I Think I Love You | Randy

track 12. i think i love you - the partridge family

I think I love you, so what am I so afraid of? I'm afraid that I'm not sure of a love there is no cure for. 

***

We played the usual tunes on the ride home, Rye making all my problems disappear the way only he could; by belting out seventies classics without a care in the world. Something about the open country roads and Rye's Freddie Mercury impression brought me back to a happy place, giving me the sense that by coming back home we could rewind the clocks for a little while. 

He dropped me off at my house where my mum instantly wrapped me up in a bone crushing hug. "So good to have you home, baby."

"I missed you," I told her.

A few months wasn't a long time to be away but I knew I was coming home a different person to when I had left, so many innocent memories attached to this place. My bedroom walls lined with photos of Rye and I made me feel things, and so did the empty outlines of the removed photos that used to hold the memories of my ex. I laid in my bed where I'd had countless sleepovers with Rye and lost my virginity to somebody I didn't know anymore. Just letting myself feel everything I needed to, even if I didn't understand all of it.

I spent the next few days with my mum, helping her put up the tree and catching her up on the time we'd spent apart, leaving out all the grown-up details that still felt weird to talk to my mother about, even though she knew I was an adult myself now. She was excited to hear about Brook, telling me how proud she was that I had opened myself up to love again after getting my heart broken. I didn't have the heart to admit my doubts to her, just wanting her to be happy, which I knew she would be as long as she thought I was.

The Beaumonts had invited us for Christmas dinner, always wanting to include us in their big family when they knew there was only two of us- not that I ever had a problem with that. I loved Christmases with my mum. The mornings where we she baked fresh croissants for breakfasts before we took a walk down the lake, feeding the leftover crumbs to the ducks by the pond. They were our little traditions, and I would never trade them in for a bigger family. But still, I loved Rye's house at Christmas even more. His little twin brothers pelting me with bullets from their brand new Nerf Guns the second I crossed the threshold, still in their pyjamas at three in the afternoon. Rye bickering fondly with his older brother, Robbie who I knew he'd missed more than he cared to talk about, while aromatic cooking smells wafted over from the kitchen. The Beaumont house was always so wonderfully chaotic.

Robbie started a Monopoly game in the living room which was bound to keep the twins calm for a little while, until the inevitable fights broke out, resulting in Rye being stripped of his role as the banker and banished to jail for three turns for stealing. Our mums gossiped in the kitchen over glasses of sherry while Rye's dad sat down with a beer in the comfiest chair in the house, trying to find a few rare moments of peace in his whirlwind of a household. No, I'd never felt like I needed anything more than my mum, but this was still my family too. A big family never being something I'd craved until Rye had welcomed me into his. 

"I just can't believe you two are at university now," my mum cooed over Rye and I at dinner making me roll my eyes.

"It feels like yesterday they were splashing around naked in the paddling pool in our back garden," Rye's mum joined in.

"Mum!" Rye groaned.

"I just lost my appetite," Robbie joked, making Rye elbow him in the ribs.

"Boys, no fighting at Christmas," Rye's dad reprimanded.

The sentimentalism didn't end there of course, Rye's mum digging out the old photo album after dessert, forcing us all to gather around it. It was funny to notice just how much I featured in their family album, having been present at most family holidays and major events for the past decade or so. Rye and I had apparently gone through a long phase in our childhood of pulling the ugliest possible faces we could muster in every single photo.