Page 104 of The One I Need
“Izzy! You came to my party!”
“Like I’d miss it,” she says. “Oliver told me it was going to be the party of the year, so of course I had to be here.”
Magnolia wiggles out of my hold and grabs Izzy’s hand. “I have to show you the photo booth. We need to take a picture.”
Izzy turns and hands me the presents, a smile as wide as I’ve ever seen on her beautiful face. “Care to come?”
I shake my head. “You two have fun.”
I watch them for a few seconds before I make my way over to the gift table. Coincidentally, it’s close to where my friends are gathered on the patio deck. I make my way over there, though I’m still staring at Izzy. Since Nebraska, it’s like she’s a new woman. Reborn, even. It’s a beautiful thing to be a part of, and every day I’m in awe of how strong this woman is and how with each day she only gets stronger.
“He’s alive!” Simon exclaims, handing me a beer. “We thought you went dark again on us.”
“Sorry. Just been a little hectic after we got back.”
Hectic. Sure. That sounds believable.
“How’d it go?” Shane asks.
“Good,” I say. “Well, not good. But good.”
“You’re going to have to use more words than that,” Amelia says. She’s standing next to Shane, and, I don’t know if I’m imagining things, but I feel like they are standing very close. Like weirdly close.
“Sorry. The bad things that happened: Izzy’s mother is a horrible human. Her ex-boyfriend is as much of a shit bag as I suspected, and I might have punched him. I take that back. I did punch him. And I’d do it again.”
“Fuck yeah” Simon says. “You make me proud, best friend.”
“Do we have to go over the best friend shit again?” Shane says. “Oliver, continue.”
“Thank you. Now for the good things. Izzy got to see her sister and her niece and nephew for the first time in a long time. And good in the sense that going back gave her the closure she needed. Maybe not all of it, but it was a hell of a start.”
I want to tell them more, but it doesn’t feel right without Izzy next to me.
“Well, I’m glad that something good came from the trip,” Amelia says as Wes and Betsy come into the circle, looking quite run down. “Are you two okay?”
“No,” Wes says. “Kids are exhausting.”
Betsy falls into one of the chairs. By the looks of it, she might not get back up. “Be a nanny, they said…it will be fun, they said…They didn’t tell you that you might fall in love with your boss and then have to be a bonus mom and plan extravagant birthday parties.”
“Hey, you’re the one who said we needed face painting. This was after you already convinced me to hire princesses.”
Betsy turns to look at Wes, and while she might not look angry, I can tell she’s five seconds from blowing. “Wes. I love you. I love the kids. But right now I’m going to need you to stop speaking and using my own actions against me and just support me when I’m ignoring the problem that I created.”
This makes all of us laugh, even Shane, as we find seats on the patio, far away from the children. “Oliver, I don’t know how you do it,” Wes asks. “How do you deal with this age every day?”
I smile, taking a second to look at my about to be students having the times of their lives. “The key is no bounce houses.”
Wes lets his head drop back in defeat. “I knew it.”
I look up to see Izzy taking Magnolia over to a group of her friends at the face painting station as Wes’s oldest daughter and my goddaughter, Emerson, comes slinking over.
“You okay, Em?”
Emerson falls onto the one open chair left. “I just need five minutes. Five minutes away from the kids. I just…I need this.”
It might seem to an onlooker that Emerson is being dramatic, but it’s the opposite. She’s the most mature thirteen-year-old I’ve ever met. I’d trust her to run this whole party. Hell, she can substitute for me any day of the week.
“Who says you can sit at the big kids table?” Simon teases. By the look she shoots him, she doesn’t find it very funny.
