She Will Be Loved- Ben Tyler Cook

Chapter 55

Ben's POV

November 23, 2020

"I hope you realize I'm going to put you three to work later. I'm not gonna let lazing around and watching football on the couch slide," my mom called from the kitchen. Nick and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

"I don't think you want us messing up your world famous cherry pie!" my dad called back, winking at us and I chuckled. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and I was home for the week with my family. My mom was currently in the kitchen doing as much prep as she could before tomorrow, and Kate was helping. Emma would be arriving later.

"We'll do dishes!" I promised, and turned my attention back to the game on TV. It felt good to just be home and surrounded by family, especially before the holidays.

"Hey Ben, would you mind going through your room and seeing what you want to keep or donate right now?" my mom popped her head back into the living room. My parents were currently in the process of trying to sell this house, they wanted more of a smaller place now that all of their kids had moved out. But anyways, this process entailed all of us going through our old rooms and clearing out whatever junk was left in there.

"Of course," I said and got up off the couch and went upstairs. The door creaked open. My childhood bedroom. It looked almost exactly the way I'd left it when I'd been here in my first year of high school. I smiled to myself, thinking about all the time I'd spent in not only here, but in the whole house. I had some of the best childhood memories that I'll forever be thankful for.

My parents always made life so special for us, even through the simplest things. We had intense snowball fights every winter in our backyard, and movie nights every month. Sunday mornings were for waffles and in the summer they'd let us have bonfires with our friends. And on top of giving us the best lives, my parents did everything to keep up with our crazy endeavors. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant to drive Emma and I to dance classes multiple times a week, but they still did it anyways. They let me go to an incredible performing arts high school in the city. They let me be on broadway and go on multiple national tours. They supported all their kids in whatever we did and let us take on incredible opportunities.

I'm thankful for the two most loving and supportive parents, and for the best siblings that I have incredible memories with.

I started rummaging around my room, and set up one box for donations and another box for things I would keep. I started by putting old clothes in the "donate" box, along with old costumes and dance things. I went through my bookshelf, and kept a few of my favorite books and donated the rest. I went through old dance and show programs and decided to keep those for the memories. I had a pretty hefty collection of playbills, and I immediately put those in the "keep" box. I mean hey, some of those could be worth money. Totally not keeping them for the nerd in me. I carefully took down the old posters I had up, and I rolled up my "Ragtime" poster and put it in the keep box. Ragtime would always hold a special place in my heart, it was where a little boy's theatre dreams came true for the first time. I took down the photo collages on my wall, smiling as I recalled all the friends I'd had in my childhood and teenage years, some of who I was still friends with. The rest, I wondered where they were today and hoped they were doing good.

I'd gone through just about everything in my room, and the last thing I found in my closet was an old nerf gun. I chuckled to myself. Of course. A staple part of my childhood was nerf guns and me and my friends' ever so imaginative nerf wars and challenges. We even had a Youtube channel with a pretty big amount of subscribers, full of videos poorly edited on iMovie. Thank god that channel's gone, I thought, cringing as I pictured my child self and those videos.