Chapter 84 - Meeting Up

                                    

                                          
Willow
I wish my mother were here. 
Aunt Beth is feeling so sad and lonely tonight. She seemed relatively fine all day, much quieter than usual, but fine. Right now, she's upstairs watching her stories all by herself, and she hasn't come running down the stairs to fetch some wine or snacks even once. When my mother is here, the two of them normally act like college friends having an all-night party.
True, I don't have any idea what all-night college parties are supposed to be like, but I know that my mother would've been able to draw Aunt Beth out of her slump very quickly. I'm sure of it, and so could Uncle Ryan, but he needs comforting too.
I turn off the shower and step onto the little mat outside the door. I think this was my third shower for the day; I just cannot seem to feel clean. I was glad for the excuse to have another one after Frankie managed to get more water and soap suds on me than on himself. Well, he did have Hunter to help him.
I smile at the memory. It was rather fun. Hunter got wet too, but mostly just his sweater, which he said he'd exchange for a dry one. I love taking care of Frankie with Hunter. It feels like we're a family, and the way he treats his brother makes my heart all warm and fuzzy. Hunter is going to be a wonderful father and husband one day, just like his father.
I sigh a long, wistful sigh and force my mind to stop running along ridiculous fantasies of me being the wife in that scenario. I dry myself off, remove the shower cap and pull on warm, snuggly pyjamas over granny panties. I really hate this time of the month. I know it's supposed to be a blessing telling me that my body is probably fertile, but I don't need to know that right now. I'm an almost 17-year-old schoolgirl. Why couldn't the adult body features start at the end of next year, when I leave school and am ready to start a family? If that is what I want to do...
Who am I kidding? It is what I want to do!
I have no clear ideas about my future. I used to have a life map, plotted very extensively and precisely by my grandmother; now I'm a balloon that broke loose from its string and have no idea where I'm heading to. Well, I have another year to think about that, explore options, get to know myself and find dreams of my own. Being a wife and mother seems like the most amazing thing in the world to me.
I want what Aunt Beth has. She is a successfully self-employed woman who holds her own hours, doing accounting tasks a couple of times a week for a few firms and selling real-estate when on others. The rest of her time, she spends doting on her children, her husband and everybody she loves. She told me today how happy she is with her life. How she gets to have the best of all worlds and that none of it would've been possible without a supportive, wonderful husband like Uncle Ryan.
I want that kind of life... with Hunter...
I giggle at my crazy thoughts and clap a hand over my mouth. Honestly! What am I thinking?! I've known the boy for less than two weeks! Still, everything just feels so right when he is with me. I feel at home, safe and blessed. I wish he could feel that way about me, but he deserves someone truly awesome. Someone who makes him feel whole, blessed and at home.
Having had too much time to myself to think, I've discovered something rather astonishing today. I miss my grandmother! I finally even cried about her and everything we had to leave behind. It had been my life for 11 years, after all. She was my grandmother.
No, I don't miss the string keeping me tethered to her goals and ideals, and I don't miss her strict rules and suffocating control, but I do miss her surprising sense of humour that would show up at random when I least expected it. I miss the way she could cut through any nonsense to the core of a problem in a heartbeat. That was often very helpful since I tend to overthink things and cannot always see the answers staring me in the face. She usually had truly sound advice. She was decisive and wise.