”Guh Thank God it’s finally Friday,” Ashley says as we pull into my driveway.  Knocking the car into park, she leans her head against the steering wheel and turns to face me, her curly brown hair falling softly across her bare shoulder.  “You wanna get together tonight? Watch a movie or something?” She smiles pleadingly and I laugh. Like she has to ask.

           “Of course. I’ll call you after I eat dinner and we’ll make plans. Let’s stay in though, keep it simple.” I say leaning over to place a kiss on her forehead.  “Talk to you soon.” 

 -_-_-

             “Spencer honey can you come here,” Paula says from the kitchen as I push the  front door  shut with a click.  Sighing, I drop my bag over the back of the sofa and shuffle my way to the dining room table, collapsing into a chair beside Glenn.

 

            “Rough day?” Arthur said with a pitying smile, tossing the beginnings of a salad for dinner in a bowl.  Mom folded her hands on the table across from me and bit her lip. 

 

            “Oh you know how it it. School and such,” I replied, finally taking in the awkwardness of my situation.  Now I won’t say that family meetings aren’t a regular happening in the Carlin household, I mean with my dad, we have to talk about everything, but Glenn’s eyes have yet to look at me and my parents are jumpier than a pair of horn toads.  Mentally preparing for the worst, I look to my mother, “what’s up?”

 

            Paula fidgets with her fingernail and then lays her hands on top of mine.  “Spencer me and your father need to tell you something and we don’t think you’re going to like it, but we’re asking that you please try to understand where we’re coming from.  We trying to do what is best for us, for the family.”  She pats my knuckles consolingly and turns her eyes to Arthur’s.  I gulp back the fist size lump in my throat.

 

            He carelessly flings a handful of carrots into the listless leaves and then claps his hands.  “Well Spencer, you and Glen both know that your mother and I have had our…troubled waters.. since we got to California. And then with losing Clay on top of it all, things have just been..more than this family can bare at times.  We’ve grown apart and your mother and I have been talking.  We feel that, in the best interest of this family, in Paula and I finally patching everything up, in the safety of both you and Glenn.. that maybe moving to California was… not necessarily a mistake, but that what it has to offer us is not as great as what we once had.”

 

            His words were bouncing off deaf ears.  I’m at a severe risk of blacking out due to respiration failure.  ”What are you saying dad?”   I hear the words leave my mouth, but I don’t want the answer. 

 

            Glenn finally looks up at me. “Spencer. We’re moving back to Ohio.”

            It’s funny how so few words can send the whole crumbling.

            My jaw dropped as warm tears blurred my sight.  Dad walked over and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a hug. 

            “It’s for the best I promise,” he whispers into my hair.  I sit numbly as his words sink in.  Mom starts to drum on about old friends and seeing our grandparents but I don’t hear her because my head is flooded with the images of the life I have come to love here.. of the girl I have come to love here.. and all I can see is her face.

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