xmas @ the kevin's

and i know that song

So I wake up. Nice. That's a great start of my day I always like to fucking wake up.
Somehow there's still a layer of snow on my pillow like Santa Clause and his 12 reindeers sprinkled it last night from neigh on high. There was no music in my dreams, none of those old hym books or sacred musings. Everything is silent. Everything is watchful, if you allow me to say that. Like it knows how deep I've sunk  and its waiting for me to drown. I get up, walk to the door and suddenly, I smile again. I'm humming something I don't know what. I hate that. The nameless. The not-quite there. Songs are like people, the notes you can almost always see like rhe figure of a person but the lines? The thoughts? those are harder to pick out. I used to know all of Kevin's. I used to be able to understand him.
That's what's in my mind when I step out into the kitchen. The smell hits me at once, kind of an off gingerbread and egg smell. It's not particularly pleasant but it's not horrible either; it reminds me of all the cooking the fella's at Gander used to do. But it's not any of them I walk in to. It's Kevin.
Kevin doesn't look at me, I don't think he's even noticed my presence. He's placid, posed over a bowl, with a recipe in one hand and what looks like a large smudge of flour across the ridge of his nose. The board is a mess; no scratch that, it's more then a mess. It's fucking awful. There's not one corner that isn't covered in something. Flour; there, what looks like half an egg shell; here. His sleeves aren't even rolled up. Their kind of slooping, which is odd for Kevin who I had seen defiantly rolling up the cuffs off his shirts more times then one.
"Uhh, Kevin??" I say on tenterhooks.
And Kevin's like.
"Oh my god I forgot the butter." Tactically, I think the butters the least of his concerns. I come up to him like a hawk swooping up on its prey. Leaning against the table top, I say,
"What are you trying to make."
He looks ashamed. "Vegan pancakes." He says.
I can't help but laugh. "Right. Kevin." A pause. I want to talk to him about something, something really important to both of us; the guns, the bombs, the terroist organisation but instead all I say is, "You're even holding the whisk wrong." It's strange how he still smells like everything good; the walks in the forest, the work we did together and the late afternoons, EVERYTHING. Even when it all seems a world away. I come over to help him with the whisk and place my hands on his. There's a silence like there was that day; heavy enough that you could hear a pin drop. I'm waiting for it, maybe we both are, the moment where he pulls away. But he doesn't.
He's looking at me. "Are you ever going to forgive me." He says.
I bite my lip; hard. "Are you?"
"I think I already have." Is his response. "I was so angry, Kevin. You just stood there and had so much fun while I NEEDED my family. You couldn't even take that seriously. Why couldn't you?"
I say, "People cope with pain differently. I ignore it. We can work on it."
"Yeah." He nods and for a minute his baking seems to be wholly discarded. "Can we work it out? Together?" There's something else there, behind the whites of his eyes and the finely drawn line of his lips. Something he didn't have to say out loud because all at once, I know him, as much as I know my favourite Christmas song.
He wants me to let him stay. I hold his hands in mine and give them a squeeze. Some song starts playing in my head again and I realise it's 'Fooled around and Fell in Love' by 'Elvin Bishop.' God, do I know why.