Devil's House

What's Best

Being up before the sunrise wasn't Chester's favorite thing, but that was part of the reality of having infants. When Lily's cries came over the baby monitor at just after 4am, Chester knew it was his turn to get up. He'd gone to the nursery, and just like so many other nights, right about the time he got her laid back down, Lila was ready for her diaper change, feeding, and to be rocked back to sleep while Chester sang softly to her in the peaceful space of the girls' nursery. Despite being tired, these nightly communions were a bonding time between him and his girls, and Chester cherished the moments. He would be relieved when the time came that Lily and Lila started sleeping through the night, but until then, his heart was thankful that he was able to soothe them back to sleep each night, their bellies full.

Normally, after the nightly ritual was complete, Chester would crawl back into bed with Mike, collapse into his arms and pass right back out. Oftentimes night kisses would happen - sleepy, not even awake kisses would pass between them as one of them came back to bed. It was something else positive about being up at all hours of the night that Chester looked forward to. Affection from his husband always made his heart happy, and he loved to give that affection back whenever he could.

But this morning after he'd gotten Lila back to sleep, Chester didn't manage to go back to bed. His mind was awake and troubled as the conversation and confession from his husband just a few hours ago was still fresh on his mind. It was troubling to be told that, once again, Mike had fallen in love with Jason. That once again, Mike had been putting Jason first, and that was the reason there had been so many ugly fights lately. It was a heavy thing to think about, to try and reason through, and so instead of crawling back into bed with Mike, Chester had crept into their darkened bedroom and grabbed his messenger bag instead.

He thought about going out to the living room to sit, maybe on the couch or at the dining room table, but both of those places felt too open. Too exposed. Those were part of the common areas, and therefore inherently not private. It was a desperate decision to go to the spare room instead - to Talinda's room - as Chester shuffled through his messenger bag to find his journal and rainbow pen. The black and gray bag went to the floor as Chester settled onto the bed. He'd sat on it many times while Talinda had been living with them, but this was the first time he could remember sitting in the room by himself.

He sat close to the wall, with his back propped against the line of pillows that smelled like Talinda's perfume, his knees up as he rested his journal there. He looked down at the pink words of his last entry - a half a page of joyful scribbles about the girls being born, and Chester smiled. It was nice to re-read his thoughts from a couple of weeks ago and the joy that had clearly been present. It prompted him to flip back another page, only this time he frowned. Not at the words, but at the date. He flipped back and then back again, and again as he traveled through time via his journal.

Over the last few months, there were only a handful of entries. It was a massive difference from the thicker, chunkier parts of his journal where every other day he'd scribbled his thoughts. It was odd to see such a drastic change, and as he looked at the dates and the few things he'd written about, he realized his writing had become so slim when they moved into the L house. Everything before that - things from the apartment and when he was living on campus with Mike and even back at Amir's where his journaling had really begun - were a mix of long, emotional cries from his heart and joyful moments in life peppered in between.

But all of that hadn't carried over into his journal once he and Mike had moved in with Ryan and Jason. The few entries that had happened all seemed to have been penned at Score, other than the happy pink paragraphs about Lily and Lila coming into the world.

It made Chester frown as he flipped back through those very few entries. They were more rambles and rants about life at Score than anything deep or personal. There were three pages of red ink dedicated to the awful metallic screen printed line of shirts that the creative team was determined to add to the summer line. Chester felt his insides boil as he re-read his own writing, reliving the anger and frustration over the ugly things he was losing the battle on, and now, he had to assume, in his absence, the creative team had probably gotten Forrest's approval.