#fun part about being tiny though is they hit me with that anesthesia and my ass is out HARD even in post op it takes foreverrrr to wake me

[sesamestreep]

stack the deck with wild cards (chapter 6)

(read on AO3)

(start from the beginning)

SUMMARY: One year later... 

A/N: Here is the epilogue for my Obvious Child AU, which might be dorky but I really wanted to write some fluff to cap the whole thing off. Still mild content warnings for abortion and pregnancy here, so please check the AO3 link if you need more info on that. I can’t even begin to express my gratitude for the response this fic has gotten, everyone has been so lovely, and I want y’all to know how much it means to me. It may be September but you’re all my Valentines.

Jyn wakes up alone, which is surprising. It’s Saturday, so Cassian doesn’t have to work and he normally sleeps in like a teenager on the weekends, a habit she’d found hilarious at first. She would have figured him for an early riser, always up at the crack of dawn to work on some project or other, but more often than not, she’s up before him, sketching in bed until he finally wakes up. It was endearing, really, especially after she’d spent so much time thinking he was this perfectly responsible adult, to realize he had quirks just like anyone else, and not just the saintly or admirable kind, like how he can never leave his job at the office or how invested he gets in local elections no one else has even heard of. Being alone in bed on the weekend is unusual for her now that she's adjusted to his habits, though, and when she checks the clock on the bedside table, it’s only just past nine, which elevates this situation from weird to concerning. Even if he’s awake at this hour, he’s never out of bed by now. She throws off the covers and immediately regrets it when the cold air hits her all at once. Cassian better have a good reason for making her get out of bed to look for him, because she’d much rather stay under the cocoon of blankets all day.

For all Jyn’s concern, the mystery of his whereabouts is easily solved. She can hear him tinkering around in the kitchen before she turns the corner and sees him standing there, measuring flour into a mixing bowl. There’s ingredients scattered in front of him, and a container of strawberries sitting open on the part of the counter Jyn leans her hip against to watch him. She can smell coffee brewing too.

“Good morning,” she says, smiling at him.

He must be truly distracted, because he actually jumps at the sound of her voice. Normally, he’s pretty difficult to startle. “Jyn,” he says, like he’s somehow surprised to find her in his apartment. “You’re up early.”

“Not as early as you,” she replies. “What’s all this?”

“Uh, it’s…nothing.”

“Try again.”

Cassian sighs, defeated. “It’s for you. Well, it’s for us. For our anniversary.”

“What?”

“I was going to make you breakfast for our anniversary. It was going to be a surprise, but you woke up earlier than I expected.”

“It’s not our anniversary,” Jyn says, flatly.

He looks at her with concern. “Yes, it is,” he says, carefully. “We started dating a year ago.”

“That can’t be true. It can’t be a year already.”

“Well, it’s pretty easy to remember, since our anniversary is Valentine’s Day.”

Jyn groans and buries her face in her hands. “I’m the worst girlfriend in the history of the world.”

“That’s not true.”

“I forgot our anniversary and Valentine’s Day, Cassian! That’s awful!”

“I should have reminded you,” he says, like this is his fault somehow. “I just got caught up with the idea of surprising you with breakfast and I didn’t want to spoil it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He waves her apology away stiffly. “It’s okay. Really. You told me you weren’t into Valentine’s Day when we started dating. I didn’t expect anything.”

“I didn’t even know you counted today as our anniversary!”

“When else would it be?”

Jyn gestures emphatically at nothing in particular. “I don’t know, maybe not the day I got an abortion?”

“But that was our first date.”

“Most people wouldn’t find that romantic.”

“Most people would be wrong, then,” he says with a shrug, as he continues measuring out flour. “I thought it was very romantic.”

