OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one-hundred-twelve.

IT WAS EERILY quiet downstairs, more quiet than it typically was whenever Reagan was home alone. And technically, she wasn't alone — Gracie was upstairs in her bedroom, occupied with a box of Disney VHS tapes.

Reagan was in the kitchen cleaning up the remnants of their dinner, trying to get her brain into the groove of a new work week. She had meeting the next day and a singer being signed out of San Francisco was coming by the office.

She couldn't focus on work, even as she tried to repeat her mental to-do list over and over again. All she could think about was Dave.

It was strange that after months of distracting herself from him, he'd wriggled back into her thoughts so prominently that she felt winded by the change. She couldn't stop wondering about him in Cabo, what he was doing, who he was with.

If he missed her.

Reagan winced at herself. The guilt she felt in such a question was eating at her. She'd crushed his heart right in front of his eyes before he'd left for the airport and yet there she was, twiddling her thumbs and hoping that in some corner of his mind, he was thinking about her.

She didn't quite understand where the sudden change had come from. She still felt at a total loss, unsure of whether or not their relationship would survive 'til the new year, but for some reason she found herself obsessing over him. Obsessing over the idea of him, like it was all of the sudden anxiety-inducing to know that he was out of the country.

It had started the night before, when she'd woken up alone in their bed gasping. Immediately she'd thrown her hand out, clawing up and down the sheets in search of him even though she knew he wasn't there.

That had jolted her.

Why had she done that? After all that time of pushing him away, she couldn't make sense of what had possessed her to wake up shuddering, her unconscious mind calling out to him.

Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Reagan glanced at the kitchen wall clock and saw that it was getting late. She needed to put Gracie to bed.

As she started her climb up the stairs, she nearly toppled back down them when she heard the sound of Dave's voice coming from Gracie's room.

"Reagan! Babe! Aw, don't be like that."

She froze, her eyes widening in shock. There was no way he was back — she may have been walking around as a zombie-fied version of her former self, but she definitely would have noticed if Dave had strolled through the front door.

Had it really come to this? She was hallucinating him being there?"

Then she heard the sound of her own voice, and it too came from Gracie's bedroom.

"Go away!" she was saying over a ripple of laughter.

Reagan hurried up the rest of the staircase and down the hall to Gracie's room, skidding to a stop by the opened door.

Gracie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back to Reagan and her head tilted so that she could look up at her television. The box of VHS tapes was sitting beside her and Reagan's eyes fell on the television screen.

It was Dave. On video.

He looked young and telling by the length of his hair, Reagan guessed that the video had been filmed sometime in late nineteen-ninety-two. He held the camera pointing up at his face, wearing his usual wide grin.

"Everyone, look at my beautiful wife. Isn't she gorgeous?" He elongated the word 'gorgeous' into several syllables, using a horrible attempt at an accent as he turned the camera shakily around.