First person isn't a style I am too conversant with, so this might be shit.
I apologise.
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Part 1
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I pant as I roll onto my back, my fiance rolling onto hers too and letting out that self-satisfied chuckle she always does when she's aware that she has practically undone my entire world and pieced it back together, one orgasm at a time.
It's something between smoky and cheeky and I find it endearing in the oddest way.
But then again, I find most things about Bo endearing.
"That," she kisses my shoulder, her, her head being supported by her elbow, her brown, proud eyes smiling down at me, "was amazing. If I do say so myself."
I roll my eyes and try to keep my smile at bay as I pull the covers up to regain some of my modesty. God knows why seeing as Bo's mouth was just seconds ago in parts of me that I'll never reach.
"Your humility astounds me."
The sarcasm in my voice isn't lost on her and she throws her head back in a hearty laugh. "Are you going to deny that I just, literally, made you see stars?"
"It wasn't that good." I lie and she scrunches her nose in that way that she does when she doesn't agree with what I'm saying.
"Oh Bo. I think you broke me. Bo B-" She mimics in a voice that sounds nothing like mine.
"Shut up." I hit her with a pillow and she ducks, covering her face as she laughs at what I'm sure is my red face.
I love this. I mean, yeah sex with Bo is amazing. In the past six months that I've been with her she has shown me sides of myself that even I didn't know exsisted. Not that that's surprising seeing as there's a lot of myself that I don't know.
But as great as the sex is, this is easily my favourite part of everything. Being silly with her, making her laugh. Seeing her eyes shine so bright and knowing that I made her that happy.
It makes me feel like I have a purpose in life. Something that for a really long time I didn't have.
Her soft lips on mine cuts off my train of thought. She tastes like the red wine we had before she removed all my clothes and led me to bed. My fingers find their way to the fine hairs at the base of her neck, she loves it when I play with them for a reason. I run my index finger down her neck and she smiles into the kiss before pulling away. "You know I get ticklish when you do that." She says then sighs after a minute."I have to get going."
I can't help the pout that my lips form. That's the thing about your entire world revolving around one person, it sucks when they have to leave because then your purpose is gone and you have no idea what to do.
"Don't be like that." She softly tucks my hair behind my ears. Something she always does when she's being comforting. "You knew I could only stay a few minutes."
Now I'm wishing I hadn't made lunch and opened that bottle of wine. It took me a whole ten minutes this morning to get Bo to agree to come home for lunch today. I spent my morning cooking and making everything ready for her. I'm creating new memories and I want them to be beautiful, so every moment counts.
But lunch and wine took away time that we could have been doing other things. Maybe I should have suggested lunch in bed. But no, I might not know a lot about myself but I know that I hate disorder. It makes my skin get goosebumps and I absolutely cannot stand it.
It drives me crazy.
"I'll try coming home earlier tonight." She kisses my shoulder one last time before slipping out of bed. I pull her pillow that always smells like her close to me and lie on it as I watch her dress.
Bo is perfection personified. Every single part of her is as it should be and sometimes I wonder exactly how I got so lucky.
"Don't look at me like that. You're making me not want to go back to work."
"Then don't."
"I have to." She sits on the bed and puts on her shoes.
I sigh and kneel on the bed. My hands moving to help her button up and she adjusts her sitting position to make it easier for me. This is something else that I love, how she trusts me. Bo is strong, indipendent. So that she lets me take care of her means the world.
"What's your plan for the day?" She asks as I fix her cuffs.
I shrug. "I think I'll go shopping. We're almost out of groceries so I think Mrs. M will be getting a visit from me today."
She smiles. "Sounds like a plan. I love you and I'll see you soon, okay."
I nod and kiss her, telling her I love her and sitting back on the bed as I watch her leave. She gets to the door and rushes back and kisses me again. I laugh as I kiss her back. "You're going to be late."
"I love you." She says again.
I chuckle. "I love you too, now go."
...
I don't like sitting idle. Another one of the few things I know about myself. So, minutes after Bo leaves, I get up and start getting busy.