Jyn thinks back to that day, which was somehow a year ago. It feels simultaneously like it just happened and like it’s been an eternity since then. She thinks about Cassian bringing her flowers and holding her hand in the cab on the way to her appointment, about him keeping her calm in the waiting room by attempting a crossword in People Magazine that he clearly knew none of the answers to and asking for her help with all of them, and about him telling her later that he’d passed the time during her procedure by answering emails on his phone until his supervisor called and yelled at him for working when he’d called out for the day. She remembers him getting them a cab back to her place, even though she was still a little out of it from the anesthesia at the time, and that he made them tea in her tiny kitchen before convincing her to watch ‘The Sound of Music’ for the first time because it was his go-to sick day movie ever since he was a kid.

(She found out later that it’s actually his grandmother’s favorite movie because apparently Captain Von Trapp reminds her of her late husband, or so she told Cassian when he was a kid. She was always the one who stayed with him if he was home sick from school, because both his parents still had to go to work, which is how her favorite movie became his sick day movie, but it took him having a nasty head cold three months into them dating before he admitted any of this to Jyn. Until then, she just thought he really liked musicals).

She also remembers falling asleep after maybe thirty minutes of the movie, even though she really wanted to stay awake because Cassian had seemed so excited for her to see it. She drifted off to the feeling of him brushing his fingers gently through her hair and, when she woke up, it was the next morning and she was in her bed, which meant he’d carried her there from the couch and she’d been asleep the whole time, which was just unfair. He did have the good sense not to try to be chivalrous with her by sleeping on the floor or, worse, on the couch, so at least she’d gotten to wake up next to him, a pleasure she’d missed out on the first time they’d hooked up, when she’d fled immediately afterwards to avoid the very intimacy she found herself enjoying that day.

“You’re right,” she says, now, wrapping her arms around his middle. “It was romantic.”

Cassian lifts his arm to make room for her and then drapes it around her shoulders to pull her in closer. “But if you’d rather use a different day for our anniversary, we can. These can just be Valentine’s Day waffles.”

“You’re making me waffles?!”

“Yes?” He replies, sounding wary, like he’s afraid he’s done something wrong. She shouldn’t have yelled. That was probably confusing for him.

“God, I love you,” she says, pulling him down for a kiss that’s meant to be quick but then she gets distracted because kissing him is still so much fun, even though she can do it whenever she wants now.

“They’re not—that hard—to make,” he says, or tries to, between kisses. He seems like he might try to argue the point further, which Jyn absolutely doesn’t want to happen, so she slips her tongue into his mouth and deepens their kiss, making him groan in a way she recognizes as a sound of defeat. A moment later, he throws his arms around her waist and lifts her up onto the counter, narrowly avoiding knocking over the mixing bowl in the process.

She parts her legs so he can step in between them and smiles when he kisses her again. This is the thing they’ve always been good at, even before they were dating. She had worried (clearly unnecessarily) that putting a label on it, being serious and exclusive, would ruin this, but if anything, it’s only gotten better with time. The efforts she’d made to keep him at a distance during their first time together only seemed more and more foolish as she got to know him better and saw the lengths he went to in order to satisfy her and make her happy.

Her initial proposal, when they finally got their shit together and started dating, was for them to take things slow—at least, emotionally. When it came to their physical relationship, the doctor had told her she could have sex again as soon as she felt ready, which only took about a week after the abortion. Cassian was, of course, trying to be careful about it, not wanting to rush her when she’d been so clear about needing to ease her way back into dating. His gentlemanly willpower held out a little longer than she expected, leading Jyn to unapologetically sabotage their second attempt at a movie night together by making out with him the whole time and they’d ended up having sex right there on the couch. She can’t even remember what movie they were trying to watch that night.

Then again, sex had always been the easy part for them; it was everything else that was tricky. Jyn’s rules—don’t put a label on it, don’t call it a relationship, just take things slow—had worked wonders in the beginning, but the longer they dated, the more it was clear they needed to call this something . Jyn was surprised to find the idea didn’t terrify her as much as it once had and it only took one long weekend where Cassian was laid out by an awful cold and she made him (store bought and microwaved) soup while finally seeing ‘The Sound of Music’ all the way through (several times, in fact) before she realized that, whether she admitted it to herself or not, she was in a serious relationship. When Cassian finally recovered, he thanked her a little too profusely for taking care of him, and Jyn had been so flustered by his praise that she’d blurted out that she loved him before she could talk herself out of it. She would have been much more embarrassed if his face hadn’t lit up with the most beautiful smile as soon as she said it, and if he hadn’t kissed her senseless a moment later, saying he loved her too whenever they came up for air.

