***
Your braids like a pattern
Love you to the moon and to Saturn
Passed down like folk songs
The love lasts so long
*
He calls her. All of a sudden, there is his name right on her phone screen. The most fucked up thing, he’s back in town.
She’s eighteen. She’s been living in-between places for most of the year. She sleeps in her car sometimes. He forgets to wire her some money regularly - sometimes she runs out of gas.
He was on the front cover of People last week. New girlfriend.
Her mother doesn’t call.
She misses– Well. She can’t miss what she doesn’t have. She can’t miss what she never had.
Lucas and Peyton hung out the whole day of her birthday.
Her parents didn’t call her once.
But now he calls her. She meets him by the airport. In-between flights. He’s got forty minutes but he spends most of it talking on the phone.
He writes her a check. She tries not to cry. He hugs her with only one arm. She needs two.
She thinks of that one time Peyton was crying because her dad’s car had been robbed.
“I’ll never see my mom’s old guitar again, not ever again, y’know?”, she’d said. That’d been the first time she’d tried on a cigarette. Brooke’d thought to herself that she had nothing like that to miss. But right after that Peyton’s huge eyes blinked at her - and she was able to recognize a thousand things she’d always miss if a time came to be where they didn’t talk anymore.
She could only hope it’d never happen.
“I love you, P. Sawyer.” She’d said then, a small whisper, fingers clasping on fingers, teeth sinking into her bottom lip.
As she drives back - where? - from the airport, she recognizes with a fair amount of bitterness that she has nothing to miss anymore, and yet she misses and misses and misses - just everything.
*
Your dad has come to town
He'd like to meet
I said, "You don't have to see him"
But for whatever reason, you can't tell him no
*
Years later. He calls her. It’s the middle of the night. She wakes up from a nice dream (reality is better, anyways, now that she reminds herself that her arm is around Brooke’s waist while she sleeps calmly, her forehead against Peyton’s chest as if it’s not bony at all).
Peyton declines the call. Right after that comes a text, Your little brother has been born. Say hi to Tom!
She hates Larry. Ever since she started therapy, she understands negligence and abandonment and fear better than she did back then. She hates that Larry almost cost her Brooke. She hates that she had to live by herself, and take care of herself, for so long.
He calls again. This time she hisses loudly as she hangs up the phone, and it makes Dylan and Joan meow in protest by their feet. Brooke laughs softly, her eyes opening just a bit.
“What’s going on?” Brooke asks, her voice still cracking.
“Tom was born tonight– My dad– Go back to sleep, honey, really, it’s not–” Peyton whispers back. Dylan slaps Joan right on the face, and she jumps right onto his belly, her paws attacking him back. Peyton loves the familiarity. The domesticity.
“No.” She sits up right then, promptly, and pulls Peyton against her chest, her two arms wrapped around bony shoulders, her thumbs wiping warm tears.
“I feel awful–”
“‘S okay,” Brooke reassures her, kissing her temple, her fingertips running against her hair. “You don’t have to love him. Your family is right here.”
*
So we meet him at a bar
You were holding my hand hard
He ordered rum and Coke
I can't drink either anymore
He hadn't seen you since the fifth grade
Now you're nineteen and you're 5'8"
He said, "Honey, you sure look great
Do you get the checks I send on your birthday?"
I would kill him
If you let me
*
He calls their home. He knows that this is the only way Brooke might answer. He calls suddenly, sometimes, in the middle of a Tuesday night. He asks how they are but doesn’t seem to listen as Brooke answers. Peyton knows that because Brooke always ends up blinking too fast and spending a while locked inside their bathroom.
Tonight is different, though. He says he’s in town.
He says he had a connection that has been delayed. It sounds a lot like Brooke’s his second choice on how to spend the night.
They go to the airport bar anyways. Brooke has yet to learn how to say no.
“We can stay,” Peyton had said. “It’s okay if we stay.”
“I know. But we’ll go– Okay?” Brooke said back, grabbing the keys of the Comet and handing them to Peyton. “Let’s just– Put on some Carly Simon and let’s just go. Just don’t– Let’s not tell him, okay? About the IVF. About the baby.”
“Sure. Of course.” Peyton had readily agreed. “But if you want to come home, at any time, just say the word. Alright?”
