It was a bit of a headfuck to have a ... girlfriend? Gavin didn't really know what to call what he and Charlie had going, every word he knew that sort of fit the basic idea of it didn't seem to come close to touching on how he felt about her. Girlfriend. It was so casual and 'other-people'. He didn't really have anything like that in his life. Until now? Yeah it was a mindfuck. Not that they'd even talked about it but they'd had sex and he was taking his kids to her place for a Thanksgiving dinner so what the hell else could he call it?
He was honestly surprised Jasper had agreed to come with them. Amelia was no surprise, she liked Charlie already and she was so agreeable to everything but Jasper was more like to roll his eyes and flip him off than say yes. And yet he'd said yes. Gavin was both happy and disappointed because this was honestly awkward enough without his son tagging along to his teacher's house. God. That was just another aspect of the whole thing to make it all weirder. He was dating(?) Jasper's teacher. Under any normal circumstances he would have backed away from it all because it felt too much like becoming a part of society. Going to church was as far as he was willing to participate in the whole community thing, dating a teacher? The thought alone was giving him an ulcer. The only reason it wasn't scaring him off was because he couldn't walk away from Charlie, not in a million years. She would have to push him away and he was honestly waiting for her to realize that was what she wanted - needed - to do.
He had a hard time with all of it and that included picking clothes for the dinner. He almost wore a suit out of pure stress and utter confusion on how to deal with this. It was Amelia who somewhat rescued his sanity when he came out wearing just jeans and a t-shirt and she gently steered him toward something a little nicer with a simple 'what about the nice blue shirt? I always liked that one'. So he ended up wearing jeans but at least the shirt was nicer than a plain t-shirt.
Amelia wore black jeans and a really nice blouse he'd bought for her when they'd gone shopping for ... well. Everything. She had nothing that fit her when she first came home and Gavin had slowly but surely been fixing that particular problem. When she was ready, Gavin went and knocked on Jasper's door, half hoping he might have changed his mind about going. "Hey," he said just loud enough to be heard through the door. "You uh, you ready?"
Jasper didn’t really want to do this. It wasn’t that Ms. Harris wasn’t nice, or that his dad couldn’t benefit from having a new woman in his life, it was just that ... she was his teacher. Whatever history they had seemed nebulous and difficult to imagine to him. Gavin Lucas had never been young, Jasper was pretty sure. Not in spirit, anyway. It was weird to think about him with anybody, but especially someone Jasper saw on a daily basis (when he went to school, anyway). Someone who’d earnestly tried to help him. Someone who was just watching him continuously fail. It was weird and embarrassing to be in her presence outside of school.
So, he was going to just stay stoned. Jasper had already smoked a joint that morning as he got ready, and he had two more tucked away in his cigarette pack for a mid-meal escape. He’d had the amused thought that he should share with Gavin so he didn’t have a panic attack, and it resurfaced when his dad knocked on the door. Instead of just yelling back, Jasper -- who was indeed dressed in jeans and a decent-enough long-sleeve shirt -- stood up and opened it. “Hey, yeah,” he said, then gave a little smirk. “You wanna hit this before we go? So you don’t freak out at your girlfriend’s house?”
The smell hit Gavin as soon as the door opened and he had half a thought that he should be annoyed about it - but he wasn't. He did give Jasper a disapproving sort of grimace at the question, even as he took the offered joint between his fingers and took a hit. Jasper was right: he was nervous and he could do with some calming down. He didn't much care if his son had been joking, it was too late to take it back now and besides, it was less likely to lead to a fight than bitching about him having it in the first place. Gavin wasn't going to start trying to father him now and he'd be a hypocrite if he got pissy about him having weed. He handed the joint back after a second hit, then nodded at the hallway. "Ready?"
Jasper’s brows lifted when Gavin actually took the joint from him and hit it, but he didn’t say anything. He’d mostly been joking. He’d provided his dad with some pot and pills and stuff while Amelia had been missing, but Jasper didn’t think he’d been smoking lately. Or even did it regularly. Liquor was more Gavin’s thing. Jasper took the joint back with a faintly amused smirk and nodded as he took on more little hit off of it. He leaned over to stub it out in the ashtray on his nightstand, then slid the rest of it into his cigarette pack with the others. Maybe his dad would need some more before the evening was over. Jasper was sure he would. “That’s a good shirt,” he murmured to Gavin as he followed him down the hall. Maybe it wasn’t much of an olive branch, but a compliment was a compliment.
