I'll Be Right Here | ✔

4 | Choose

    Derek

THE SMELL OF pancakes is the first thing that catches my nose when I enter the house. It's eerie and quite... almost too eerie if you ask me. I almost think that I'm home alone until I hear that creaking sound.

That sound. God, that sound.

I cup my ears, trying my best to drain the sound, knowing fairly well what comes next after the sound. And then, I hear the voice. That dreaded voice.

"Derek," her voice is as broken as the wooden floor, if not more.

I sigh, removing my hands from my ear. "Yeah?"

"Derek," she starts again. I slowly walk into the living room where she's sitting all comfortable in her red velvet chair that he bought for her. "Derek, where were you?"

I fumble with my fingers, recalling earlier today. "Sorry, I was busy," I say, "and forgot to tell you." Which is a complete lie because Spencer was running late from his tutoring session with Cassie. I almost had a feeling that something more was going on between them, but didn't feel the necessity to ask him.

It takes about a moment for her to sink that in. "Derek," she murmurs in the silence. "W- why did you go out?"

"G- go out?" My stomach does a double flip, wondering if she caught me. "Uh, I was just," I scratch my neck, "I went out with my friends."

"On his birthday?" she says, out of the blue.

I immediately feel a sense of guiltiness, as my mind floods with memories of him and I on his previous birthdays. "Mother, it's not like I go out with my friends everyday!" I surprise myself by shouting out.

She suddenly stops rocking her chair back and forth, and looks directly at me. Even more intensifying than Spencer's eyes, which is saying a lot. "Derek," she starts, "are you talking back to me?"

I take a step back. "No, Mother, I'm," I stop, realizing I am.

I swear she's about to get up from her chair at that moment, but she sits back down when something catches her nose; more specifically: a scent. "Oh f," she stops, looking at me.

I sniff the scent to only realize that something is burning. "What were you cooking?" I ask, but now in a demanding tone. I follow the scent to the kitchen, and find a burnt flat cake of batter perched on a pan right there on the stove. And on top of it, the stove is still on.

Why hadn't I noticed this before?

I turn off the stove, before returning to the living room where she is still seated all peaceful like. "Seriously?!" I scold, "God, are you trying to burn the house down!"

My mother waits until I've calmed myself down. "Derek," she starts, "he loves pancakes, remember?"

I look up from the ground, wanting to desperately slap my mother across the face for how guilty she's making me feel. "He loved pancakes," I murmur.

My mother looks up. "What'd you say?"

"I said he loved pancakes," I repeat. "Love is a present tense; he's dead now."