Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty Three
Evie
Eight Months Postpartum
Asnort leaves Harper as she topples over onto her side, I’m holding back my own laughter as I continue my dance in the living room. Being sure to turn around and bend over in front of her as I attempt to twerk.
Josie returns and pauses briefly before she continues to walk into the living room.
When she gets close enough she begins to move her arms in a pumping motion above her chest, joining me in my crazy dance.
Causing Harper to blurt out laughing, which causes me to lose my battle and topple over myself howling.
Josie’s mom just left with Hayes, taking him for a sleepover. We told her to use the loft and that Harper and I would just crash on the couch so she didn’t have to travel far.
When our laughter dies down, I go to stand up only to stub my knee on the coffee table.
“Oh fuck a duck!” I grunt, grasping onto my knee in agony. Shit, this might actually bruise. I pull up my leggings and check out my skin. A purplish-red circle about the size of a ping pong ball has already started on the side of my knee.
“Oh no, it’s already starting to bruise.” Josie says as her fingers lightly graze over my skin. A little shiver runs through me at her touch and I hope it wasn’t too obvious. “I’ll go get you an ice pack to put on that for a bit, go sit and put your leg up.”
A smirk forms as I follow her directions, “are you going to nurse me back to health? Kiss my boo-boo better.”
Josie chuckles as she walks to the freezer and retrieves said ice pack.
“Okay, smart ass.” She mumbles, placing the cold gel pack on my knee, which causes me to jump at the change in temperature.
There’s a knock at the door, and Harper jumps up. “Sounds like our food is here! I’ll grab it.” She’s out of sight before anyone can object.
She’s back with two big brown paper backs in her arms.
“I don’t even remember what we ordered. We got Thai food right?
” I ask, getting up and flinching slightly.
Once I get a couple steps in the pain in my knee isn’t too bad, so I take that as a win.
Harper places the different take out containers on the dining table, while Josie grabs plates and utensils from the kitchen.
I change directions from the table to the fridge and grab three cans of Diet Coke and place them on the table.
“I don’t know if anyone wants a drink, drink. So I grabbed pops for right now. We can always switch later on.” I say, pulling my own can toward me and opening it immediately. Taking a sip, allowing the bubbly goodness to trickle across my tongue and down my throat.
“Sounds perfect,” Harper replies, “I think we got a little bit of everything because we couldn’t decide what we wanted. So dig into whatever smells good.”
My eyes devour the spread of food across the table. We really did order everything, Pad Thai, Thai Spring Rolls, some noodle soups, with some curry dishes as well.
We spent the next half hour eating our fill of food. Before I know it I'm leaning back feeling bloated but so satisfied.
“Oh fuck, my eyes were totally bigger than my stomach,” I groan leaning back and undoing the button of my jeans.
Josie and Harper groan in similar fashion, and I survey what's left of what we ordered.
“Oh my – we still have so much food left over." Josie says with wide eyes. “Guess we are having Thai for leftovers.”
She gets up and begins packing up what's left and bringing it to the fridge. Harper offers to help Josie put the food away, while I take the opportunity to change into sweats.
“I’m going to run to the loft and get into comfy clothes, I’ll meet you guys in the living room if you want to get the movie set up.” I call out to them as I jog toward the door. It’s short lived though with how bloated I am. The evening air hits me and I take a moment to inhale the summer air.
I love this time of year, it’s later but the sun’s still in the sky.
The crickets have come out and their continuous tune lulls me into a comfort that I sometimes forget about.
When I was a teen I used to lay out on my trampoline in my moms backyard and watch the sky change from blue, pink, purple and then black.
We lived in the middle of town, so the light pollution made the stars dim.
I remember laying there, loaded up with bug repellant to try and deter the mosquitoes from eating me alive, and trying to find the constellations.
I would share my secrets to the stars, and when my last relationship ended I found myself out in the late summer night, seeking out an open space to lay there and watch the stars come out.
After I showed up on Harper’s door that night, the year before her and Dalton broke up, I had finally stopped the tears.
I told Harper I was okay, and encouraged her to go back to bed.
She didn’t believe I was okay, but she knew me well enough to know I wasn’t going to tell her anything more that night.