Gavin glanced down and tugged on his shirt without giving it much thought. He supposed it was a good shirt but it was nice to actually hear it - especially from someone like Jasper who didn't really say shit just to placate him. "Your sister suggested it," he mumbled in time for Amelia to come back from her room to give them both approving looks.
She stepped up to Jasper, tugging gently on the collar of his shirt and nodding. "You clean up nice," she said and it was just a phrase people said, right? She always thought he looked good, just maybe not in a nice dinner with Charlie sort of way.
“Of course she did.” Jasper grinned at Amelia when she came to fuss with his collar too -- he didn’t have a lot of nice clothes, but dating Jules had inspired him to buy some button-downs at least. He wasn’t tucking it in, though, fuck that. “You too,” he said, plucking at the sleeves of Amelia’s shirt like he could possibly fix anything on her in return. She looked cute, and all together they probably made a handsome imitation of a normal family. Appearances could be deceiving and all that. He thought Ms. Harris would probably see right through them, but whatever, it was her funeral.
Jasper slung his arm around his sister to steer them down the hallway behind Gavin. “Ready to get stuffed with turkey and green bean casserole?” he asked Amelia. “She probably cooks better than all of us put together. Real wifey material.” Jasper shot an amused glance at his father’s back.
Amelia nodded happily. "If her food is as good as her book collection then yeah, dad's marrying her or else." She snickered, oblivious to the way it made Gavin tense up even more. She was allowed to be excited though, she hadn't had a good Thanksgiving meal in years and she barely remembered what it tasted like but all the pictures she'd been seeing were mouth-watering.
"Enough of that," Gavin said, his voice hoarse with barely swallowed exasperation. "Let's get going, I don't wanna be late." It was rude and all and he felt awkward enough as it was without making it worse.
Charlie had gotten up early to start preparations for Thanksgiving. She was excited to see Gavin, but admittedly she was feeling a bit apprehensive about Amelia and Jasper coming to dinner. Okay, the apprehension had more to do with Jasper than Amelia, but that was mainly because she was still Jasper’s teacher and Charlie was well aware of how awkward that could be for any teenager, knowing their father was dating someone from their school. In any case, it was a holiday and she enjoyed cooking so Charlie turned on some music from her phone and got to work. She did her best not to overdo it. Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, veggies, dinner rolls. The table had four place settings, but she purposely kept it casual, not wanting to make everything look stuffy and formal the way she and Drew used to do it back in New York when they had friends over. She lit only one candle in the middle of the table with a small, autumn themed centerpiece.
By the time Gavin and his kids arrived, everything was pretty much done. The house smelled pretty good and Charlie was well aware that the conversation was probably going to have to rely on her and Amelia. Gavin was not much of a talker, and Jasper… well, neither was he. But that was okay. It was something Charlie was used to by now, and she honestly didn’t mind filling the silences. She was telling herself that even as she opened the door after Gavin rang the bell and greeted the three of them waiting on her porch. "Hi," Charlie said, smiling as she stepped back to let them inside. "Perfect timing."
She looked absolutely beautiful Gavin thought, but then she always did, whether she was all dressed up or just donning a sweatshirt. He got that sappy feeling right in his core like he always did when he saw her and his smile was fitting for it as he shuffled inside. "Smells good, Charlie," he mumbled and it did, like a proper Thanksgiving dinner. Gavin hadn't honestly had many of those unless he did the work for it so this was... weird. Nice! But weird.
Amelia was the next through the door and she gave Charlie a beaming smile. She wasn't stupid so she already suspected she might be the one to keep things lively through dinner but that was okay, she genuinely liked Charlie and now they had books they could talk about. "Thanks so much for having us," she said and moved in to give Charlie a hug.
Jasper was behind the others, of course, hanging back with his hands stuffed into his hoodie pockets. He already wished Jules had been able to come with them, tell her parents she was having turkey day dinner with a friend or something. It would have been another ice breaker and he could focus on her instead of how weird all of this felt for him. At least he was pretty stoned instead, and all the food did smell good. He moved into the house behind his sister and tried not to think about how surreal it was to watch her hug his English teacher. Jasper gave Charlie a nod and a little smile and echoed the “thanks,” in a quiet mumble.
