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“Ow!” I complained.
“Run, Josie! Run!” she yelled over her shoulder.
Josie quickly caught up to her. They both paused at the end of the aisle, holding their stomachs and giggling hysterically at me.
I made a move to chase them with the cart and they both ran away.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. The two of them together might be dangerous. They were both quicker and wittier than me, but it seemed they were happy together, and that’s all I cared about.
34. Josie
Talking to Stevie felt surreal. She had the same shy grin, the same dimple that popped out when she smiled, and the same golden complexion as Tyler.
And when Tyler walked toward us holding up jerseys, saying they were for his girls, as in me included… Well, my heart flopped around hopelessly in my chest.
I told myself I didn’t need answers and I didn’t need to push him on questions of what we were at the moment. I could go with the flow and just be here to help them.
And when Josie excitedly asked me, “Wanna help us set up my new room?” I nodded without even looking at Tyler for permission.
Things felt natural with the two of them. That is, until we loaded the car.
While opening the trunk, he bent to whisper in my ear in his husky voice, “Thank you so much, Josie. I really appreciate your friendship right now.”
The word “friendship” was like a shot of reality being forced down my throat.
I straightened up and fixed a fake smile on my face. “No problem, buddy,” I replied, giving him a playful punch to the shoulder.
He dropped his head down and licked his lips. When he looked back at me, his jaw popped, and I knew my shot landed right where I aimed.
“The fuckin’ irony,” he ground out. His remorseful eyes met mine. “I hate that word now too.”
And I was grateful he was pissed. That meant he missed me too.
“See you back at the apartment,” I told him, then practically skipped off to my car, feeling back on cloud nine with his gaze on me.
________
It felt weird to be walking into his room for the first time while Stevie and I were overhauling it. I wished I’d been invited into this space before, when we were connected. Because it felt unfair that I felt his absence in my room when this space had remained free of me.
His room was clearly a bachelor pad– dark blue walls with a few hockey sticks, posters, and flags hung up in disarray, as well as a huge flatscreen TV mounted to the wall silently playing SportsCenter. The space was relatively clean besides a basket of dirty clothes in the corner that was overflowing onto the futon couch as well.
Stevie and I spent the next half hour spreading out random pieces of pink accents throughout the bedroom. We laid a new pink comforter on top of his navy one, replaced his bedside lamp with a frilly sparkly one, and we covered his Miracle on Ice poster with a Taylor Swift one.
While picking up the random tags we’d torn off, Stevie shouted out,
“Omgoodness! My mom made that!”
My neck snapped to a framed picture next to the window that I’d missed… It was a drawing of a couple sitting on top of a car watching a beautifully faded sunset.
“Yeah, she did.” Tyler’s eyebrow furrowed as he studied the painting.
Stevie’s mom…
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized just how clueless I was about this situation. I wanted to ask questions about her, but I knew it wasn’t my place and this wasn’t the right scenario, so I stayed quiet. But now, thoughts of me beingthe other womanand breaking up a potential family bombarded my brain.
I never viewed Stevie arriving as a complication to our relationship. If teaching taught me one thing, it’s that motherly instincts were not restricted to biological children. The ability to love a child like my own was definitely there inside me, so stepping into a caretaker role– if that’s what was wanted– didn’t scare me at all.
But…
