Milo burst into the room without knocking. He’d just gotten home from his first day at of his new school, and he overflowed with excitement. Bobby was still at college and he had nobody else to talk to, so he woke us up. Or at least he tried to.
I was happy for Milo, but I’d only been asleep for a few hours when he rushed in. Jack managed to sit up and engage in conversation, but I curled up closer to Jack and learned things through osmosis.
The teachers appreciated Milo’s genius, and the girls kept hitting on him. He debated about whether or not he wanted to be openly gay, or fly under the radar. Jack gave him some sage advice about just being himself, and people could make of him what they wanted.
Jack was awake after that, but he knew I slept better when he was around, so he grabbed the laptop and sat in bed next to me. I couldn’t really sleep either, but I loved lying in bed next to him. Then, abruptly, he slammed the laptop shut and hopped out of bed.
“What’s going on?” I asked, watching as he rushed into the walk-in closet. I sat up when he didn’t answer, and he came out a few minutes later, pulling on a tee shirt. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. He grabbed his wallet off the dresser and shoved it in his back pocket, and when he turned to look at me, he grinned like a fool. “I’ve got something awesome to do.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll see.” He came over and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Okay?” I asked, but he just laughed as he walked out of the room.
After he’d gone, I showered and got ready for the day. When I got done, I checked on Milo and Bobby across the hall, in Peter’s old room. Peter had actually packed up his stuff because he left this time for good. I hated to admit it, but I felt a pang in my heart every time I saw his empty room.
Well, it wasn’t empty completely. His four-post bed had been dismantled and sat propped up in the corner, with the mattress and bedspring shoved in the walk-in closet. His empty bookcases lined the walls, and all his furniture and other belongings were gone.
Peter had also left a copy of his book A Brief History of Vampyres behind on his bed, and I know he’d done it for me. But I couldn’t keep it. I’d taken it before Jack could see, and shoved it in the box with the rest of Peter’s odds and ends stuff, burying it below a shirt and some old records.
With Peter gone, the boys had turned the empty room into a playroom. Before Christmas, Jack and Bobby had discovered a massive sale on Star Wars Legos at the Toys R’ Us, and they “had” to buy them all. That somehow translated into them bringing them all into Peter’s old room to put them together.
So far, they had managed to build the Death Star and a walking AT-AT, set carefully on the bookcases, and they had moved onto a giant Millennium Falcon. Bobby sat cross-legged on the floor, carefully sorting through the Lego pieces, and Milo laid on his belly, a textbook splayed open in front of him.
The new Silversun Pickups CD played softly on the stereo, and the door to the balcony had been propped open, letting the cool winter breeze blow in. Bobby had flipped up the hood on his sweatshirt, but he didn’t mind the cold that much anymore.
It still felt weird to me stepping into Peter’s room, even though it wasn’t his room anymore, and it didn’t even really look like it. I breathed in deeply, still able to smell him faintly. I wrapped my arms around myself and shook my head to clear it of thoughts of him.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked.
“Stuff,” Bobby said stiffly, adjusting his thick black glasses. He never wore them, but he needed them to see the small pieces of the Legos.
“Bobby had a rough day at school,” Milo informed me without glancing up from his book. “He got some teacher that hates him. But he doesn’t wanna talk about it.”
“I see.” I walked over to Milo and looked down at his textbook, and all the words were in a different language. “What are you studying?”
“French,” Milo said. “How do you feel about going to France this summer?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. I stepped away from him and looked around the room. It looked so barren and large without all of Peter’s antiques cluttering it up.
I knew that Peter and I couldn’t live together anymore, not if I wanted to make things work with Jack, but I didn’t like the feel of empty space. But it wasn’t just his absence that made the house seem empty. Mae had taken a good chunk of the warmth with her, and the house had the distinct feel of a bachelor pad.
Since Milo didn’t seem to be in the mood to chat anymore, I went downstairs to check out the laundry situation. Under ordinary circumstances, Ezra would’ve been a rather clean, orderly guy, I’m sure, but he’d been all mopey without Mae. Milo was the only one who really picked up after himself, and I’d felt like I had to step up my game lately.
The laundry room was overflowing in a way that would’ve made Mae faint. Jack had once made a joke about how unreasonable it would be to wear a new outfit every day, but he had enough clothes where he could go months without washing it and still have clean stuff to wear. So, that’s what happened.
I shoved as many clothes as I could into the two washing machines and turned them on. Pushing the hair off my forehead, I surveyed the room and I’d barely made a dent on the laundry. Sighing, I turned to leave, since I couldn’t do much more for the time being.
I paused in the doorway and looked down the hall, towards Ezra’s den. The door stood partially open, and I could see the dim blue glow from the computer. He’d holed himself up in there since Mae had been gone.