Page 10 of A Me and You Thing
I laugh in spite of the somber moment. That doesn’t describe my man, thank goodness.
When the emotional hug ends, Bree wipes away her tears. I know I can’t take away her pain, and it kills me. I wish I could do more for her. Sometimes listening and being a friend doesn’t feel like enough. Especially when I’m sitting in my home while my hunk of a man is sailing the ocean blue and our identical twins are upstairs sleeping. It makes me feel guilty for being happy, for having what I know she craves.
“Thanks for listening to me moan all the time. I know it gets old. I needed my Melanie today.”
I’m hardly a Melanie. I’m not filled with enough kindness and selflessness to qualify for the title. But, Bree, she could pull off Scarlett any day of the week. If needed, she can be cunning and manipulative. It has served her well in the cutthroat business world she thrives in.
“Hey, you’re my best friend. Your pain is my pain. You can always talk to me, okay? You won’t wear me down and I’ll never tire of listening, so don’t worry about it.”
“By the way, I was promoted yesterday,” she tells me as an afterthought.
“What? And you didn’t call me?”
She shrugs as if it’s no big deal. “A hefty raise goes with it too. I told work I was taking a day off to celebrate, but the truth is, I couldn’t face work today.”
Bree has a Master’s in Business Management, and she’s a shrewd businesswoman. She’s basically a human calculator, quick as a whip. She works for an up and coming company in Portland. I don’t doubt she’ll continue to rise to the top of the ranks.
The baby monitor shoots to life with soft coos, clucks, and giggles. “That’s my pager going off. Break time is over.” Break time is a myth.
That merits a small laugh from Bree. I’m glad I could evoke one, even if it was small and brief.
“Can I help? Please, I want to.” Bree’s eyes are huge and pleading.
“Of course. And if there’s a soiled diaper, it’s all yours.”
Bree grimaces. “I knew I could count on you to help a girl out.”
We hug one last time before hiking up the stairs to get my baby girls up from their naps.
Jordyn and Josie are both standing in their cribs, babbling with baby talk to each other as if they’re having a conversation. It’s the cutest thing. My little blond-haired, blue-eyed beauties inherited Sawyer’s coloring. I may be blond, but I’m the odd man out with deep brown eyes.
Bree picks up a baby, checks her ears and says, “Josie,” while hugging her tightly. Both girls had their ears pierced at six weeks old. Josie wears little gold hearts and Jordyn wears little silver hearts. In the Olympics, gold represents first place and silver represents second place. Josie was born first, hence she wears the gold earrings. It follows that Jordyn wears the silver earrings. It’s our clever way of keeping track of who is who. I’m grateful for the identifiers. Without them, Sawyer always jokes that we’d mix them up on a daily basis and we’d never know which one was actually Josie and which one was actually Jordyn. In the near future, we need to figure something else out because I don’t want Jordyn to always feel like she’s second place and develop issues over it. For now, it works though.
I pretend like I don’t notice Bree’s obvious emotion as she holds Josie.
But I do. And I’m worried about her.
We change the girls into some darling new outfits I recently purchased for them and freshen them up after their naps. I love dressing up my baby girls and adorning their hair with oversized bows.
We give the girls an afternoon snack, then set them free in the living room to play, surrounding them with toys.
“Three months. I wasted three months of my life on Ben,” Bree remarks sadly.
“I suppose it’s not enough time to really know someone.”
“I guess so. But, you and Sawyer sure knew right away. It was kind of disgusting to watch. I thought you were going to eat each other up right then and there.”
There’s that Bree humor I love so much. “Yeah, I guess we did know right away. I believe it’s a rare occurrence in the world of love, though.”
“That’s all I want. Someone who lusts after me from the moment we meet. Is that so much to ask?”
In spite of her lightheartedness, I know she’s serious. “No, it’s not. One day it’ll be right, just wait for it. It’ll happen when you least expect it.”
Jordyn and Josie steal our attention. We play with them and laugh at their silly antics. My baby girls love Bree as much as I do, and they’re always willing to go to her. I heard once that babies and dogs detect pure hearts, and it shows in their reaction to you. It’s probably an old wives’ tale, but most of the time, it seems fairly accurate.
Suddenly, a determined look overtakes Bree’s face. “I will have this one day, Quinn. I will.”
There’s the woman I know and love. She’s a fighter, and once knocked down, she always gets up.