She doesn’t tell him now that, if she had to pick a date for their anniversary, it would be then, the day she finally got over herself and told him she loved him. Because that would be sappy and embarrassing and also his idea seems much easier to remember for next year, anyway.

“I’m going to make this up to you,” she says, against his mouth, as his hands are creeping up under her t-shirt.

Cassian laughs. “Are you going to get me one of those giant stuffed bears from Duane Reade with the hearts that say ‘I Love You Bear-y Much’ on them?”

“If that’s what you want,” Jyn says, pulling back to look at him quizzically. “I was just going to let you fuck me on the kitchen counter, but it’s up to you.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but…”

“Oh my god, you’d rather have the bear, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” he says, burying his face in her shoulder. “I already know you love me bear-y much. I don’t need anything to remind me.”

Jyn swats at him half-heartedly. “Then what’s the problem?”

“It’s just…this is where we prepare our food. It doesn’t feel sanitary to, well, you know…”

“Are you telling me that—on our anniversary of all days—you’d rather have boring, normal sex instead of weird, potentially unsanitary sex in the kitchen that you share with a roommate and where you’re currently preparing a meal?”

Cassian nods, looking like he’s putting on a contrite expression just for her sake. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes. Although, I don’t know if concern for Bodhi should even merit a mention. We both know he barely lives here anymore.”

Jyn does her best not to react to that, even though she knows Cassian is right. Bodhi is away for the weekend with Taidu and she’s fairly sure one or both of them are going to broach the topic of moving in together finally, since Bodhi spends most nights at Taidu’s studio apartment anyway, because it grants him access to a dog while also allowing him to spend more time alone with his boyfriend that he loves. If they move in together, though, that leaves Cassian without a roommate, which means he and Jyn will probably have to have a conversation about where their relationship is going.

It’s sooner than she’d normally consider even the possibility of moving in with someone, but she barely tolerates her current roommate as it is and, more importantly, she could see herself living with Cassian. It’s almost too easy to picture. Before, with Reece, they’d hit the two-year mark and she’d told herself that living together was the next logical step but it hadn’t been because she’d truly wanted it. It was just something people in relationships were supposed to do when they’d been together that long. Now, though, their circumstances might necessitate the conversation, but her excitement outweighs her feeling of obligation. It doesn’t stop her from being terrified that Cassian will think it’s too soon and she’ll scare him off, though, but they can burn that bridge when they get to it. There’s nothing to worry about until Bodhi comes home with news.

“And besides,” Cassian continues, interrupting her thoughts, “I wouldn’t call it boring to have sex with my beautiful girlfriend in our soft bed on our anniversary. That’s basically the dream.”

“Sap,” Jyn says, poking his cheek with her index finger and ignoring the way her heart races at how he thinks of the bed as theirs . “Can we at least bring the strawberries with us? Or is that too wild for you?”

“What are they gonna do, watch?”

“No, dumbass, we’re going to eat them. You know… sensually .”

“You can just admit you’re hungry,” he says, planting a kiss on her forehead.

“That too,” she says, smiling. He hands her the carton before he unceremoniously lifts her off the counter. She thinks he’s going to put her down at first, but he seems content to carry her all the way back to the bedroom. She makes an inelegant noise of surprise when he tosses her on the bed, which just makes him laugh in response.

“What? I thought you were worried our sex life was getting boring,” he says, unapologetically proud of himself.

She tosses the strawberries onto the side table, so her hands are free to grab him by the front of his shirt and pull him in for a kiss. “I promise I’m going to remember our anniversary next year,” she says, as he settles on top of her. “You’re not going to be able to move for Duane Reade bears.”

She expects him to smile at that, to laugh it off and kiss her again, but instead he stills. His eyes search her face as his hand comes to cup her cheek. “Next year?” He asks, his tone careful.

