Other than the living room, the house was dark when I parked outside of Oma’s house that night. Lucas and I had had sex in so many ways so many times I couldn’t even remember how many times that was. My head was swimming with the thoughts still swirling through my brain, and the smells and tastes still clouding my limbic system. The smile on my face was genuine and not a single bit innocent as I got out of the car. Locking the car with my key fob, I climbed the stairs to the front porch and unlocked the front door, letting myself inside as quietly as possible. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and Oma had the living room lights on, so it was unlikely that she was in bed. However, I didn’t want a fight to start first thing. I was too happy, too satisfied, to want to bring my mood down before bed.
“And just where the hell have you been?” Oma was waggling her head at me from the easy chair in the living room as soon as the door was shut.
I sighed to myself and flipped the lock.
“I’ve texted you fifty times today if it was a million.” She seethed but didn’t rise to her feet.
The T.V. was on but was muted and it cast an eerie blue tint through the room and on her face.
“At Lucas’ fucking again.” I shrugged.
Oma frowned at me.
“Shocker.” I raised my eyebrows.
“Surprising, maybe. Not shocking.”
I held my hands out in a “there ya’ have it” type of way.
“You two playin’ house now, are ya’?”
“Playing something.” I shrugged.
“Mm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean nothing you little shit.” She waggled her head. “Just a response so you knew I heard ya’.”
“Charming.”
“Oh, fuck you, Mister High-and-Mighty.”
“Goodnight, Oma.” I turned toward the stairs.
“Get back in here right now, you little asshole.” She boomed.
That voice was the “Oma voice” from my childhood. I knew better than to ignore it. Not out of fear, but out of respect. It was Oma’s way of letting me know that the conversation wasn’t over. That she was my elder. That she, whether I liked it or not, was my grandmother, I was in her home, and I had to give her respect. I walked back into the living room and stood before her, arms crossing over my chest.
“Now, you look here.” She looked up me, trying to be angry, but her expression was too soft. “I don’t care that you and Lucas are seeing each other—”
“How kind.”
“—but, ya’ little asshole, you could at least return a text so I know you’re not lying in a goddamn ditch somewhere.”
“Or eaten by a wolf on the way home to grandma’s house?” I waggled my head this time.
“Or that.” She snapped.
“Got it,” I said evenly. “I apologize. I will text you next time.”
“Good.”
We stared at each other as the T.V. cast its blue haze around the room, casting eerie, late-night shadows even with the lamps on.
“You wanna watch some T.V. with me?”
“What are you watching?”
Oma looked at me for a second, then seemed to realize what was being asked of her. She glanced at the T.V. nervously and reached for the remote. She wasn’t quick enough. I spun to the T.V. and saw my face on the screen. It was one of the action movies I had made two years previously. Something about terrorists trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty. It was complete crap. I had made twenty-million-dollars. Before taxes. It was a fair wage. The movie made twenty-times that much domestically and even more internationally.
“I’m going to assume you just wanted to see my face.” I snorted as I turned to look at her again. “Because that isn’t one of mine that I would have picked. Unless you’re trying to go to sleep.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
I laughed.
Oma laughed with me.
“It was just on cable.” She relented. “And, well, I was flipping and there you were.”
I shuffled over and sat down, perching on the ottoman her feet were on, looking at the T.V.
“God.” I shook my head. “I have lost a lot of weight, huh?”
“Look like a damn twig.”
I nodded.
“You know they made me work out every day with a trainer for three months before I made this shit?” I gestured at the T.V. “They put me on this high protein, low-fat diet. I’ve never eaten so much salmon, chicken, and eggs in my life. I couldn’t drink alcohol or have sugar. And I worked out for three hours a day every day for the entire two months.”
“Well, you can tell.” I sensed her waving at the T.V. from behind me. “That shirtless scene was something to behold, Robbie. Looked like you were carved outta stone.”
I laughed.
“I felt like shit the whole shoot.” I sighed. “I was so unhappy.”
“Well, I’d be unhappy too if I felt like my neck was eating my head.”
The laughter poured from my throat.
“Who’s that wrestler fella?” She asked over my laughter, a few chuckles escaping her throat. “That guy who is always telling people they can’t see him?”
“I was not as built as John Cena.” I gestured at the T.V.
“Your neck was bigger than his, that’s all’s I’m saying.” She cracked. “Looked like you could drink peanut butter straight from the jar.”
“Yeah.” I cackled. “It was ridiculous. It’s the buffest I’ve ever been.”
“Then why did you feel like shit?”
