “I’ll love you wherever you go.”
Nini’s face softens into a smile. She pauses for a moment, then eases herself off the bed and pads across the room, glancing in the makeup mirror and brushing the tear streaks from her face. “I was going to wait until Christmas to give you this, but the timing feels right,” she says. She opens the top drawer of her dresser and pulls out a green box with a red lid, then clambers back onto the bed and hands it to him.
He holds the box, marveling at it. “You didn’t have to -”
“Just open it,” she insists.
Ricky eases the lid off and peers inside. The box is padded in gold cloth, and lying in the middle is a pewter compass rose, fastened to a red string. He slowly takes it out and holds it up admiringly.
“It’s a bracelet,” Nini tells him without being asked. She gently takes it from him and pulls his left hand toward her. The string tickles his wrist as she ties it securely.
“There’s a story to go with it. It comes from Chinese folklore but a lot of cultures have their own versions of it. It’s called the Red Thread of Fate,” she says, her finger brushing the red string. “It says that when you’re born, there’s an invisible red thread tied to your finger. The other end is tied to the finger of your true love. No matter how far you go, the thread connects you. It can stretch and tangle, but it can never break. And no matter the time or place or circumstances, the red thread of fate will always lead you back to each other.”
She dares to look at him directly. His brown eyes are wide, still glassy from unshed tears, and his mouth hangs open in awe of her. She smiles softly.
“I haven’t decided if I’m going to go to the YAC yet,” she tells him. “But no matter where I go, or where you go, this is our red thread of fate. It’ll always guide you home to me, and it’ll always guide me home to you. The compass rose is there to help you find the way.”
“Nini…” Ricky begins, but his words fail. There’s nothing he can say to describe the feelings that well up inside him and threaten to bring forth a fresh round of tears. He’s not even sure what those feelings are, only that they are warm and that he would gladly stop time and sink into this moment if it meant holding Nini to him and living in these feelings forever. He turns to her and does the only thing he can do to communicate his love. He presses his lips against hers and thinks of every beautiful, warm thing that Nini makes him feel, and he hopes that in doing so, she understands. The tension leaves his body. He feels weightless as she relaxes against him, taking in everything he’s telling her without words and sending a message of her own.
I love you . I love you. I love you.
“I’ll think of another Christmas present for you,” she says when they finally pull apart, worming her way deeper into his arms.
He chuckles, a rich and inviting sound, and pulls her closer to him as he buries his face in her hair. “You’re the only thing I need.”
“Kids!” Mama D’s voice carries from the base of the stairs. “Dinner!”
Ricky rolls off the bed and offers Nini his hand, lifting her to her feet. Together, they stare at their reflections in the mirror: eyes red and puffy, noses runny.
“God, I look like a mess,” she laughs ruefully.
Ricky spins her towards him and places a gentle kiss to her forehead. “You look perfect,” he tells her. Nonetheless, he doesn’t resist when she leads him to the bathroom to wash their faces and straighten out their clothes.
The table is set when they reach the dining room, and Mama C ladles steaming gumbo into four white bowls. “There’s plenty, so don’t be shy about seconds,” she says. Ricky takes a seat at the table beside Nini, raising a spoonful of stew to his lips and blowing to cool it. The warmth and spices dance across his tongue and his eyes widen in amazement. Mama C laughs when she catches his expression. “I spent a summer in New Orleans,” she says. “Picked up a thing or two.”
Mama D dumps tabasco sauce into her bowl and takes a savoring bite. “Best decision you ever made,” she exults.
“Not true,” she answers, reaching out and closing a hand over her wife’s. “The best decision I ever made was you.”
“Moms! Gross,” Nini complains good-naturedly.
Ricky takes another bite. Under the table, Nini slips her hand in his, mirroring her moms across from them. He can’t escape the warmth that swells within him when he realizes that this is home. This feeling of laughter and joy and Mama C and Mama D giggling as they accidentally talk over one another is home. Nini is home. Not his half-empty house. Not his mom, tossing years of memories into a box to bring with her to Chicago, marrying one life to the next.
He glances down at the bracelet, newly tied to his wrist, and Nini’s hand clasped in his. Her words echo in his head. It can stretch and tangle, but it can never break. This is our red thread of fate. It will always guide you home to me, and it will always guide me home to you.