Brooke had nodded slowly. Her fingers entwined Peyton’s and she squeezed her hand. “Thanks, babe.”
Teddy Davis talks a lot. It’s all about him, really, so there’s no reason for them to panic. He won’t ask a damn thing about their lives. There is no reason to tell him about the fact that they’re trying to get pregnant. Well, trying to get Brooke pregnant, to be more precise. They’d chosen an artsy, blond, curly-haired donor.
The baby, when it comes, will probably have Teddy’s eyes. Brooke’s eyes. Peyton can’t stop seeing it as she watches him speak about golf for a whole hour. He didn’t even ask Brooke how she was - at some point, he’d asked her how old she was. Peyton wanted to smack his stupid face right then. Brooke’s hand squeezed her knee. He keeps on talking.
He doesn’t notice anything except for his rum and coke. Peyton imagines herself punching his teeth, her fingers bleeding, his upper lip opening. And then she feels guilty for a second because Brooke’s nails are digging into her knee. Teddy talks business. Brooke says nothing for a whole hour. She pretends to smile. Peyton wants to vomit.
“So, no boyfriends?” He asks abruptly. Fucking Teddy Davis. Stupid, foolish Teddy Davis. No ADHD justifies it. The nonchalance. The disinterest. Brooke gasps in surprise and they exchange an alarmed look.
“I think we should go.” Peyton says, clearing her throat. She opens her wallet, even though Teddy shakes his head, and leaves thirty bucks behind them even though they didn’t drink anything. She gets up, pulling Brooke up too, not letting go of her hand, and they don’t look back. Teddy follows them to the airport exit, seemingly confused, his hazel eyes lost. Her hazel eyes welled up. Same eyes.
Same eyes as my kid will probably have, but fuck it, how is it possible to hate someone’s face so much and acknowledge the one good thing they did in their life is the best thing in your life?, she’d thought.
“He’s looking,” Brooke says, anxiously. Her breath is uneven. Peyton squeezes her hand twice.
“Let’s just leave the car. We’ll come back tomorrow to get it. Let’s just go to the south exit and get a cab there, alright?”
“Alright.” Brooke whispers. Peyton watches as she finds it harder to breathe so she reaches into her purse and grabs a bottle of water. She looks behind them and sees it as Teddy walks back inside the airport building. “Drink this as slowly as you can. Okay?”
“This will fuck up the insemination because my nerves are everywhere.” Brooke says, stopping by a wall, trying to grab some air.
“I don’t care. We’ll wait. We can wait.” Peyton says, holding Brooke’s face with both hands. Teddy calls. They turn off their phones. “I hate him.”
“I hate all of them. I wish we could–” Brooke says in a whine, her throat aching. Peyton’s arms are around her, both arms, a full hug, and this is home and family and certainty like nothing else.
“We can. We can just tell them to go fuck themselves. You don’t owe them shit, honey.” Peyton says against her forehead, her voice thick, her throat aching too. “It’s all just coincidence. Family is a choice. This is it. This is it for us.”
Brooke nods, and sobs, her face red and wet from crying.
“I want that to end. I don’t want the baby to live like we did, with them. I don’t want them to unlove and destroy us. I want them away.”
“It’s okay. We can do that.”
“We’ll keep Victoria, because she’s better. She’s changed. But them–”
“Yeah, no. We don’t need that.” Peyton agrees, tapping Brooke’s foot with her own. “I love you.”
Brooke smiles. Her lips, salty from tears, touch Peyton’s lightly. “It’s you and me, baby. This is the family that matters. Family that I chose.”
“And the baby, when they come.”
“Of course.” Brooke mutters, her nose rubbing against Peyton, who laughs because of the wetness on her face. “I love you, too.”
It’s not extraordinary, this life, this family, this love. It’s the most known thing in the world for the Sawyer-Davises. It’s the rarest thing they’d ever encountered as well. And damn, was it worth it.
*
"You two are connected by a pure coincidence
Bound to him by blood, but baby, it's all relative
You've been in his fist ever since you were a kid
But you don't owe him shit even if he said you did"
You don't owe him shit even if he said you did.
*
Our love lasts so long.
***