“I was so unhappy.” I sighed. “I was lonely and miserable and bored and stressed and…I guess everything not good, Oma.”
“Well, ya’ can’t tell.” Her voice was soft. “Guess that’s a testament to your acting skills, huh?”
“I suppose.” I stared at my ex-body doing my possibly ex-job on the small screen in front of us. “I wasn’t acting. I was posing.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I was doing what was expected of me.”
“Isn’t that what actors do?”
“I’ve never won any acting awards because I can’t act, Oma.” I sighed. “I just know how to be anyone but myself. That’s what I do when I’m making movies or T.V. shows. Or I’m playing ‘rock star’ on stage. I’m anyone but Robert Wagner.”
“Robert the youngest.”
“Do you think mom and dad would be proud?” I didn’t dare look back at her.
“Oh, Robbie.” She sighed.
“It doesn’t matter.” I swatted my hand in the air over my shoulder. “That’s stupid.”
“Your father—even though he was a dumbass—was smart enough to be proud of you. And your mother—even though she was a triflin’ tramp—was proud of you, too. As long as they were around, anyway.”
I laughed. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk crap about them.”
“Doesn’t it make it easier to not miss them?”
“No.” I sighed. “It makes me wish I could argue with you about your opinion of them. But I can’t. Because I don’t know them. I have nothing I can use to argue. Other than my feelings. And I don’t even know if those are real.”
“Robbie.” I felt her scoot forward in the chair and then her hand was petting my hair. “Them feelings is real. We can have dumbass, triflin’, trampy parents and still love ‘em. I’m mean as a Pitbull with his balls in a vice and you still love me, right? And you ran off without a word ten years ago and I still love you. Facts don’t factor into feelings.”
“I suppose.” I sat there and let her pat my hair.
It was a kindness, a loving gesture, that we hadn’t shared since before I was in junior high. Though it wasn’t exactly comfortable, seeing that we hadn’t shared affection like that in so long, it was still comforting.
“Maybe you don’t know who are ‘cause you didn’t stick around long enough to find out?”
I just listened.
“Ya’ ran off when you was still figuring all that out and, well, that part of your growing up got stopped right at sixteen.” She said gently, her fingers running through my hair. “Can’t really keep figuring out who you’re going to grow up to be if you’re running all over God’s damn creation and pretending to be anything but yourself, can you?”
“I guess not.”
“And, well,” she sighed, obviously having some internal struggle, “even if you are a goddamn shithead, I’m proud of you. And that’s just gonna have to be enough, isn’t it?”
That settled on the air between us. I let it linger for a few moments as I felt her fingers sliding through my hair.
“What’s Lucas, Oma?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” I said at a whisper. “Andrew’s a werewolf. You’re…Oma. What’s Lucas?”
Her fingers froze in my hair for just a split second then continued their path downwards before starting up near the crown of my head again.
“I don’t know, Robbie.”
“But…he’s something, isn’t he?”
“I would say so. Yes.”
“Have you been trying to figure him out like you were trying to figure out Andrew before the other night?”
Oma’s hand left my head. When it didn’t return, I shifted on the ottoman so that I could turn and look at her. She looked troubled, but not concerned. Deep in a difficult thought was the only way to describe it.
“He knows things.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He saw you coming, Robbie.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think he knew you was coming back to Point Worth.”
“So…are you saying he’s psychic or clairvoyant, or…”
She chewed at her lip.
“He knew I was destined to be the love of his life?” It came out teasing, but it made my throat clench. “He knew I’d return and the two of us would fall in love or something? Because I’m not so sure he was one-hundred-percent right about that.”
“It had nothing to do with the two of you.” She shook her head.
Frowning was the only way I could respond to that.
“He just…said some things that let me know he was expecting you back.” She said, her voice measured. “Not that he knew when, of course. He just knew it would happen.”
My teeth chewed at my lip for a moment as the thoughts formed in my head. The right questions moving to the forefront.
“When he saw me that first day we met?” I asked. “He wasn’t shy, was he? He was concerned.”
“Might have been.”
“Concerned about what?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” She threw her hands up suddenly. “Talk to him about it. Y’all are so close now.”
I sighed.
“And we were having such a nice moment.”
I rose to my feet and started to walk away.
“Oh, don’t be so damn sensitive.” Oma huffed from behind me. “How the hell am I supposed to tell you things I don’t know? Someone needs to slap you upside the head.”
Turning to Oma, I said: “And someone needs to drop a house on your sister.”
Oma’s eyes turned to slits. I let that hang in the air.
“Goodnight, Oma.”
And then I went upstairs to bed.