The Door Is Always Open
1
Elena and Gabi had been the best of friends, for so long, that they often asked each other if they had a life before they married and had their boys, Niall and Oscar, enter their lives around the same time.
The similarities did not end there. They were each divorced, Elena longer than Gabi, but when their men had left them their sons were almost through college and Elena's business, 'Verdant,' already active and successful in landscaping and lumber. It had been the foundation for her new life from the moment that the ink had dried on the divorce papers.
Gabi worked at whatever she could find and that kept her mind occupied. She chose to do that, rather than to be at home, and having to endure the silence that fell over the place now that her stepson, Oscar Kennett, had left and joined the Marine Corps. His loss in that way had cut Gabi deep, and she struggled not to feel that she had been abandoned by both father and son. Oscar had become her emotional prop and, now, he was no longer around and she had no one in her life to make good her loneliness.
Gabi should have known what could happen. Oscar had been into all things military ever since he had been a kid and she had married his father. His closest friend, Niall Jackson, had not been tempted into doing the same thing. He was now a vital part of Elena's business, it being his idea to also deal in lumber, what Verdant cut down on a customer's lot and that they either logged and stacked for the customer's fire or the brash was shredded for mulching. That too a client could keep, or Verdant took it all away. Once rotted down, some, Niall bagged it and they turned what had been mulched into cash, Verdant's logo prominent on every bag.
The boys had been inseparable until Oscar had joined up and gone to Parris Island. It might just as well have been the other side of the country, and the base in San Diego, because Gabi had not seen him until recruit camp time was through. She had never doubted that he would make a success of it all.
"There sure is goin' to be a space to fill in my life once you're gone...you've always been my best pal around here and we've done almost everything together," Niall had blurted out when he'd been round at Oscar's place, a compact ranch style house set in a patch of woodland scrub, and where they'd often throw a football or challenged each other at basketball, the ball rattling the loop set high on the gable of the garage. Girlfriends came and went. They'd fooled around with them and learned along the way, but none had hooked them, enough, to make either think about what the future might hold. In any case, Oscar wasn't wired to stay true or remain with anyone for long.
"I'll be back as soon as I get through the boot and recruit camps, and I've found my way around the Corps," Oscar had observed casually, not wanting to let his pal know that it was going to be a wrench for him too.
He would also miss the four of them having a barbecue out in the yard of their respective homes, but he knew that Niall was committed to the business his mom had set up before her marriage to Niall's father hit the skids. Elena sure didn't deserve that, and he'd started thinking that he would miss the sight of her. She sure was competent, attractive enough to hold the eye on her, and she never could conceal what she'd bring to a man, even when she wore only too functional work clothes, usually some washed-out dungarees along with a blouse or T-shirt, a colourful bandana at her throat and her stark blonde hair cut in an only too functional bob. In winter that would be hidden by a knitted beanie hat, her body wrapped in a quilted jacket zipped up to her throat, and only too functional patch-pocket pants replacing the dungarees. Her bright smile and lively eyes always made up for it all.
But when they were together, relaxing at a barbie, out would come the swirly skirts and figure-hugging tops, clothes to catch the sun on their skins, the bracelets and the necklaces. When she, and his stepmother, did that they saw another side to the women who were constants in their lives, and that set them talking.
It was then that they gave voice to youthful fantasies that the girls they went with, or had gone down on, never quite satisfied. They had also taken to wondering what their moms found so funny when seeing them fooling around before them. They were both lean and strong, jocks in their college days; he was the more muscled of the two, taller and broader than Niall, but he had seen how his friend had filled out some more after he had begun working for Verdant. The heavy lifting bulked him out. Yeah, they were just over six foot tall, lean and strong, their mothers not knowing that they still catalogued every curve and dip of their bodies when they had the chance. They were fooling around, and it was all teasing banter, nothing more they would say to each other and would let their imaginations run a little wild.
"I sometimes think it's disrespectful to think of them as we do, pal," Niall had gone and told him. "I also think that they must get lonely and with only us around most of the time."
"I guess, and dating isn't something I know my mom gets into, or she'd tell me."
"Too bad, because she looks okay," Niall had said and sensed that Gabi thought of Oscar as the only company that she needed while he was still at home.