Jyn feels her heartbeat stutter in her chest—the old nerves and worries haven’t abandoned her completely, after all—but she still manages a smile before she leans in and kisses him again. “Next year,” she says, firmly. She can’t be sure, of course, but she has faith they’ll make it.

[belladonnaandulriched]

amped and wired, part two | chapter seven: bloody mary

It was so good to climb into a shower—it had been such a long day after all. The feeling of the warm water against my body and my head was something I had yearned for even upon waking up or even when Lars and I left with Brick for the hockey rink. Mrs. Hamilton was kind enough to wipe down the inside of the shower after she had used it, and she was kind enough to keep the knit mat down on the floor upon my climbing out.

There was a part of me that wanted her to be in that tiny bathroom, though, but only because I wanted her to scrub my hair for me. I always loved that feeling of having someone else scrub my hair for me; but I had what I had at the moment and there was nothing more I could ask for.

I thought about what Lars had told me before, about his deceased wife. I could admit that it was understandable in that he had difficulty in talking about it with someone but I had this odd feeling within me about it. I kept on thinking about his belching problem, how his breath always smelled like meat immediately following. Surely, there had to be an explanation for it, much like how there was an explanation for everything up to that point.

I stood back and let the shower pour over my chest and shoulders. I brought a hand to my chest to feel it cascading over the backs of my fingers and my knuckles. I took a look down at the fine brown skin on the back of my hand and at the very shape of my fingers, how they crept along all spindly and narrow, much like the legs of a spider.

That dream continued to linger in the back of my mind, too.

Even as the warm water hit my chest, I couldn't help but think back to the full details of it. The very digging into my chest and my stomach and absolutely tearing me to fine sinewy shreds... it made my head itch. 

Another thing I didn’t understand about Lars’ explanation was the whole thing about the warehouse.

Why lie like that? Why say that and not expect me to even so much as look over there given it was out in the open? It just made no sense to me as I turned around to rinse out my hair.

I tilted my head back so it would wash over the crown of my head.

Speaking of crowns, I wondered about Scott, Frankie, and Charlie as they bunked over there in Black Orchid. For some reason, I imagined us all becoming a commune of sorts. A small, tightly packed commune there in upstate New York as a bunch of bone broke artists being cared for by a horde of strippers. We would make art, have fun, and if anyone wanted to join us in it, they were more than welcome to do so.

Eat, drink, and be merry because it didn’t matter... we all are going to die and have our flesh reused for something else.

I turned back around for another scrubbing of my chest and my face. I looked down at myself, at my stomach, my hips, and my thighs, as the water made its way down my legs to my ankles and my feet, and towards the drain. The whole shower smelled of my shampoo and my soap, and I was in a state of bliss.

One more rinse and then I switched off the water, and let the residual droplets trickle down from my skin. I reached behind my head to wring out my curls of the remaining water when I caught Mrs. Hamilton and Lars discussing something in the next room.

Something moved out of the corner of my eye, too. Something beyond the shower curtain.

I nudged it back in time to catch the faint wisp of Mrs. Snow right as she faded out into nothing.

Ah, yes, the nurse who loved me.

Of all the ghosts who lived with me there, she was the one I could never figure out the origin of. Mr. Lang was the old man from the military, Vera was a little girl, Nerissa was a troubled vixen, but Mrs. Snow was the oddball of the bunch, kind of like how I was the oddball of Anthrax. The few times I had seen her at night when I couldn’t sleep too well, or I was jarred awake by something, I always thought she had made her way over here from a hospital that ceased to exist by some dark magic.

She wore these pale white scrubs and the first time I got a real good look at her, I noticed the shape of a snake on the left side of her chest. It took me days to figure out that that was the symbol for a medical person, a nurse. But she also had a cross around her neck, so I had always assumed that she was more than a nurse, but a member of the church, too. Which church, I had no idea.

