Page 8 of Bad Habit
Who is this?
Mia
Don’t act like you don’t have my number saved.
Oliver
What do you want, Mia?
Mia
Guest room updates. Your house is boring. Do you really want to be boring, Ol?
Oliver
You know I’m not boring.Why do you care?
Mia
The point is that youshould care.
*photo*
*photo*
*photo*
Mia
White walls and no decorations is too bachelor for a man that owns his own home, Oliver. Do better.
I stare at the pictures that Mia sent. New paint suggestions, new furniture, rugs, and other little things. It’s not hard to see the vision she has. She’s not wrong, the house does need updates. I’ve had a hard time wanting to change a lot after Dad moved us all out. The walls were the same paint colors that mom picked out. They aren’t white though. Mia got that wrong. They’re some sand color that mom picked out to match the sand on the beach her and Dad got married on. When I bought this house from Dad last year, he gave me his full blessing to be able to do whatever it was that I wanted to do with it. He loves this home but he always taught us how mom loved to actually live her life through experiences.
According to him, she believed your home is where the sun shines bright and you feel the most loved. This place isn’ther.And even though I’ve never met her, I can feel her in the creaks of the floor. And the way the rooms light up with the sunrise. Dad has never failed to keep her as alive as possible by telling us how her love lives in each of us. He’s made sure we know all the bits and pieces of her that he fell madly in love with.
I know we look like her more than him. I know that she was an avid believer that you always keep fresh baked cookies in a house because there’s nothing that can’t be cured with a warm chocolate chip cookie. I know that she loved sunsets more than sunrises. I know that she wouldlaugh until she cried and couldn’t breathe over the smallest things. I know that her best friend Remi has been lost without her all these years but she makes sure that she is a part of our lives because we are pieces of our mom.
But I don’t know the exact shade of her eyes or how they would look if she was upset with us or proud of us. I don’t know what her recipe for the cookies tastes like because I never got to taste them. I don’t know if she likes the purple and pink sunsets or the cotton candy sunsets. I don’t know what her laugh sounds like. Dad loved her laugh most.
It’s a strange feeling, not knowing the woman that created half of who you are but having her memory so loudly imprinted on your life that you are able to love her still.
I go back to the open text thread with Mia and can’t stop the smile that comes. Her texting me gives me a new avenue to rile her up and I’m going to take full advantage of it.
Oliver
What about my room? You seemed to like it there.
Mia
Fuck you.
Oliver
Love when you’re mean to me, pretty girl.
I know that she won’t respond to me now. That’s Mia. She’s the perfect balance of love and bite existing in the same moment of time. The way that she brought AJ back from a place that I didn’t even know she was hiding in gives her a permanent space in this family alone.
Truth is, Mia keeps herself pretty guarded. I know nothing about her family even though she is around mine every day. She holds too many jobs, even though I feel like she doesn’t actually need them? One time, AJand I went to go and get coffee and the boss from the coffee shop handed her three paychecks at once and told her she had to cash them soon or they’d expire. And she didn’t care about her pay at the gym either. Dad offered her a raise for growing our memberships and working extra on the scholarship foundation. She denied any kind of raise and said that people shouldn’t have to be bribed to help the betterment of children. It’s one of the reasons her and AJ match souls so easily. Their hearts are both too big for their bodies.