I change the sheets, second time today. The ones we have one reek of sex and sweat. Not that I mind, but maybe tonight I might have a surprise for Bo and said surprise might lead to sexy times. I don't want to have it on top covers that already smell of sex.
I've been actively looking for a job for months now. Not that it's easy seeing as I don't even know what on earth I'm good at other than making lists and making things orderly. Yesterday, Mrs. M called me. She's the old lady who owns the grocery store I go to. I trust her products. I like to think they haven't been injected with chemicals that will make me age before my time.
Anyway, the girl who worked for her, Abby, eloped with her rich Indian boyfriend. Last Mrs. M heard they were in Mumbai taking selfies and being young and in love. As great as that is for Abby, it leaves Mrs. M without anyone to help her at the store. That's where I come in.
I love Mrs. M's. I love the smell and the people and the old lady herself. Other than Bo, she's the first friend I ever made and she doesn't make that big a deal over my condition.
It is what it is.
And I might not know a lot, but I'm good at simple mathematics and I'm healthy and that's all she needed to hire me.
We're going to finalize things today then I'll telll Bo later. I get that working in a grocery store isn't much. But it's a lot to me after everything.
I hope it'll be for Bo too.
I jump into the shower after I'm satisfied with how the bedroom looks. Bo's (our) shower isn't for everyone. Something happened with the plumbing so that now it has only two temperatures; freezing cold and scalding hot. That's except for the tenth second after you've turned it on when it becomes soothingly warm. Then on the sixteenth second it goes back to either too hot or too cold depending on whether or not someone is in the toilet.
It's a science, taking a shower.
One that Bo and I have turned into some sort of Saturday game. Usually when we're done, the bathroom looks like a mini-pool and the both of us are panting from laughing and going in and out of the shower.
It's the only reason I haven't asked Bo to get it fixed.
Our house is full of those. Little knickknacks that other people see as just things but mean the world to me. To us.
Like the record player that we bought on our first month together for no reason other than I thought it would look amazing on that mis-shapen stool that Bo made herself. We've only played a record on it once and it was ABBA and we danced so much and sang so loud that the grouchy old man from across the street came knocking, telling us to keep it down or move out.
Then there's the things that other people would find annoying. Like the creaking floorboard that only creaks because Bo dissmantled a slat while looking for the lucky penny I gave to her on our first date. She was certain it was under it. Why, I have no idea. We've thought of repairing it, but it's like an alarm whenever I try sneaking up on her and Bo finds that funny and since I adore it when she laughs, it stays unfixed.
There're other things. Like the hedious yellow cup that sits at the coffee table and carries nothing but Bo's pen that doesn't work anyway. And the picture of a woman who I swear looks like a work of art and Bo insists is superiorly hedious. They all have some memory attached to them, and I love it.
...
It's a beautiful day outside. The sky is cloudless and that wind that only comes by in July is caressing my skin gently. The sun isn't furious today. It's sort of gentle actually. It touches everything with such softness that the world just looks golden and lush.
It puts me in a great mood and I'm smiling when I enter Mrs. M's shop. Biting back a chuckle when I see the old woman squint her eyes she tries to serve a customer who judging by the tapping of his feet, is getting impatient.
Mrs. M is losing her eyesight. She needs glasses. But the last time someone mentioned that, they were lectured for an hour. So I don't say anything although I already decided earlier on that I'm going to buy her a pair for christmas. Just to give her a push so she can get real ones.
"Oh, thank heavens you're here." She sighs out when she sees me. "Could you-"
"Of course." I say even before she finishes the sentence and go behind the counter. Serving the customer as quickly as I can so that the next one won't have to wait as long.
"You're an angel." Mrs. M says to me. "You're also radiant. Good afternoon with the fiance?"
I blush and look away. Mrs. M knows about Bo and I. Of course she does. Bo is all I ever talk about. She's also the one who helped me go to the custom jewellery makers to get Bo's ring ready. She says if it wasn't for her I would have been cheated out of my money seeing as I don't know how to haggle.
This wouldn't have been good. That money was all I had and I wanted to get Bo the perfect ring.
"That look in your eyes says it all." She teases some more. I love Mrs. M. I do. But I'm not really up to talking about my sex life with her. As great as it is.
