Losing Ruby
Copyright © 2020 Kelsa Dixon
All rights reserved
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[Brody]
I stood in my living room—in the middle of my apartment—and there was shit everywhere. For days it had been like this. Days we spent going back and forth from our parents house, twenty-five minutes away, to dump another pile of boxes across my wide-plank oak floors. Half of every one of them still left unpacked.
Blankets that had adorned our parents' couches now haphazardly covered the leather ones I currently stood between. My coffee table had disappeared under a pile of magazines and small baskets of nail polish and an assortment of candles all burned to various heights. In front of me, the once bare TV console whose sole purpose was to house my sound bar and WiFi receiver now bore the weight of stacks and stacks of books. Clearly it wasn't large enough based on the brown paper grocery bags that sat beside it labeled: BOOKS.
My eyes shifted left to the front door. On the once bare coat rack I'd screwed into the brick wall, now hung several of Chloe's coats. No mind that it was the middle of August and any cool weather remained months away.
I followed the wall to an onslaught of dark cabinets and a set of appliances that had gotten more use in the last few days than they had in the year I'd lived here. Four stools nestled beneath the island and a picture window flanked the far wall flooding the countertops with light. Concrete counters that were buried beneath piles of cookware that I hadn't previously owned. Under a blender and a juicer and a dutch oven—which I only knew the name of when I'd asked if we would ever be making the absurd amount of food that it could hold.
It was mom's and therefore it was now ours. I didn't ask again.
Beyond the window that I'd once stood peacefully in front of, in my nearly empty, silent loft, drinking my coffee each morning was a metal balcony. Slight steel arms extended from the building, providing a small amount of cover for the now plethora of furniture and potted plants I'd never had before.
A round dining table with four chairs—ironically, just the right number for our family now—sat between the kitchen and the area rug, defining the space I currently stood in. It too was lost beneath a heap of unpacked, some unmarked, boxes and bags. Clothes draped over the chairs, shoes piled in some, and bags—an endless amount of purses of different sizes and shapes—littered in every direction. Some hung over the flaps of boxes, others had been collected and then dismissed onto the edge of the table. And still others slung across the backs of the chairs.
Fortunately, in the far corner, tucked at the back of the apartment was my bedroom. And of all the space I no longer had for myself out here—in this open, once barren expanse of a home that was no longer my own—my room had remained untouched. For now. I'd seen her eyeing the closet I kept half empty yesterday.
The stairs just outside my bedroom door though, those were also hers. A box was set upon each step, pushed to the side, making a path only large enough for Chloe to climb to the open loft where I used to keep nothing at all. Now it collected the mass of her shoe collection, and they were no longer contained to a box, a bag, or any type of luggage. They were scattered in every direction across that suspended floor. Although, yesterday she'd decided we'd purchase an extra mattress and set of linens for whenever Luca or Noah wanted to spend the night. The situation was becoming cozier by the day.
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Losing Ruby
ChickLit[Ongoing] It took one tragedy to tear them apart. Another tragedy to force them to face their issues. And the scare of a third to finally mend what was broken. Brody has never been able to forgive himself for the death of their sister six years ag...
