Right before your eyes I’m aching”
“So he’s going to take her today and tonight and bring her back in the morning”
As she walked out of her bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body and one in her hair she let out a long sigh and nodded her head. She’d only been up an hour and already she was exhausted. The day had hardly begun and already she could feel it dragging on.
B lay across her bed expectantly, waiting for her to get dressed and be ready to go out with him she was sure. Christmas shopping. Because the days were dwindling down and she was running out of time to get everything set and ready to go for the big day. This year it meant something, this year she had a little girl to put first and foremost. Faking a smile needed to become second nature, she was working on it.
“I also talked to the building owner, the penthouse is up for grabs. Spiral staircase, library, four spacious bedrooms…”
Dropping her towel and walking into the walk-in closet she paused and stuck her head out to roll her eyes at him.
“B… you’re the one that owns this place.”
It was a secret that she hadn’t quite shared with anyone else. One that he’d arranged and she’d gone along with because it just seemed better to shut her mouth on before Fi could tell her what a bad idea it was or anything else of the sort.
“Exactly, and I think that it’s time that you and Eleanor have a little more space. You’ll be right down stairs for them. That’s less than a phone call away. If something major goes on up here you can be up in a matter of seconds.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong. She did need the space to spread out, it was a lot keeping Eleanor in the room with her or with whoever took over couch duty for the night. It wasn’t that she wanted to be apart from her siblings, but with the chaos it might have been the better option.
“Can we just table this discussion for now? We can start setting things up later. I get it, it’s the right idea…”
Eleanor needed her own bedroom, knowing B, it was already set up downstairs with all of her favorite things. There’d just been a part of her hoping that she’d be going home instead of to yet another different space. She craved the house that he’d bought, craved something normal for the first time in years. Maybe if she hadn’t opened her mouth the day before she would have had that.
Pulling clothes from the closet she threw on her favorite ripped jeans and an old tee shirt. Not fully caring to put in any extra effort. She needed to snap out of this, she knew that. Before it was all handed back in her face.
“You know that you guys will be fine right?”
Straightening out her hoody she shrugged her shoulders as she made it back into the bedroom and took a seat beside him on the bed, her head resting against his shoulder. She didn’t want the pep talks for once. They weren’t the thing that she needed.
“I trapped him into having a kid B. I slept with you… I walked out of the hospital while he was still alive…”
She could have kept going on, god knew she had enough issues to speak of. They’d gone through enough in the past couple of years. All she wanted to do was move past it all, to put it all behind her.
“Come on, you’ve been in this room long enough. Get out”
There was a very good chance that he wasn’t right, that she shouldn’t have been leaving the room, or the house. But she also knew that all she was going to do would be to linger on things if she didn’t just go. Slipping her heels on she took her black leather jacket from him as he held it and the door open escorting her out.
“We’re doing lunch, RH Rooftop? I made a reservation already. Figured that, some ice skating and a bit of shopping and then get you back to look at the new home.”
As the cool air hit her face she reached for his arm, lacing hers through his as they hit the busy sidewalk. Regardless of what was going on at home and in her head she couldn’t linger on it. It was time to do a better job with herself and her daughter. Nothing else was more important than that.
“Did you already put a tree down there?”
His hardy laugh told her all that she needed to know, she should have suspected it from the moment he’d started on it. The apartment downstairs was all set up and ready for her to walk down with her clothes.
Well, it was as good a time as any to grow up and start doing things right.