But I always found it interesting that whenever she showed up before me, I was always naked, like she wanted to do something to me for being in the buff. And thus I came up with this theory that she only appeared whenever I was about to get down and get going with myself—the first time I ever saw her was when I lay in bed with no clothes on and I had a little bit of a rise going to boot. I wasn’t using my hands, but there was something going there.

She could blame Nerissa all she wanted but the fact of the matter was that she always came whenever I was naked, and the shower was no exception.

Those white scrubs appeared in the bright bathroom light for a second and then she disappeared. It was right then I reached out to the towel rung for my towel, which I put upon my head first before I wrapped it around my waist.

I rubbed my eyes, and stepped out of the tub and onto the mat down there on the floor. I held the edges of the towel with one hand and used the other to steady myself.

In the next room, I caught the sound of Mrs. Hamilton laughing. I wanted to hurry up and join in on it, but I needed to dry off first and put my clothes back on.

I leaned forward to wipe off the condensation from the surface of the mirror to better look at myself. In the reflection, I gazed into my own two eyes and my own round face, and the black disheveled dripping curls tousled onto one side of my head and over my shoulder. I leaned back to better examine myself, my slender body. I even turned to the side a bit to look at myself.

I thought back to that dream I had had. Laid out on the table, strapped down, and wide awake with no anesthesia and under a thing that gave off x-rays. Remembering it somewhat, I noticed my body was a lot thicker than normal, given my waist was quite thin, narrow in fact, far more narrow than when I first joined Anthrax. 

It was like I dreamed about twenty-year-old me getting slashed open and carved for clone making, given my waist was sort of on the full side and the nurse called me a boy. Slaughtering the still slightly adolescent version of myself.

I spotted something behind me and it took me a second to realize it was Mrs. Snow emerging and then vanishing into nothing again.

I wasn’t fully naked given I had a towel around my waist, but I could feel her presence against the right side of my body: when she vanished, a wave of chills shot across my skin from the right side over to my left, and prior to then, I was feeling warm. In fact, the whole bathroom grew cooler within a matter of seconds. I turned my head to the mirror right as the condensation stuck in place and turned to ice crystals.

I swallowed down the burgeoning firm feeling inside of my throat, and fixed the edge of the towel against my waist, and I got the hell out of there. I didn’t care if I had on just a towel—I needed to get away from that freezing room. 

Mrs. Hamilton laughed again and Lars joined in with her. I stepped into my room and closed the door part of the way behind me. I strode over to the lamp on my nightstand: bright yellow light shone over every corner of the room.

I gave my hair a toss back from my chest. Still too wet, and being in a room that grew cold within a matter of seconds didn’t help in the least so to speak. I took off the towel and I put it upon the crown of my head to rub those curls dry.

It was oddly warm in my room.

And then I realized one of them turned on the furnace for me. Granted, the thermostat had a mind of its own at times but it was better than standing there in the middle of the room with no clothes on my body. I cocked out my hips a little bit as I pushed my hair up off my neck and my back. I was alone in my room with nothing on. I was letting myself hang out and feel for my own good, before I did anything else.

“Oh, hello, Joey!” Mrs. Hamilton said from behind me. I yelped out and lunged forward—lucky for me, I was right in front of my bed. She still saw my naked ass, though. I pulled the towel down onto my back, but it was useless at that point.

“That won’t be the first time I saw a cute little ass like yours!” she giggled.

“Mrs. Hamilton!” I cried out from the mattress. I lifted my head and shifted myself onto my side. She had poked her head inside but it was still enough for her to see me naked from behind. Some of those still rather wet strands of hair found their way into my mouth.

“Ha, I just wanted to see how you were doing given you were taking a while in the shower just now,” she confessed.

“Can I—“ I stopped to spit out some of the hair. “—can I at the very least get my fat ass in a pair of pants?”

“What about his pants?” Lars called out from the next room.

“He needs ‘em!” Mrs. Hamilton replied.

“Come on!” I groaned.

“You really do have a tight ass, Joey,” she continued. “Nice and tight and full.”

“MRS. HAMILTON!” I shouted.

“Come on back here!” Lars called out again.

