Vanilla

Chapter Nineteen

Dedicated to a_colorful_dreamer because as of thirty seconds ago, I think we might've just become best friends.

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             A week later, and suddenly the date of Gram’s exhibit had drawn so close that I began to wonder what consuming entity the days had vanished into. The final few days had, as predicted, reduced her to a bundle of pent-up energy, and the techno music had been going strong for as many as six straight hours a day. I hardly noticed it now; it was almost like I was building up some kind of immunity to the electronic beat, so that the constant vibration of my bedroom walls had become just background noise. In fact, it seemed stranger now to awaken to a quietness throughout the cottage, silence like gentle waves breaking on the shore, instead of the daily tsunami of obnoxiously loud music.

            Today, a Thursday, was the final day before the opening. Gram was rushing around so wildly, ten different paintbrushes clutched in her fist at any given time, that I was kind of scared to venture any further than the bottom stair. So instead, when Daniel had showed up at the front door to hang out as planned, we’d come to a mutual decision that retreating upstairs and leaving her to it was probably safest.

            “Hey,” he said later, when the both of us were settled sideways on my bed. He was beside me, close enough to let our arms brush with every movement, our legs somehow still tangled together whilst dangling off the end of the frame. “It’s today your sister’s coming down to Walden, right?”

            The anticipation of seeing Nora again was growing; I nodded a little more forcefully than I should’ve. Though I’d adjusted to life without her, the passive consciousness of her absence was always there, like I was missing an unessential but noticeable part of myself. “I’m not sure when she said they were aiming to get here, though.”

            “I’m sure you’ll know about it when she does,” he commented, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “She was with you on the day you first came into the shop, right? The, uh… heavily pregnant one?”

            The memory, at least, had some comedic value; I couldn’t help but think of Nora in her third trimester, and how ridiculous she’d looked having to waddle everywhere she went. “Yeah. That’s her. Except she’s not so heavily pregnant anymore.”

            “Oh, yeah.” He chuckled. “Right.”

            Daniel shifted in his spot, whilst I tried not to dwell on the way the skin-to-skin contact sent tingles coursing through my every nerve. “I can’t believe you remember that,” I said. “That first day in the ice cream shop. The day we first met.”

            “Are you joking? How could I forget?” The smirk was already materialising across his face. “I chased you all the way down the street to give you your change.”

            The initial details of the scene emerged slowly, the rest of it following soon after in one big rush: a tidal wave crashing across my mind. The summer that now lay behind us seemed to have stretched into forever; surely it had to have been close to years long, rather than a mere few weeks? It felt impossible that it wasn’t longer since I’d met Daniel on that first day in Walden, impossible that it had only taken us this long to fast-forward through everything we’d been through. A laugh bubbled up inside me before I had the chance to stop it. “Oh, I remember.”

            “Of course you do,” he replied easily. “I mean, you were so blown away by my breathtaking good looks that you let your ice cream melt all over your hand.”