It's so FLUFFY I could die!!!!!!!!!!

Let Your Love Be Strong

Joyce Arner snapped her phone shut angrily, muttering something unintelligible about crappy phones make puppies cry.  Ten-year-old Austin sat nearby, playing his DS, watching TV, and listening to Tiffany’s iPod, against her wishes, of course.  Mr. Jacob Arner was in the kitchen baking cookies, a job held by Mrs. Arner until her untimely death ten months previously. 

Tiffany was ten miles away, trying to convince her boyfriend Nolan that he did not want to meet her family before he went home until the next semester. 

“I want to meet your family, for better or for worse,” Nolan said. 

Tiffany crossed her arms, ready for an argument.  “Trust me, you don’t.  Dad will grill you for two hours and then judge that you’re not good enough for me.  Joyce will text the entire time or try to impress you with the fact that she dated three guys at once and got away with nothing but a bad reputation.  Austin will just sit there and maybe punch you in the face.  It’ll be better for both of us if we just go somewhere else tonight,” she finished wearily. 

“I thought you told your dad that you’d be home for dinner.”  Nolan frowned, uneasy about his girlfriend skipping out on her family. 

Tiffany shrugged.  “It’s not like it’ll be that different.  I’m busy enough with work that we don’t eat together.  It won’t be the first time my place at the table will be empty.” 

“Don’t you want to be around your family during the holidays?” Nolan queried, clearly asking the wrong question. 

Tiffany’s grip on his hand tightened slightly.  “No!” she answered defiantly. 

Nolan’s frown deepened as he quickly pulled over his ancient sedan.  “Tell me why not,” he said as he put the car in park. 

She sighed heavily, obviously not at all wanting to reach this topic. Not now, not ever.  “My family, they just haven’t been the same since Mom died.” 

“Isn’t that expected, though?  We lost my dad when I was twelve.  Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him like crazy.” 

“It’s not like that,” Tiffany exclaimed, frustrated.  “My dad tries to be a father and a mother.  Joyce is with a different guy every week because she feels alone.  Austin thinks he has to be strong and not care, but he’s hurting as much as the rest of us.” 

“What about you?” he asked gently. 

“What about me?” she echoed. 

“How are you dealing?  Avoiding memories?  Avoiding them?”  After his father died, he had reached out to his two older sisters, not pushed them away. 

“I’m trying to move one,” Tiffany snapped, “and they aren’t.  We aren’t really working together all that well.” 

“How about this?”  Nolan suggested.  “We go back to your house and, if it doesn't go at all well, we never see them again.” 

“Who judges how well it goes?” Tiffany challenged. 

He hesitated.  “You.”

“Fine.”  She shrugged, satisfied. 

Nolan got back on the road and prayed to God that the evening would go well. 

Little did he know, five miles away, Jacob Arner was praying the same thing.  Every day, he felt like he was losing his little girl more and more.  Sometimes, he had the strange feeling that every time was his last to win her back. 

“Jo-Jo!  Austin!” he called to the living room. 

With a few groans and, though he couldn’t see them, grimaces, his two youngest children were in the kitchen. 

“Can you guys help me out with all the last minute stuff?”

Austin just shrugged, having adopted a virtually perpetual silence. 

“I guess,” Joyce sassed.  Every day he wondered where his wife Maggie’s sweet daughter had gone.  Who was this reckless risk-taker that had inhabited his once cautious daughter?

“Okay, Joyce, set the table.  Austin, you get the bread out of the oven and put the cookies in.” 

Again, a shrug and a sass. 

Jacob stirred the spaghetti sauce, content with the looks of it, before placing the pot next to a bowl containing Tiff’s favorite angel hair pasta.  After slicing the bread and getting the baked kale out of the oven, he watched his children. 

For once, Jo-Jo’s phone was nowhere to be seen, and he saw just how gloomy she’d come to look, despite the bright clothes and makeup.  She was trying to be just like those girls wearing the skimpy outfits on the covers of the magazines she was always reading. 

Austin concentrated on getting the perfect amount of ice in each cup and fixing each place setting so the utensils and plate were equidistant.  His perfectionism had brought his grades up the past few months, but Jacob could tell he was simply trying to distract himself. 

And Tiff.  Jacob sighed as he thought about his oldest kid.  She was once so happy and energetic but, after Maggie’s death, had seemed to just exist.  Then she met this Nolan character and started smiling.  He’d hated her having a boyfriend since some jerk had broken her heart three years previously, but he had to admit that any guy who made her laugh like she did on the phone with him was obviously special. 

Jacob turned his head quickly enough that it popped in several places.  He heard a door being opened and shut and a hysterical laugh, one he felt like  he’d maybe heard, sound.  Shocked, he realized it was Tiff’s laugh. 

She entered the kitchen holding some guy’s hand tightly in her own.  He was a tall guy, real tall and skinny, with darkish hair and tan skin. 

“Daddy,” Tiff said.  “This is Nolan.”

They shook hands and Nolan greeted him respectfully.  “It’s good to meet you Mr. Arner.” 

Jacob smiled slightly.  “No need to be so formal.  Call me Jacob.” 

If he hadn’t been looking for it, Jacob would’ve missed the look of shock that crossed his daughter’s face; he’d never been this easygoing with her boyfriends she’d brought home. 

It touched his heart that Nolan didn’t just climb in his shell or go straight for the food.  He went over to Austin, who had his PSP in his hands, and sat by him. 

“So Tiffany tells me that you’re pretty good with math,” Nolan said, causing Austin’s head to shoot up.  It was strange how he talked to Austin, like he was addressing someone his age rather than someone almost a decade younger. 

He nodded and put down his game. 

“I’m studying almost all math right now at University of Michigan.  Do you know what you wanna study in college?” Nolan asked. 

Austin cleared his throat.  “Maybe something like that.” 

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” 

His son frowned for a minute, thinking.  “Maybe a scientist or a teacher.  What are you gonna do?” 

Nolan laughed for a minute, bringing a seldom-heard sound to the room.  “At this point, I don’t know.  I wanna teach in a college someday, but who knows?” 

Jacob, for once, wasn’t bothered by the fact that a man his daughter might potentially married had no plan for his life.  When he saw the way Nolan listened to Jo-Jo talk about Twilight and actually respond or smile at Tiff spontaneously or ask Austin what he liked best about science, he knew that this on was alright.

 Maybe he’d be around for a while, maybe he wouldn’t.  All he knew was that he saw a sparkle in his daughter’s eyes that he hadn’t seen in almost a year.  Tiff was learning to love again and that was what mattered.