Once she left, I silently made my way outside and in the middle of her backyard I laid on my back and more tears ran down my face as I told the stars my scars.
I told them about everything that he did to me, and how I accepted his love because I didn’t think anyone else would love me.
I let his toxic words break me down, until they became the truth that I saw in myself.
I spent a long time trying to deprogram the disgust in myself that he made me believe. It wasn’t until I started therapy that I slowly broke those walls down and built back up my self worth.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I look down to see that Harper sent me a text asking what movie I wanted to watch.
She gave me a couple options, one of them being my all time favorite movie.
Miss Congeniality was my vote, and after a couple minutes Harper responds to let me know that my choice is what we’re going to watch.
Quickly getting into a pair of biker shorts and one of Monty’s shirts, I make my way back to the house and quickly make myself comfortable in between Josie and Harper on the couch.
I’m engrossed in the movie, no matter how many times I’ve watched it, it still remains my top movie choice. At some point, Josie throws blankets over the three of us and we all snuggle in. Josie has her head on my shoulder and her fingers are intertwined with mine under the blanket.
That feeling of comfort and something else settles in my chest. I can almost pinpoint the emotion, but it remains just out of my grasp, but I don’t try to look too much into it and choose to enjoy the movie night with my best friend and my girl.
Josie's hand goes slack in mine, and when I look down at her I realize that she’s asleep. Not wanting to wake her up, I remain still and turn my attention back to the movie.
Even when the movie’s over, Harper sits up and sees that she’s asleep.
“Should we wake her?” She asks.
I look down at Josie, she looks so relaxed. Her face is slack with sleep, she does so much and doesn’t often take care of herself. Which means Monty and I make the extra effort to make sure we take care of her and to let her know that she’s appreciated.
“No, let’s let her sleep.” I say, not taking my eyes off her. “Let’s watch another movie, then we can wake her up and tell her to go to bed.”
When I look up, Harper is looking at us with curiosity. Her head’s tilted as she takes us in. When her eyes connect with mine she raises an eyebrow at me, and I can’t hide the soft smile that comes out.
“What?” I whisper to her.
“Oh nothing, just wondering when you’re going to tell me what’s going on between the three of you.” She says so casually, I had to replay her response in my head to make sure I heard her right.
“I– uh…the three of us?” I start, a little embarrassed that I haven’t told her anything else.
We didn’t want to tell anyone until we were more comfortable with what was going on.
It wasn’t until before this trip that we agreed that we would tell our best friends, mostly because we couldn’t tell just one and not the other.
“I was going to tell you tonight actually.”
“Really?” Harper squeaks with glee, a little louder than I think she intended.
Which startles Josie awake, she shoots up eyes wide.
Then her brows furrow as she tries to take in where she is.
You can see when it dawns on her that she fell asleep on me, and a slight flush marks her cheeks as she mumbles “Sorry.”
“No, I should be sorry.” Harper says in a rush, “I didn’t mean to wake you up. We were going to leave you be and throw on another movie.”
“Harper was just about to pick the next movie, but did you have a suggestion?” I ask her, trying to let her know it really was okay and she can get comfortable.
“I’m really sorry I fell asleep,” Josie starts. “I didn’t realize I was that tired until I got comfortable under that blanket.” Leaning forward she grabs the bottle of water she had on the coffee table and takes a drink.
“Actually…” Harper only hesitates a second before she continues. “Evie was just about to tell me about what’s going on between the three of you.”
A garbled noise comes from Josie as she half spits out her drink, and tries to catch it with her hand unsuccessfully. Her face takes on a deeper shade of fuchsia and I can’t help the chuckle that comes out of me.
I wait until Josie has sorted herself out before speaking, “Harper was just asking me what’s going on. I told her that that was one of the things we wanted to talk about with her tonight.” When Josie nods her head, letting me know I can continue.
“Harps kinda hinted just then that she already had an idea that something’s going on with us.” Suddenly I feel nervous, like Harps is going to tell me she doesn’t support us and can’t be my friend anymore.
Ridiculous train of thought I know, but my brain goes to the worst case scenario first.