"It's my pleasure," Charlie told Amelia, returning the girl's hug. She didn't want to gush about how much she loved the company and over do it. It meant a lot that Gavin had come over, and more so that his kids came along, even if this probably wasn't their first choice of where to spend Thanksgiving. When she released Amelia she smiled at Jasper and then shut the door behind him once he was inside. "Feel free to hang up your coats and make yourself comfortable. I have a couple more things to finish up before we can eat." Charlie was fairly certain Gavin and Jasper would rather sit in silence, so she turned to Amelia. "Would you mind giving me a hand?"
As Amelia happily joined Charlie in the kitchen, Gavin led the way to the living room to sit down and... being there with his kids was weird. He'd had sex with Charlie right over there. If they'd just gone to her bedroom it might have been a different story but no. He cleared his throat and somewhat regretted not taking another hit of Jasper's joint when he had the chance. Having to sit around and chat? Not his thing and neither was it Jasper's but it was the holidays and being around Charlie always made him feel like maybe he should be putting in some extra effort. "Things okay with and uh, your girl? Jules?" he muttered when they were seated.
It was a bit of a relief not to have to hang around and make small talk with Ms. Harris, but Jasper still felt plenty of awkward going to sit in her living room with his dad. He settled on the opposite end of the couch, slouching against the cushions and resting one ankle on the other knee. Jasper slid his phone out of his pocket and started to open it up, then glanced warily over at his father. “Yeah, they’re okay,” he said, turning his eyes back to his phone. Jasper started scrolling through an app, intending just to leave it at that, but guilt tugged at him. Ugh, they were supposed to be acting like a family. For Amelia’s sake. “Her parents still don’t know she’s dating me,” Jasper added in a mutter.
Gavin's brows drew together in curiosity. "Why the hell not?" he asked though he suspected he might know the answer. It was the Lucas family curse. People generally didn't like their daughters dating the Lucas men and while the dad side of Gavin reared up in anger, ready to tell those Overlook shits that if anything, his son was too good for their daughter, the logical side of him knew that... wasn't the case.
Jasper gave him a bemused look. “You know why,” he said, and turned his attention back to his phone. Part of him looked forward to the day when Jules’s mom found out, because it was inevitable. He wanted to rub it in her rich snobby face that her daughter was in love with him and let her choke on it. Realistically, it would make shit hard for Jules, probably, and Jasper hated that part, but their whole social dynamic had always been part of the appeal.
Gavin grunted softly, not thrilled to acknowledge that he knew but yes, he did. "Fuck'em," he muttered without much bite to it. The only opinion that really mattered was Jules's anyway and she liked his son so her parents could go choke on a bag of dicks for all he cared. God damn Overlook snobs.
The turkey was finished and resting on the serving plate on the counter. The potatoes she had peeled and cooked were in a bowl beside the turkey. Charlie found her carving knife and motioned briefly to the bowl of steaming potatoes. "Do you mind mashing the potatoes? I have a hand mixer right in the cabinet above you. It's a lot faster than having to do it by hand. I'm going to take the turkey and everything out to the table." By the time she finished that Amelia would probably be done with the potatoes and they could eat while everything was still hot. "Thank you for helping. I would have asked your dad, but I had a feeling he might flail a bit in here."
Mashing potatoes was an easy enough task and Amelia took to it pretty quickly, laughing a bit at Charlie's words. "Dad's flails at everything," she said and it didn't really feel like she was divulging any secrets here. She hadn't known when she was a kid but it was hard not to notice now that she lived with him. She'd seen him at church with Charlie, how awkward he'd been, the tell tale signs of someone who wanted to sink into the ground - though in this case he seemed to want to take Charlie with him so that was a good sign.
Well, Gavin didn't flail at everything, but Charlie couldn't exactly say that to his daughter. Instead she smiled and shrugged one shoulder as she nodded in agreement. "But he tries, and that counts for something," Charlie said. At least she could see he was trying now, not only with her, but with his kids. "From what I remember about your dad in school, he was never much for being social back then either. I had wondered this morning how many times he would nearly talk himself out of coming over today. So I'm really happy all three of you made it."
"He wanted to come here," Amelia mumbled almost conspiratorially, giving Charlie a little grin. She didn't know her dad very well yet and it pained her when people told her things about him she probably should know by now but at least she knew this. Her dad hated going places but he hadn't tried to get out of this Thanksgiving dinner and that was pretty telling.
