Stir Me (Rouse Me 2)

I have just the pick.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I run my fingers along the case of the DVD. This shouldn't feel like a big deal. It's not like it's a secret movie no one has ever seen. The African Queen is on the AFI top one hundred films list. It's near the top. It's not a big deal that I'm going to watch it with Alyssa.

She sees right through me. "What are you thinking?

"I've never watched this with anyone but my mom." I slide the DVD into the player. "It was her favorite."

I still remember sitting with her on the couch, way too young to appreciate anything she watched. My friends forced their parents to watch cartoons or silly action shows for kids, but I didn't want to do that to my mom.

I still remember the way the light of the TV flickered over her face. The way she smiled. The way she was glued to the screen. It was the only time she ever seemed alive. It was the only time she was more than Mrs. Lawrence, more than Luke's mom. She was Emilia, a person.

Most of her life was so dull and gray. Every day she cooked dinner for my father. She waited for him to come home, and they sat together in silence. I eavesdropped while I did my homework. He never listened to her. He never cared about any of her wants, her feelings, her dreams.

She was his wife, and it was all she was allowed to be.

But when it was just her and her film collection... she was a different person. She had passion. Joy.

"Luke, your smile is ridiculous."

I shake my head. "It's no big deal."

Alyssa nestles next to me. "What was she like?"

"She was sweet," I say. "She was the sweetest person I've ever known."

"So that's where you get it?"

"I'm not sweet. I'm... normal."

Alyssa shakes her head. She holds me closer. It's hard to breathe. She's so close, so close to being all mine. All I can do now is lose her.

"She was quiet," I say. "She was always busy thinking about something, but she kept it to herself. I know I was a stupid kid, and I probably wouldn't have understood half the stuff going through her mind. Hell, I probably would have been shocked that my mother was a person with her own inner life, but I wish she would have talked to me. She needed someone."

"You shouldn't have had to take care of her."

"I didn't," I say. "She took great care of me. It was all she had to do--she watched films when I was at school, and when I was home, she took care of me. She coddled me, actually. She'd make me snacks after school. She'd ask about my day. She'd allow me to watch movies with her when I was supposed to do my homework." I smile. "It was the same every day. Mom insisted I wouldn't like a film. That it wasn't appropriate for someone my age. She kept that line up even when I was sixteen."

"Was she right?"

"Sometimes," I say. "I watched Apocalypse Now when I was twelve. I had no idea what was going on."

"It's based on an incredibly dense novel."

I shake my head. "I wish she was still around. She would have loved you. My God, if I told her I was dating a woman who played Ophelia in Hamlet."

"Only in high school."

"Still. She would have adored you almost as much as I do."

Alyssa studies my expression. There's something so sweet about the way she's looking at me. This is what she wanted, isn't it? To carry some of the weight that has been dragging me down.

"What else?" Alyssa asks.

"By the time I was eight, our movie afternoons were a daily event. Monday through Friday. She picked me up from school. We usually went straight home and watched something from her collection. Of course my father made her keep all five hundred of her movies in a closet, some place where no one would ever see it. So no one would get the stupid idea that his wife was anything more than a trophy."

"That's awful."