"Yeah, it is. My mom wouldn't count on me so much if she had someone in her life but she's taking time to mend, even after some time has gone by and my father's just gone...out of both our lives. That gets to me too, you know?"
Niall had understood. "Gabi sure didn't deserve to be left in the way she was..."
Oscar had kept him from saying any more on that. "It's not just sometimes that I think of them or when I'm not with you and Elena, your mom. So, I'm glad that I'll be away for a spell. It will let the heat in me cool down, some."
He had stopped from saying how his mother, for that was still how he thought of her, got through to him in ways that wound his clock and whenever she needed him to be close. She'd touch his arm, give him a smile that revealed what was at work in her again, an unmistakable tremble of her lips, a softer wondering look of her eyes on him as the clock wound down to him leaving her.
"But it won't help me with what I feel, sometimes, when we're all together. I sure know it's wrong, but they're in our lives so much."
"Then you'll have to find a way to work it out of your system, pal," Oscar had laughed.
Niall had been too embarrassed to admit that he already did that when he was alone and in his room. His mother's frequent calls to Gabi, how they were heard to laugh and, sometimes, the cutting short of a call when he was near, suggested who it was they were again talking about.
But for him, it was all talk and no follow-through. In Oscar, a different flame seemed to burn, and it wasn't something he had decided to ask him about. Some feelings, and behaviour, were off limits and that was how it was going to stay.
2
Gabi heard a hard and insistent knock on the front door. It was louder than usual, and she knew that her months of waiting were finally at an end. Her small home, with its clapboarded walls and neatly trimmed hedge to the front, had been spotlessly cleaned, the ceiling fan in the living room cooling the air and a floral-scented spray freshening the rooms.
"I've gotta go!" she whopped, "Sorry, Elena, but my boy's home! I've got company at last!"
She spoke out in a soft, honeyed voice, her look in the mirror soon showing a bright smile, her long auburn red hair brushed out and a blush of makeup and soft lipstick just as she wanted, the wide-eyed wonder that the house would again be lively to the sound of Oscar's deep voice and engaging laughter, his energy lifting her spirits as he strode from room to room, or he slumped down on the sofa beside her and they could talk. There was so much to catch up on and to share and she would again have attentive company and, perhaps, be able to put right what had happened the last time she had seen him.
"I'll leave you two to it and won't trouble you until tomorrow, okay?" Elena felt her spirits lift, too, and hoped it wouldn't be long before they were all together.
"Sure, we can meet up for supper," Gabi enthused, checking her reflection in the hall mirror, once again, and adjusting the fit of her patterned wrap-around dress that shaped her. She had a reason to make a fuss over how she looked, doing her best for her 'boy,' as she still thought of him. "I sure have missed Oscar being around..."
"That goes for me too."
"You missed him too?" Gabi blurted out in some dismay. "I guess it's no longer illegal..."
Elena was heard to laugh softly. "I remember us talking of our boys often enough. Who else was there in our lives? I work all the hours I can with Niall's help, so we're bonded really close, but that's a different feeling and a special bond that I won't risk breaking."
Gabi knew it well enough, but being abandoned by her husband, and Oscar's father, had shaped their relationship so much further than she dared to speak of, even to Elena. Joking about the young men took things too close to how it was for her and had become before Oscar had gone away. Now she had a week, or so, to make good their bond once more and that Zoom calls were no substitute for.
"Sorry, I really do have to go, or my Marine son will smash down the door! I'll call you, promise!" she laughed in her excitement and anticipation of seeing her darling Oscar again.
On a last look at herself in the mirror, and in the grip of gnawing anticipation, she was gone.
♥
Gabi tugged open the door and gave voice to her suppressed feelings with a shriek of delight.
"At last, you're here! I can kiss and hold you...you're not a face on a Zoom call anymore!" Gabi soon closed the door and flung her arms around his neck, offered a flurry of kisses to his face and met a moment's look of his eyes over her. "Yes, I dressed up for you. I came home early from work as I didn't want to be late for you, darlin'."
Her pent-up emotions had been given voice to in a rush of words and now she met Oscar's appraising look upon her.
