A/N: Hey guys, I just got back to college, so updates might not be as frequent as they've been so far, but I'll still do my best to keep providing you with quality content. On another note, where would you like to see Wyatt—in LA or Philadelphia?
December 28, 2013
Boston's Logan Airport had a way of welcoming you in December that left no doubt about where you were, with the wind cutting through every available opening with a determination Wyatt found almost personal after spending the last few days in Texas, where winter was more of an idea than a climatic reality.
He picked up his suitcase from the baggage carousel with the same automatic movement with which he did everything when his mind was elsewhere—which was exactly the situation right now, as the belt kept spinning and the other passengers gathered their bags around him with the specific haste of people who know exactly where they are going when they leave an airport.
Wyatt, on the other hand, did know where he was going, and that didn't make the situation any less strange to process as he walked out of the terminal toward the taxi area, his suitcase rolling behind him and the cold December Boston air hitting his face with an efficiency winter had never managed before.
The question he had been asking himself during the five-hour flight from Houston with a layover in Charlotte wasn't where he was going, but why exactly he was going there. It was a question to which he had an answer, but when he tried to formulate it into concrete words, it sounded considerably more complicated than it had seemed when he made the decision on his parents' living room sofa, with Home Alone on the television and his grandfather by his side.
He was supposed to spend the holidays in Katy until the third of January.
He had called his grandfather that very morning on the twenty-eight to tell him he was going to Boston, and the conversation had lasted exactly forty-five seconds, which was roughly the time his grandfather needed to process any new information regardless of its nature and respond with something that, in his case, had been "call when you get there"—which, in his language, was equivalent to a full blessing with a ceremony included.
Elena had been considerably harder to convince, with several questions Wyatt had answered using the same information in different orders until his mother had let out a sigh and said, "I just hope I get to meet her soon," to which Wyatt had neither confirmed nor denied anything, because confirming or denying either thing required having more clarity than he possessed at that moment.
The words his grandfather had told him remained the ones carrying the most weight in his head as the taxi line moved slowly in front of the terminal.
Geography is a logistics problem, he had said with that calm of his that Wyatt had taken years to learn to distinguish from indifference, because it wasn't indifference—quite the contrary, it was the calm of someone who has seen enough things to know which ones deserve nerves and which ones don't.
You haven't dropped any passes yet.
Wyatt had repeated that phrase in his head several times during the flight because there was something in it that worked differently from any other advice he had been given in his life, perhaps because it came in a language his brain processed effortlessly.
When his turn came in the taxi line, he gave the address without hesitation because he did indeed remember it by heart, which probably said something about a situation Wyatt had been cataloging as "complicated" for weeks and which his grandfather had called by a considerably simpler word.
The taxi pulled away from the airport toward the highway, and Wyatt looked out the window at the December Boston landscape, which was completely different from October, when he had been here last for the Boston College game, the fraternity party, and everything that had occurred afterward at the bar, in the car, in Blaire's closet, and the kiss at the front door that Wyatt had thought about considerably more times than he had anticipated over the last two months.
Framingham was about forty minutes from the airport, and Wyatt spent them looking out the window without music and without his phone, simply letting the scenery pass while the exact same conversation kept running in parallel inside his head: whether this was a good idea or not.
The part in favor said that going nearly two weeks without being able to have a completely normal conversation with Blaire—because his head kept producing her name at the most inconvenient moments—was enough evidence to conclude that ignoring the situation was not a strategy that was working.
The part against didn't have a concrete argument, but rather a kind of diffuse discomfort at the image of showing up at someone's door without warning in a city he had traveled to specifically for that, which was exactly what he was doing.
But Rudy had said geography was a logistics problem, and the logistics of this specific problem required being in Boston, which required having taken a plane, which Wyatt had done, and in that sense, the hardest work was already done.
The taxi turned down the familiar street, and Wyatt recognized the facade of the Bennett house before the driver announced they had arrived with the same neutral tone with which he announced all arrivals, regardless of his passengers' personal circumstances.
The Bennett House
Inside the Bennett house, the circumstances of December twenty-eighth were exactly what one would expect after Christmas, with the family still in that specific state that occurs when the holidays end and normalcy hasn't completely re-established itself.
The argument had started approximately twenty minutes prior, with John and Ted at the center of it, which was the place where almost all arguments in the Bennett house tended to end, regardless of where they had begun.
"All I'm saying," Ted was saying from the sofa with the expression of someone who considers himself to be being completely reasonable, "is that at no point did anyone specify the Christmas tree couldn't be used for that."
"TED," Matty said from his armchair with the specific volume he reserved for occasions when he considered what he had just heard exceeded the limits of what a normal person could tolerate. "The Christmas tree is for decoration, not for throwing things."
"Technically, it was John who threw it," Ted pointed out.
"YOU told me to throw it," John responded from the other sofa with the patience of someone who has spent a lifetime being the co-author of plans that were obviously bad in retrospect.
"Both of you," Susan said from the armchair next to Matty, using the calm voice she employed when she had processed the situation and reached the conclusion that raising her tone was going to do no good. "Both of you did exactly the same thing you shouldn't have done, and both of you know perfectly well why."