"I'm glad," Charlie said, as she knew what it felt like to want something and still try to talk one's self out of it. "This place was a bit of a fixer-upper when I bought it," she explained as she sliced through the turkey. "Your dad helped me out, getting a lot of it put together. He and your uncle basically renovated my entire porch for me." She wasn't really sure why she was sharing those particular details, because it was possible Amelia already knew all of this. But given how long she had been missing, and her relationship with Gavin prior to the disappearance... Charlie didn't know, but she just wanted to show her the kind of person Gavin was, beneath the quiet, somewhat stoic surface.
"He likes to fix things," Amelia replied. "He used to work doing that, until his arm, you know." Charlie had probably seen the scars by now, though they were obscured with tattoos at this point. Amelia had heard the story young because her mother didn't really have any boundaries that told her not to tell horror stories to a child but it wasn't something Gavin ever talked about. "Aaron helped him with the porch?" she guessed since Gavin was so much closer to his youngest brother than he was Caden. Did Caden even like to fix things? She didn't really know him well, he'd never played with her like Aaron had when she was little.
"Yes. Both were very helpful..." Charlie trailed off a bit before glancing over at Amelia, her dark brows drawn together thoughtfully. "What happened to his arm?" She hadn't noticed the scars, given that the only time she had seen his arms bare were the other night, and it had been dark. Not to mention all of the tattoos covering his upper body. Charlie hadn't really noticed anything odd, and Gavin had never told her that he hurt himself. He wouldn't, of course. She only knew as much as he told her, and that wasn't a whole lot at the moment.
She didn't know. Of course not, it wasn't like Gavin was the chattiest person in the world even with his own kids so of course he hadn't been all rambly with Charlie about his past. Amelia stopped what she was doing - almost done anyway - and shrugged a little. "He fell down from some crappy scaffold or something and his arm got pierced right through, mom said he was like half-crucified but I thought that was more nails through your hands and not, you know, bicep... He had to quit working but he got a lot of money because it was his boss's fault and that's how he and my uncles got the bar." She didn't remember any of this of course, she'd been so little when it happened but that didn't mean she didn't know the gruesome details a little too well. "There's a rosary tattoo there now." She patted her arm gesture where it was. "But you can still see it."
That sounded terrible and gruesome and Charlie could only stare at Amelia for a moment as she imagined it. It sounded as if Gavin was lucky he hadn't been seriously injured or killed, although being pierced through the bicep sounded extremely painful, and probably limited his mobility in that arm. And he had been coming around fixing her porch, among other things. Why hadn't he told her? Charlie couldn't help but wonder if it was painful for him to do too much physical labor. She recalled seeing the rosary tattoo in the morning after he had stayed the night, before he pulled his clothes back on, but she hadn't noticed the scar. "Maybe that's why he brought Aaron," Charlie murmured. "To help with the labor. I feel terrible. I hadn't known he had gotten hurt. Does it still bother him? The injury?"
"I know he gets annoyed when he can't lift things," Amelia replied. "Don't feel bad though, he wouldn't just come fix your porch unless he wanted to do it." She might not have known her father her whole life but she knew he was stubborn and it was hard to get him to do things. At least it was hard for other people, Amelia was finding he did almost anything she asked him to do these days and she was trying not to abuse that new-found power. "He can't really lift much above his head but he's okay with everything else so... Don't worry about it, okay?"
Charlie nodded and set the knife back down on the serving plate. She wasn't upset, just concerned, although she had a feeling if Gavin had been uncomfortable or in pain, she would have noticed. And she didn't think he would purposely put himself in a situation to get hurt just to fix her porch. "It doesn't sound like your dad has had it very easy over the years," Charlie said. "But I hope things are turning around for him now, especially now that you're home." He had Amelia back, and was finally freeing himself of his wife. It seemed as though Gavin enjoyed having his kids living with him now, so hopefully this was all a move in the right direction.
It always felt a little weird when the subject of her disappearance was broached and Amelia smiled a little awkwardly and shrugged. She didn]t know how her dad was doing, not really. He seemed happy, but she was acutely aware of just how little she really knew about her family. She was more than happy to finish up what they were doing here and get back to Jasper and Gavin. "I think we're all doing okay, all things considered," she said. For the time being at least there seemed to be more good than bad going on.