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Why was Denise talking to Dom about me? He should be in baby bliss, not dealing with petty gossip.
She told Callie, Callie told Heath, you know how it goes.
Callie worked at the hospital too and was Heath’s sister. I should have known that was how it would get back to Dom.
She just doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shutI said.
No, she doesn’t. And all of Corsica knows about it by now.
Cool, awesome, great.
I should have expected this to happen. Echo and I weren’t trying to hide anything. I just hoped Denise hadn’t seen us making out in the parking lot.
No doubt all my cheerleaders knew about it, and I hoped none of them, or their parents, thought that I was betraying my job at Corsica. That had been a consideration.
I messaged Echo.So one of my moms saw us and now everyone is going to know.
She responded right away.Yup, one of my parents saw us too. Maybe we should have just stayed at your house and not gone out in public, but the cat is out of the bag now. How do you want to handle this?
I mean, what was I going to do? Stop dating Echo? No way. I wasn’t going to live my life by what other people might think. Fuck that.
I don’t care what they think. I want to keep dating you if you want to keep dating me and we’ll deal with what comes. Cheer season is over, so what are they going to do about it?
She had to go back to her class, but I thought about it for the rest of the day. I was going to see everyone on Friday for the celebration banquet and I knew that I was going to have to answer some questions. At least I had two days to prep my statement. Probably something along the lines of “it’s none of your fucking business” but with less cursing.
I missed Echo. I had seen her less than a day ago, but we’d been sending texts back and forth and had another date planned for this weekend. She’d showed me the little office she had where she worked on her dollhouse furniture with itty bitty tools that I would break or drop if I tried to use them, and now she wanted to show me another one of her hobbies: ax throwing.
There was a recreation center in her town that had archery and ax throwing and I could tell she was really excited about it. I was flipping out a little about it, but then I decided it would be fun if Echo could stand behind me and teach me how to throw the ax and I could pretend to be helpless and then we could go back to her place and fuck all night. Ideal date, really.
Maybe it was better to get the fact that I was seeing Echo out sooner rather than later. I hoped people would be supportive, because I knew they wanted to see me happy. Echo made me happy, and that was that.
Echo was making me more than happy. We could talk about literally anything and she was one of the funniest people I’d ever met. The raccoon story wasn’t even the most hilarious story that had ever happened to her, and she would get me laughing so hard I struggled to breathe and had tears streaming from my eyes. She was also still a pain in my ass, but I enjoyed it more now. Mostly.
I’d defend our relationship if I had to. That realization that we were in a Relationship, with a capital R, was sobering. When had that even happened?
Are we in a relationship?I asked her.
I mean, yes? What else would you call what we’re doing?
That was a good point. I guess I just hadn’t said that exact word yet, or thought about it in those terms. There hadn’t been time. I was still kind of recovering from Nationals exhaustion and getting back to work and then this thing with Echo. It was new and bright and confusing and great, but all the best things were.
So I can call you my girlfriend?I asked. Somehow, we had not talked about this in the myriad other topics we’d covered.
I mean, I’ve told all my friends that you’re my girlfriend so I hope so. Unless you don’t want that label? I should have checked, sorry.
This conversation was blowing my mind a little. She’d called me her girlfriend in front of her friends?
Wow, okay, yeah. You’re my girlfriend.
Glad we got that sorted outshe said with a laughing emoji.Speaking of my friends, do you want to meet them next weekend? I didn’t want to throw you at them all at once right away.
It seemed fair, since she’d met mine already.
Should I be worried?I asked. I knew a little bit about them already, there was Spencer, who was married to Leah, Lola and Heidi, who were also married to each other, and then her only single friend, Audra. Of course, I had asked if anything had ever happened with Audra, but according to Echo, nope. I was choosing to trust her on that, because I had no reason not to, but my insecurities were still there, lurking in the back of my mind. I knew that Audra was a knockout. Of course I had already stalked them all online. It was research into Echo’s life. I wanted to get along with her friends. I would definitely have an issue if every single one of my friends didn’t like my significant other. Big red flag.
No, they’ll be cool. I hope. I’ll have a talk with them.That made me totally nervous, but it also made me realize that I hadn’t told my parents about Echo, so I picked up the phone to call my mom.
I’d talked with her briefly after Nationals, but it had only been texts since then. She was busy with her book club, planning a huge used book sale that was taking up a lot of her time. Even when she was retired, she couldn’t slow down. She still swam at the local pool four days a week before the sun was up. Someday I wished to have her energy and vitality.
