𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐀 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄 » 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠

CHAPTER ONE | | OUT OF TOUCH

D E D I C A T I O N S

harringtonssss

crystal23543

☾ ✩ ☽

MANIC MOVES OR DROWSY DREAMS
OR LIVING IN THE MIDDLE
BETWEEN THE TWO EXTREMES.

OUT OF TOUCH – DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES

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"That's gonna boil over."

The words, as they left rouge painted lips, were off-handed, an afterthought that floated through the mind without any effort or control. Mel sat on the floor of her mother's new-to-her kitchen, a box of carefully wrapped mixing bowls lying just in front of her. They were a sickeningly sweet floral pattern, with bright red and yellow daffodils and twisting jade vines set against baby pink ceramic. The sight of them had Mel feeling ill.

"No, it is not," Diane tsked, standing at the sink, rinsing a colander of mixed greens. On the stove a few feet away, a pot of water sat idly simmering, bow tie pasta rumbling and rolling just under the frothy surface. "Will you just focus on finding my bowl, please?"

One slender shoulder lifted apathetically, and Mel continued to unwrap newspaper from around her mother's various fragile dishes, looking for the elusive, crystal salad dish. "Whatever."

It was quickly approaching the evening hours of their second day in sleepy Hawkins, Indiana. The first was mostly spent hauling around boxes, since Diane insisted that they didn't need to hire movers. No sense in paying strange men to do what we're perfectly capable of, she'd said. But, Mel knew it was because they were barely able to afford the rental truck, let alone the hulking men who came with it. And besides, the luxury of paying people to do the things they didn't want to was now long behind them. Her father made plenty sure of that, it seemed.

That also meant that George drove their box truck all the way from windy Chicago, with Diane tailing closely behind in her station wagon. Which was a four hour drive on the interstate, the back filled up to the brim with their belongings—their lives. It was odd, standing in the driveway of the house she grew up in, the house her brother grew up in, and staring into the gaping back of the rental truck, knowing that everything in this world that made her who she was, was taped up in cardboard and haphazardly stacked like the unsteady towers a toddler might build with their alphabet blocks.

When her mother broke the news of the Big Move, it was over a plate of runny spaghetti.

Diane and George Hall had decided to separate, and their home would be put on the market just as soon as they both had places to go. George made quick work of shacking up with a young woman from his office, the kind of swiftness that led Mel to believe he'd had her—Olive on the backburner for a while. Diane, while every bit as beautiful as in her youth, didn't make any room for new romance like George had so hastily done. (Although, Mel used the term "romance" very loosely.) Mel was under the crushing impression that Diane still loved her husband, and would always love him, whether he still felt the same about her or not.

Parting ways with George in the parkway of Diane and Mel's new, modestly sized Tudor house was, well... awkward.

Being a father and husband for so long—especially a father and husband like him, who loved his wife and children openly and on purpose—seemed to change George in immeasurable ways. Or at least, it gave him a certain sense of duty that had never been there before. He helped Mel and Diane pack up their stuff, he helped them load it all up into the back of that cavernous moving truck, he drove the monstrous thing all the way to Hawkins, and he even did a bulk of the unloading once they got there, since the two women were lagging and slow and losing daylight.