11. Indie #2
Lily seems to deflate every time her cherished memories don’t seem as important to Teddy as they are to her. And I want to be empathetic, because it seems like she’s going through a lot.
Lily has tearfully talked—multiple times now—about her divorce from her ex-husband. She filed for divorce the second she caught him cheating, and now she’s back living with her mother next door, heartbroken and acting like the universe itself dropped her back into Teddy’s life for a reason.
“I call that fate,” Lily told Teddy, tossing her pretty hair over her shoulder and batting her pretty eyes at him. “I need my best friend now more than ever.”
Teddy had just smiled tightly at her, not fully engaged, but not wanting to be rude.
I barely even have the opportunity to speak at dinners anymore, unless Teddy asks me something directly.
Lily sits on the other side of him, placed there by Dawn.
She drags him into conversation or speaks over me to keep his attention.
Dawn speaks over me. His aunts speak over me.
His father and uncles act like I’m not even there half the time.
And when I try to speak up for myself, the way I watched Ellie do a hundred times, they ignore me completely.
Or Lily laughs like I’ve said something funny.
Without Danielle and Stephanie around as much, and with Nana gone, I feel more alone than I ever have.
Even with my boyfriend sitting right next to me.
Grief has hit Teddy incredibly hard.
This loss cracked something open inside him, and I can see it every time his eyes go distant, every time his mother calls and he stiffens before answering her.
Sometimes he’ll come to my apartment from his mother’s house with swollen eyes and say they were just talking about her again. Sometimes we’ll be brushing our teeth side by side in my tiny bathroom, and he’ll start crying out of nowhere.
I never tell him to stop.
I encourage him to always ride it out.
The only way out is through.
When I bring up The Vacation or The Move, he brightens. We spread my carefully planned itinerary across the bed, or I’ll sit in his lap on his couch with my laptop open in front of us.
I’ve already booked our tickets to every art museum, gallery, cathedral, garden, and hidden gem we have time for. I can’t wait to see Teddy’s face when he sees it. In London, in Paris, in Florence.
He hasn’t opened his sketchbook since Ellie passed, so I hope it inspires him, and we have our fresh start in New Jersey with his creativity fired back up.
I know it’s a release for him, an outlet to channel his emotions.
He never seems to have time to process his own emotions anymore while managing his mother’s.
There’s a sunroom in the Cape May house that I’ve already mentally claimed for him. Big windows and lots of natural light. A true artist’s studio.
A couple of days ago, I put the down payment on the house. I still haven’t told Teddy yet. Every time I think I finally have a quiet moment to tell him, someone interrupts us.
And when Dawn calls, Teddy runs to her.
I’m trying to be understanding. I’m trying to tell myself that grief is making her need too much. I keep telling myself all of that, hoping something sticks because I am reaching the end of my rope with Dawn.
And I’m losing control of my temper.
“Teddy, can you pass the pepper?”
I lean slightly toward him, keeping my voice low at the dinner table.
Not low enough, apparently.
“Teddy?” Lily repeats from the other side of Teddy, too bright and loud.
She leans forward and tilts her head at me with that sweet, patronizing look that makes my skin prickle.
“Did you just call him Teddy?”
“Yes…” I say, confused, looking at Teddy for an explanation.
Is this the first time she’s heard me say it? I know he prefers Theo or Theodore from most people, but Ellie always called him Teddy, and that’s how I know him now.
My Teddy bear.
She smiles sweetly. “Only his Nana called him Teddy.”
Teddy frowns at her. “Indie can call me Teddy.”
“But,” Lily laughs uncomfortably. “You always said only Nana can call you Teddy.”
“Nana and Indie,” Teddy says, turning his smile on me. “My girls call me Teddy.”
Love swells in my chest. My hand finds his thigh under the table and squeezes lightly. I’m proud of him for that. Proud of him for speaking up. Proud of him for drawing a boundary.
“But,” Lily’s eye twitches. “Doesn’t it bring up sad memories when she does? Memories about Nana?”
Teddy shakes his head. “No, it comforts me.”
“Oh!” Lily beams. “Then I’ll call you Teddy, too—”
“No,” he says, and his tone is uncharacteristically firm. “Only Indie.”
Only Indie.
My hand squeezes his thigh once more, and he places his warm hand over mine, pressing into my skin as if he needs the contact himself to be strong.
“But, why?”
Teddy shrugs. “Because.”
“Because why?” Lily prompts, giggling, though it also sounds like a challenge.
My patience thins in an instant, my jaw clenches, and my heart starts pounding. Teddy’s hand tightens around mine.
“Because I love Indie, and I want her to call me Teddy—”
Dawn’s voice slices through his like a hot knife through butter.
“Theodore,” she says with a nervous little chuckle, glancing around the table like she’s embarrassed for all of us. “I think it would be alright for Lily to call you Teddy.”
“Mom,” he says, already shaking his head.
Dawn huffs. “Theodore, come on—”
And that’s it.
That’s the rubber band snapping.
“He said no!” I bite out, slamming my fist down on the table hard enough to rattle the silverware. “Do you people even hear him when he speaks? He. Said. No. Leave him alone!”
The entire room freezes.
Teddy looks at me with wide eyes.
The aunts and Colleen look horrified. Judd and the uncles look… weirdly amused. Lily looks smug.
And for one second, Dawn looks like I just handed her the winning lottery numbers.
Then her eyes fill, her chin wobbles, and she buries her face in her hands and cries. She sobs loudly, theatrically, and it’s like that sound snaps every woman in the room into motion. Robin, June, and Colleen react almost at once, voices sharp, teeth bared, practically hissing at me.
And I just sit there, getting yelled at from all sides, staring at the chaos I unleashed.
Robin points at me with her wineglass still in her hand. “Who do you think you are?”
“Apologize to her—now!” June snaps, pointing at the shaking, sobbing form of Dawn.
“That was so cruel!” Colleen hisses. “What is wrong with you?”
Lily gets up from her chair and rushes to Dawn, wrapping her arms around her. “It’s alright, Mrs. Williams,” Lily says, looking directly at me.
“Stop—she didn’t mean it—Aunt Robin, stop—Aunt June—don’t—”
Teddy’s words barely penetrate over the sound of his aunts, over his mother wailing, over the low muttering of his uncles now talking among themselves. He keeps trying until finally he just turns to me and gives me a smile that is too strained, too tight, to be real.
I open my mouth to apologize, I think, but the words choke in my throat.
What exactly am I apologizing for?
For standing up for my boyfriend when his family wasn’t respecting him?
For saying out loud what he was already saying himself?
Why is Teddy excusing me instead of standing up for himself?
And that’s when I have the thought that he’s never going to actually defend me, only excuse it away.
My hand tightens in his lap like I’m trying to hold on to something already slipping away. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind, a small voice asks whether Teddy would ever truly choose me in a room filled with these people.
I don’t like the answer it gives me.
So I bury it.