Scars Like Ours | Red View Romance #2

🐈 Five

Cliff's old room was exactly how he left it. Same olive green walls, same maple furniture, same queen size bed. As soon as he was alone, he got one thing out of the way: removing the mirror that was hanging over his dresser. He tucked it against the wall with a sigh, knowing it was far from the only mirror in the house. In his apartment, he'd taken them all down. The ones he couldn't, he'd taped over with newspaper.

The only times he did look at himself on purpose were to cut his hair, and that was more than often enough for him. But staying here, he'd have to start caring more about his appearance. He'd need the mirrors to shave, to make sure the facial hair that now grew in disorganized patches thanks to the scarred skin didn't make it past an awkward five o'clock shadow.

The sight of the room he grew up in filled him again with regret. He could've stayed here, could've built a life and had a real home. Living with his siblings all these years would have been fun. He liked working on the orchard well enough, and he wouldn't have missed out on so much.

Maybe he'd have met someone by now, gotten married and settled down, moved into a house on the river or the old apartment above his mom's bridal shop. Now the hope of any of that was long gone.

Of course, that was a pipe dream, anyways. He'd just never met a woman who he found more interesting than the music, and no one had ever seemed to find him particularly interesting, either. Even before the accident, he figured he'd be one of those people who'd turn eighty and still be married to their career.

Kenzie got a phone call from her contractor and left Cliff—and Fritters—alone to unpack, but the task didn't last long. Ethel, the old piano, was calling to him from the den, luring him downstairs. He barely made it an inch into his suitcase before leaving his room and slinking downstairs, the cat following silently.

One thing his siblings apparently hadn't changed about the estate was their parents affinity for memory keeping. Family photos of years past were still hanging on the walls of the stairway, displayed on a shelf in the entryway, sitting proudly on the fireplace in the den. Some were nice to look at: Jack and Dawson on the day they inherited the orchard, Kenzie and Marshall's engagement photos, and his parents, years before any of them were born, on their wedding day.

But the ones with Cliff in them stung, a cruel reminder of his lost normalcy. He hadn't been all that bad looking once upon a time, and now he barely even recognized the average, harmless looking man in the pictures. Him at twenty-five seemed almost like an entirely different person than who he was now at twenty-nine.

Mostly, he felt bad for the boy in the pictures. He had no idea what was coming, that in a few months he'd screw everything up and make the biggest mistake of his life. One that he'd be reminded of every time he saw his reflection. He turned his back on the mantle, trying to ignore the taunting call of the photographs. If he was going to make it through his stay here, he'd have to fight the way the house seemed to mock him.

And if there was one thing that could help with that, it was the upright piano positioned against the sunshine-yellow wall, right next to one of the large windows that let sunlight filter through the weeping willow outside and drench the room. He sat down on the stool, resisting the urge to close the curtains. There was no point in hiding away so severely—not when he was here, where he'd be facing people every day.

He lifted the fallboard and let his fingers lay naturally over the yellowed keys. But when he played a chord, he cringed at the grossly out-of-tune notes. He'd need his tuning kit, clearly—it was just a matter of remembering where he left it. Kenzie would probably know, but who knew how long her phone call would last? He decided to poke around, see if he could find it in one of the hutches drawers, or maybe in the hall closet.