John opened his mouth to say something and closed it again with the expression of someone who knows that anything they say at this moment will only worsen their position.
Ted, on the other hand, lacked that same situational awareness. "But technically, the tree is still standing," he tried.
"Ted," Matty said with a single tone that contained all the necessary information.
Blaire was sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa John was sitting on, her knees tucked against her chest and her eyes on the book open in front of her, though she hadn't read a single line for several minutes because the argument occurring around her was absurd enough to be difficult to ignore completely, though it wasn't interesting enough to actively participate in either.
The Picture of Dorian Gray had been stuck on the same three pages since before the twins' argument started.
"It's December twenty-eighth," Blaire said without looking up from the book. "The tree can survive three more days before someone throws it away, whatever it is you guys did."
"That's not the point," Matty said.
"What is the point?" Blaire asked.
"The point," Matty began with the tone of someone about to explain something he considers should be obvious to anyone with basic judgment, "is that these two decided on Christmas, of all possible days..."
It was at that moment that the doorbell rang.
The Bennett house doorbell had a specific sound everyone in the house recognized, and to which everyone reacted in predictable ways, with Matty turning his head toward the door with an expression of who could that be, Susan rising from her armchair with the naturalness of someone who always ends up being the one to answer, and Ted and John pausing their argument with the same simultaneous curiosity they had for any unexpected interruption.
"Susan, open the door," Matty said, settling into his armchair without moving from the spot.
Blaire returned her eyes to the book as she listened to Susan's footsteps toward the door, followed by the sound of the lock, and then a brief silence of the kind that occurs when the person opening the door encounters something they didn't expect.
And then Susan's voice saying, "yes, tell me," with the polite and slightly interrogative tone she used with strangers.
And then a voice Blaire recognized before her brain finished processing the complete sound, causing her eyes to leave the book and fix on nothingness for a fraction of a second before she could do anything else.
"I'm looking for Blaire," the voice said. "Is this where she lives?"
The Bennett house living room processed that information at different speeds, with John and Ted turning simultaneously toward the door with the immediate expression of someone who has just recognized someone, and Matty leaning slightly forward in his armchair, his eyes narrowing in the direction of the entrance with the specific expression of a man evaluating a stranger without enough information yet.
Susan stepped aside with a smile Wyatt hadn't expected to encounter so easily. "Come in, come in," she said as if the visit were completely normal, gesturing inward with a movement that admitted no discussion.
Wyatt walked in with his backpack on one shoulder and stopped at the threshold of the living room, where four people stared at him with completely different expressions.
John recognized him first with a look that shifted from recognition to something closer to amusement in less than a second, which he contained with a discipline Wyatt internally thanked him for.
Ted took approximately half a second longer in the same process and, unlike John, contained nothing, instead simply leaning back on the sofa with the expression of someone who has just received exactly the kind of entertainment they didn't expect but welcome with open arms.
Matty looked at him from his armchair with his arms crossed and that evaluative expression Wyatt recognized as that of someone going through a rapid classification process, trying to determine what category of unexpected visitor this boy with a backpack at his front door belonged to before making any decision on how to treat him.
"I came to see Blaire," Wyatt said, addressing the entire living room because there was no way to direct it to just one person with everyone staring at him from their respective spots.
"What are you doing here?" Blaire said from where she was with a bluntness she didn't try to hide, standing up with the book still in her hand and looking at him with an expression Wyatt couldn't fully read, but which held a mix of incredulity and something else underneath that he couldn't name at the moment either.
"Blaire," Susan said with a calm tone that was clearly not a suggestion. "That's no way to speak to a guest."
Blaire closed her mouth, and Susan turned toward Wyatt with a smile Wyatt found considerably more comforting than any other expression he had encountered in the living room over the last thirty seconds.
"How do you two know each other?" Susan asked with the direct curiosity of someone who asks the questions they want to ask without unnecessary beating around the bush.
"He's a classmate from college," Blaire said before Wyatt could open his mouth, looking at him with an expression on her face that was completely unmistakable, saying play along and don't say absolutely anything that contradicts that.
Wyatt looked at Blaire for a second, processing the instruction before nodding with the same natural ease with which he would have confirmed any piece of information. "That's right," he said. "Classmates."
"How nice," Susan said with the same smile, showing no sign of having registered the exchange of looks that had just occurred directly in front of her. "We were just about to have lunch, stay with us."
And without waiting for a response from Wyatt, Blaire, or anyone else in the living room, Susan turned toward the kitchen, leaving Wyatt standing at the entrance of the Bennett house with his backpack on his shoulder and the entire family staring at him from their respective spots.
John had the same expression as before, which belonged to someone processing a situation they found considerably more interesting than they expected that day to be.
Ted had the expression of someone who had just received enough material to comment on it for several days.
Matty remained in his armchair with his arms crossed, the evaluation still underway, having not yet reached any visible conclusion.
And Blaire looked at him from where she stood with her book in her hand and that expression of hers that was somewhere between incredulity and something else Wyatt couldn't entirely name, but which didn't seem completely negative either if one knew where to look.
Author thought
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