maggieâs priorities forced a smile brighter than the sun onto eitanâs scruff-covered face. heâd be lying through his teeth if he said he wasnât happy to hear she wasnât playing the dating game at the moment ; happier than he should be, maybe. the man had his chance to make a home with her more than half a decade ago and watched her world burn down next to his own, instead. a part of that would kill him forever.
it wasnât like heâd wanted to save her. maggie hadnât ever needed saving ; she was the strong kind of songbird. quiet, but resilient. calculating but not cold. she was the yin to eitanâs yang. so what was stopping him from acting on how heâd felt?
standing with his feet planted in front of her, he glanced downward and let out a content sort of sigh, happy to hear that they wouldnât be losing one another any time soon. emilie rolls her eyes as he places his lips on maggieâs forehead. âthank you,â he whispered. âfor never giving up on our ⊠friendship. you know?â
âdad, god,â he hears emilie groan, watching as she bounces toward the universityâs recreational lobby doors, hopping down to sit at her usual spot. âshe hates me. why does she hate me, mags? is it really that time? âthe hating dad because sheâs grownâ time?
      as much as she hated to admit it , maggie was still trying to find her footing in this re-established best friendship. eitan was right. she hadnât ever given up. but distance had crept in, and life separated them, and there was a part of her that struggled to accept the fact that, in the past, the fight to remain in each otherâs lives despite the challenges hadnât been a more valiant one. calls went unanswered for weeks at a time, texts seemed to gather dust in her phone. eitan had been the person that had made her feel the safest and most valuable in the whole world, and the absence of him had nearly ripped her apart.Â
eyes fluttered shut as eitanâs lips made contact with her forehead and briefly silenced the nagging, anxious thoughts that were prone to plaguing her at inconvenient moments such as this one. they would be okay - of course theyâd be okay. â yeah , well. youâre worth sticking around for, so itâs easy - - even when life isnât. you know ?   â she smiled gently up at him, before her attention was redirected to emilie who was clearly not in the mood for the sentimentality that the adults were displaying.Â
  â she doesnât hate you, drama king.  â she said plainly , nudging at his side with her hip.  â youâre her whole world , you know ? that can be kind of overwhelming. she has a lot to process, you know, moving & getting settled and readjusting life, and youâre the center of her whole world. so youâre going to get the brunt of every emotional response she has to life. good & bad.  â parenting hadnât been something that maggie had yet considered beyond daydreams, so she wasnât entirely sure that her advice was exactly quality. her ex-fiancĂ© had rejected the idea of children, much to her own heartbreak. â sheâs nine goofball. youâre in the clear until at least the end of fifth grade.   â
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