“Okay, okay, just you know...” She flashed me a wink 

“You like what ya see here?” I cracked; at the end of the day, Mrs. Hamilton was a stripper all about pleasure after all. I might as well lighten up a little bit.

“Exactly! I just saw you flexing your body, I had to take a look. Real sexy and beautiful, Joey.”

She flashed me another wink before she ducked back out to the hallway and closed the door back where it was before to leave me to it. I climbed up onto my hands and caught the towel on my back so it’d stay put there. I then lay it on my dresser so I could put on a fresh change of clothes.

Once I was dressed in clean jeans and a little black knit sweater, I strode out of the room to find out what was going on.

“—surely there must be a way to darn my own socks without a needle,” Lars was saying to Mrs. Hamilton, who had taken her seat on the opposite side of the couch; and then he spotted me as I made my way into the front room. “Ah! There he is! The man of the hour.”

“You talkin’ ‘bout me in here?” I asked them.

“Maybe,” she teased me. “What we were discussing was Lars probably showing us a round of tennis outside before the snow comes in.”

“Where the hell you gonna find a tennis racket outside, though?” I asked them. “I ain’t a tennis player and Brick’s the guy with my hockey stuff. All I got is my jersey and my mask.”

“Mrs. Hamilton was telling me about a series of tennis courts near where the hockey rink is,” Lars explained.

“That’s a school, though,” I pointed out.

“We could still have a little show and tell, though.”

“But all the stuff is going to be packed up, though.”

“I still want to show off what skills I have, though,” he insisted. “I will make my own racket, if I must.”

“You’d need a metal thing and some strings if you gotta make your own racket,” she told him.

“Nah, no, no, no, no, this is making my own racket—kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats!”

“Maybe we should wait ‘til tomorrow?” Mrs. Hamilton asked me in a loud voice.

“Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats!”

“Sounds good by me,” I told her. “I think—“

“Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats!”

“—I think it’s gonna snow here—okay, Lars, I think we get it.”

“I like saying it, though,” he said. “Kumquats! Kumquats! Kumquats!”

“What have we done?” she groaned.

“Nuthin’,” I assured her.

“KUMQUATS! KUMQUATS! KUMQUATS!”

“SHUT IT!” I shrieked. The apartment was silent; within a few seconds, I picked up the faint sound of rain on the roof.

“See? It’s raining now,” I pointed out as I pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. “No more kumquats unless we’re makin’ a pie or cookies, kapeesh?”

“Kapeesh,” said Lars as he made an okay gesture. “Hey, at least it wasn’t ‘fuck face.’”

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

“I wasn’t.” He stifled another belch in his mouth, and that time he brought the tips of his fingers to his lips.

“Alright, so for a change of pace and subject,” she started, “what do you think we should do? It’s raining and I don’t feel like leaving just yet.”

“I don’t really have much to eat here, though,” I confessed to her, “so we’re probably gonna have to go again at some point.”

“Hmmm... well, the boys are still back at Black Orchid,” she started, “and I know Cindy and Gwen are getting started on their night shift. The place is still serving food until midnight.”

“I forget to tell you, Joey,” Lars piped up out of the blue right then. “I didn’t realize I had forgotten to tell you about it until I told it to Mrs. Hamilton.”

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“Remember when you asked me that there must be some source for all of the clones of Maya? Like they all must be coming from somewhere?”

“Yeah, of course,” I recalled. “I pointed it out to you.” 

He brought a hand to his chest and he looked as though he had eaten something rancid. “Something I learned from my wife prior to her death was that—there is in fact a prototype. Patient zero. ‘Prototype’ is actually a misnomer because it implies there was some experimentation involved when she vowed that that wasn’t the case. But she always referred to her as the prototype.”

“The first one,” she added, her expression serious.

“So do you think that maybe you befriended this prototype?” I asked him as I folded my arms over my chest.

“See, that’s the thing and what I keep saying—I have no idea. All my wife knew was there was in fact a source, a first girl. Just who she really is and if I met her is beyond me.”

“Right, of course,” I said.

