Author's Note: This one is an homage to Xarth, one of my favourite authors (check my favourites list), roughly inspired by the very first story they posted - 'Kaylee'.
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The welcome party at the airport set the tone for my return home.
By which I meant the complete absence of a single person.
I had sort of left things in a bad way, when I left, so it was partially my fault. Mostly my fault... All my fault.
I was head-over-heels for my girlfriend, so when she had proposed moving to Paris, I may have resisted at first, but she won out in the end. We packed our bags, ignored everyone telling us it was a terrible idea, and headed out.
She had instantly fallen in love with the city. Sinking all of our savings into this tiny 2-bit cafe off a side street, despite the fact neither of us had any experience in either business or cooking.
Instead of romance in the world's most romantic city, all I got was fucked.
The daily stress of keeping things running, just above sinking beneath all the debt, was absolutely crushing me. We were just barely scraping by, when about six months into the venture, she started finding excuses to be elsewhere, or work less, and I became a burned out husk.
In the end, it was too much.
I didn't have enough money to think about buying a plane ticket home, so I was forced to reach out to my parents, begging. They agreed to it, and even offered to clear my debt so I could safely leave the nation, on the one condition:
That when I came home, I actually came home.
I would live under their roof, and get a job and pay my way, until they were satisfied that not only had I paid them back, I had demonstrated I could live independently without screwing up my entire life.
So, only twelve months after I left, I found myself back in my birth nation, in a busy and clean airport. It felt lonely and clinical as I made my way through it, collected my one suitcase that was now the sum total of my possessions, and caught a ride share back to my parents' house.
Arriving on the doorstep, I saw that their cars were missing, probably at work. Earning their way without naive and stupid dreams. However, I also saw that another car was parked in front of the house.
A familiar, beat-up red little hatchback.
It had been a gift, back when I had a bank account that wasn't completely laughable, from me to my younger sister. A congratulations for her earning her driver's license.
Which meant that she was still living with my parents, probably. She'd never exactly been in a hurry to move out. She was twenty, this year. I'd already missed her birthday, and hadn't been able to send her any kind of present.
I hadn't said goodbye, before I left, either.
I was not looking forward to this conversation, especially without our casual-going parents to buffer the inevitable screaming back and forth. She had a way of getting under my skin, even when she was right.
I usually made her cry, in the end.
I fumbled with my keys, finding the old key from when I'd called this place home, and entered the house slowly. I called out as I closed the door, "Laura, you home?"
I wheeled the case down the length of the hallway, passed a bunch of landscape paintings. Most of them were as familiar to me as the back of my hand. However, there were a couple of new ones. All of them signed with a tiny L.W. in the bottom left corner.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up, readying myself to try and head to my childhood bedroom... And passed her room. Hoping to hell she was either not home, or hadn't heard me.
I heard that God hated me when I got halfway up the stairs. A door creaking open, and soft footfalls on the carpet.
She came into view, her cascading black hair falling all the way to her hips. She instinctively tucked a strand behind one ear, and looked at me as if I'd just thrown up all over the floor. "Oh. It's you."
I flinched, waiting for the rant.
She turned and walked back to her room quietly. Didn't even slam her door. I think I would have preferred it if she lashed out at me, instead of... This.
I dragged my suitcase, and my guilt, off to my bedroom.
-.-. --- -- .. -. --. .... --- -- .
She didn't speak to me for about a week after that.
I managed to wrangle a job at a fast food place from an old friend who was now a director or some other managerial title that was only distantly connected with what they actually did.
Our parents didn't dress me down, or even mention where or why I'd gone. They set my board rates, and then did what they could to help. Even offering to help me get a car to make things easier.
I turned them down.
Not because I didn't need it, but mostly because the guilt was already eating me alive. I was the family failure, who had actually believed a crazy girl when she said she loved me and wanted to live in France with me.
So when it came to meal times... Our parents tried to keep the conversation light and flowing. Laura absolutely refused to even look in my direction and always pretended to not hear me.
In the end, I stopped saying anything to anyone.
"Laura, why don't you take Bren out this weekend?" Mum suddenly said one dinnertime, "He's been moping around the house, too much. And you should get out of your room, once in a while, too."
The girl shot a wrath-filled look back at her mother. The kind of look that would make even a drunk guy at a bar reconsider the life choices that had led him to speaking to her.
Mum, however... "Why don't you take him up to the hill, at least, and get some air? It's been ages since you painted anything."
"Huh?" I said in surprise, "I saw a couple new ones in the hall. You stopped painting, Lor?"
"Don't feel like it." She said quietly, angrily. She didn't look at me to say it, but it made my stomach fill with butterflies at the fact she was actually talking to me.
I needed to keep this going.
"Didn't you have an exhibition, right before I left?" I asked her, "You were so excited for it. You got put in the entrance of the gallery."
She ground her teeth together, fists clenching as she lowered her cutlery. "It didn't happen, Brendan. Which you'd know, if you gave a damn."
"Laura!" Mum admonished.
My sister shoved her chair back, and picked up her food, "I'm not hungry. For some reason."
Then she went to the kitchen, scraped her plate, before heading up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door.
Anger was a new emotion. Better than being ignored... Maybe.
I sighed and looked at my own plate, with about as much appetite as she had just demonstrated. I pushed a potato idly with my fork, sighing heavily.
"Have you two... Talked?" Dad asked.
I shook my head, "That's the most she's said to me since I got back. I... I want to apologise. But, we have to be in the same room for that."
"If you two need some space from us, let us know." He said sympathetically, "Your mother and I will make ourselves scarce."
"What am I meant to say?" I shrugged, "I fucked up."
"Language." Mum said reflexively.
I smiled sadly, "How would you describe it? I abandoned my family. Ran myself face-first into the ground, and then came crawling home. I missed her first exhibition, which apparently didn't even happen. I missed her birthday, even though that used to always be our thing. She got a single letter from me when I was gone, where I lied through my teeth and said how awesome it all was."