“I mention it because—“ He nodded back to Mrs. Hamilton. “—she was talking about potentially having some dinner right now with the both of us and by the power of the human brain, I put two and two together.”

“Some fresh meat,” I said with a little gyration of the head.

“Exactly! Fresh meat as it falls right off of the bone, if you will.” He showed me a sly grin, one which showed off those pearly whites, still pearly white even after he had been let go with such haste.

“I can always go out and get something and bring it back for you two fellas,” she suggested, “and then I can skedaddle out of here afterwards because you look cozy and comfy already, Joey.”

“I am! Just took a shower—still digesting lunch—“ I brought my hands to the real soft but extra slender part of my belly.

“So I shall take my time then,” she said with a smile. With nothing more to add, Mrs. Hamilton stood to her feet and breezed past me to fetch her coat. She hesitated for a second to look at me in the face with her eyes hooded and her lips puckered a bit; she dropped her gaze down to my chest and then back up again, and hung there for a few seconds. And then she kept on going: she put on her coat, and out the door into the beckoning rain.

“I’ll be back, boys,” she promised in a singsong voice.

“We shall await you!” Lars replied with a mimicking tone. Once the door was closed, I returned to him with my hands to my hips.

“Kumquats, Lars?” I demanded.

“What? It’s a funny word, like ‘blubber’ or ‘tinkle’ or—“ He stopped in his tracks.

“Or what?” I asked. He was silent, and his green eyes had widened a little bit. The skin on his face had washed out to an almost pure shade of white. His lips parted a hair. But I could tell something had him pegged right then.

“Lars?” I asked him in a low voice. Slowly, he ran the tip of his tongue along his lips and his eyes grew wider.

“Lars?” I repeated; I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising.

“Very slowly... look—over—there.”

I did just that: I started with a look over my shoulder and then I turned my body around to find Vera at the kitchen table, right in the same seat where I had put Maya when I found her. In fact, she lay in a similar position with her head down on the table top. Her gaping black holes for eyes stared back at us.

I returned to him and the stunned expression on his face.

“Still think ghosts aren’t real?” I asked him. He didn’t reply. “Lars?”

He climbed to his feet and ambled across the floor to her. He got within a foot away from her when he stopped.

“Which one is this again?” he asked me in a soft voice.

“Vera. She’s a little girl.”

He dropped down to his knees, which allowed her cold presence to spread throughout the room: I could feel it coming down onto my wet hair.

“Dearest Vera—“ Lars started, “—so very young and so very ghostly. I assume it all to be very much so—very Vera—“

“Very Vera?” I echoed; out of the corner of my eye, I noticed ice crystals forming on the little ringlets of hair on the side of my head.

“Tell me what brings you here,” he begged her. She raised her head a bit so as to look at him better; as far as I knew, she was looking in my direction at the same time.

She opened her mouth to say something but I couldn’t exactly hear it from there. Without a sound, she vanished into nothing. Lars then turned towards me and the growing ice crystals on my hair.

“Shit will turn a guy like Joey white,” he muttered; I could tell he was spooked, but also fascinated, like the ghost of that little girl brought something out in him.

“What did she say?” I asked him as I didn’t want to let something as trivial as ice in my hair catch him sideways.

“Blood on the table, I think,” he announced.

“Blood on the table?”

“Yeah—she whispered it to me and I felt it from inside so it was hard to tell exactly. But that’s what it sounded like.”

“There’s no blood on the table, though,” I pointed out; I thought back to the dream.

“At least, not right now anyway,” he corrected me.

“I did have Maya laying there,” I recalled. “She said it to you, though—I didn’t even hear her.”

“Yeah, that’s—odd.”

The rain picked up the pace outside and that was when I started to feel hungry again. Even as much as I had eaten that day, I still found myself getting hungry again after night had fallen. Lars stood to his feet, albeit with a little struggle with one hand on the top of the table. I watched him make his way into the kitchen for another glass of water. This whole thing made me wonder now.

There was something else here. Something I couldn't exactly put my finger on.

[andrearodway]

Mom & Dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary | Canton, South Dakota | Andrea Rodway Photography

Mom & Dad's 50th Anniversary

When you're little you always wish to be older. You always want to hurry up and do and experience things. Now that I'm in my 30's I wish time would slow down. We're almost at our 1st anniversary and I have no idea where the time went. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in August and Matthew and I drove home to celebrate with the family. I don't know about you, but I still think of my parents as they were when I was in high school. It's like they're stuck in my mind in their 40's/50's and I can't believe that I'm creeping up on 37 this year.

To say this last year has been chaotic is well ... putting it lightly. My dad has had health problems for as long as I can remember. Shortly after I moved to D.C., I flew home in July and as soon as I got off the plane the first words uttered were, "he has cancer". My family isn't very open to discussing problems, and I am 100% opposite. Maybe I share too much, but I feel like we need to talk about what's bothering us and we need to tell people that we love them or they're being a jerk. It's just not healthy.

A week after my wedding he had to undergo triple bypass surgery. We weren't even sure his doctor would clear him to be at my wedding, and truth be told ... he probably should've had his surgery immediately. But I am forever grateful that he was there, even though I know he wasn't feeling well at all. It's been so difficult on all of us and especially my parents to cope with all of the ups and downs. 

The following weekend after our wedding, I shot a wedding on Saturday, kissed my new husband good-bye, and caught a flight to Minneapolis on Sunday to meet my family for his surgery at the VA Hospital. Sitting and waiting was the absolute worst. He had many complications during surgery and the time seemed to slowly creep by. We stayed at the Fisher House in Minneapolis, and it is an absolutely wonderful organization. My mom was up in Minneapolis for at least a month and there is no way she couldn't have done it without the ability to stay there and be close.

A few days went by and I had to head back to D.C. The worst part, my dad still hadn't opened his eyes from surgery. He was taking a while to come out of anesthesia and I so wanted him to open his eyes before I left. I took an Uber to the airport, had a glass of wine, and cried the entire flight back to D.C. I'm sure the lady that was sitting next to me thought I was a lunatic, but I just couldn't hold it in anymore. You know your breaking point? I had hit it.

Fast forward a few months later, rehab had begun and my mom was trying her best to whip him into shape. Which is not an easy job, he's a little stubborn. Haha. 

The point of this post is to celebrate their marriage of 50 years and I promise I'm getting to that. Growing up we'd road trip all over the place. From driving all the way to New York to Yellowstone National Park, and seeing Mt. Rushmore a few thousand times, we covered many miles in our car. This is where my love of travel comes from. I have a need to see the world and how beautiful it is because of these family trips. My parents have worked extremely hard for everything they have and they've given me so many opportunities that they never had themselves. These family trips were part of that and I'm so thankful that we took them. Just another thing that you appreciate a lot more when you're older.

When Matthew and I stood up in front of our family and friends and said our marriage vows, I couldn't help but think of my parents. Vows go so much deeper than just words written on a piece of paper or something you say to get married. You are promising each other that no matter what the circumstance good or bad that you will have each other's back. Even in the darkest times, where you can't stand to look at the other person or in the best of times when you love them beyond words ... you are their everything and they are yours. I think the thing I try the hardest to do is tell Matthew thank you and let him know how much I appreciate him, not only as my husband ... but as my best friend.

My parents were married on August 12th, 1967. My mom's dress was only $127 and they opened all of their gifts in the church basement in front of family and friends. Cards were kept as cherished memories, a beautiful photo album of their special day has been well preserved, and the gown adorned with lace has a tiny yellow hue to show the years that have passed by.

They are truly an inspiration and I am so proud to say that they have had 50 years together! I can only hope that Matthew and I have the same. I had so much fun hanging out with my mom, having her take out her wedding dress, album, bridesmaids dress, veil ... she literally kept everything! I need to get scrapbooking! I made them have a little photo session with me before we headed to their party. They're just two of the cutest kids ever! P.S. they were total hotties! AND make sure you check out her wedding list! As I mentioned above, her dress and veil were only $127?! OMG.