She laughs as she tells me to man the counter for a bit longer as she goes to get something from the store.
...
Mrs. M is takes her time back there, probably due to the fact that she can't see and won't ask for my help. And business is slow. So much that I pull one of Mrs. M's numerous magazines and start going through it to keep myself busy.
I'm lost in the seemingly never ending pictures of food when I hear someone enter the store. I look up with what I hope is a welcoming look, closing the magazine as I do so.
A little girl is panting as she holds the door open. Her wide brown eyes looking at me, her curly blonde hair falling from her ponytail and for some reason, the sight of her makes my heart still.
I want to ask her if she's okay because I don't see any adult behind her but her eyes get even wider the more she looks at me and before I can say anything, she beats me to it.
"Mommy! I found you!"
...
My stomach is confused. It's not sure whether to lilt or sieze so it does both at such quick intervals that it makes me feel dizzy and like I'm going to be sick.
There's something I'm supposed to know. The little girl's wide eyes that are blinking so slowly like she's afraid if she does it any faster I'll dissapear tells me so. My thoughts, my memories that seem to want to break free from somewhere tell me so too.
But I don't.
I don't know anything.
And that feeling that I spent months fighting, that I thought I'd gotten over comes back so fast it almost knocks the wind out of me. For the first time in months, I feel inadequate and Bo is not here to tell me different.
"Rae-" a voice calls and I can see through the glass a woman running to the store door. "Reagan!" She scoops up the little girl who's still got her eyes fixed on me . "What did I say about leaving places without me?"
"But I found her, momma!"
"Reagan."
The woman still hasn't looked at me. She just seems so overwhelmingly happy to have found her daughter. She's also not helping with my feeling of inadequacy because again, I feel like thre's something I should know.
"I did. I found her." The little girl whines. "Look." She points at me and the woman sighs. Placing her down and only looking like she's looking at me to quieten her daughter.
But then our eyes meet and she gasps. "Lauren?"
...
I should know them.
We've been seated in Mrs. M's office that she so graciously offered when she came out and found me stupified for the past half an hour I think.
And all the while, as the little girl sits on my lap and slurps on the juice that Mrs. M gave her while taking pauses to play with my hair and ask me questions, the blonde woman who said her name's Crystal passes photos to me ;
"This is the day Reagan was born."
"That's our first family fun day."
"This is you when you were six months pregant with Rea, you ate pickles like crazy."
I feel like I should know something. I should know it at a deeper level than I do. But I don't and it makes me feel like the worst person on earth.
"Are you gonna come home with us? We still live in the same house. Momma said we have to stay there in case you decide to come home. Will you? Will you come home?"
It feels like the earth has been pulled from beneath me and now I have no idea where I'm supposed to stand.
The little brown eyed girl is looking at me with such innocent eyes, so trusting and I genuinely don't know what to tell her. "I uh- I don't know." As soon as I say that, she pouts.
"Why?" It's Crystal who asks. She's pretty, I can definitley see what I saw in her. She has that unavoidable beauty. The kind that slaps you in the face and demands that you take notice of it. She hasn't talked much except to show me pictures that prove that yes,I have another life that doesn't involve Bo at all.
Bo.
The reasonI don't know whether or not I'm going to go back with my child.
It's been a half year.I've built a life here. I'm in love. Just last month, I sneaked out of town and drove three hours to pick the ring I had custom made for Bo and asked the brunette to marry me.
How am I supposed to just pack up and leave all of that? Leave the life we built behind.
"I don't know." I answer honestly and Crystal's face falls like she was expecting that.
...
I text then wait for Bo first in the kitchen because for some reason I find the sound of the appliences soothing. Especially the fridge.
But today it gets old really fast and I drift to the stairs and sit on the last one. Tapping my feet and stopping when I noticed what I'm doing. Willing myself to please, please be calm.
It has been almost an hour since I said an odd goodbye to Crystal and Reagan and left the store without as much as a word to Mrs. M.
I didn't know what to tell anyone. Not even Crystal who gave me her number and informed me that she's staying in a hotel in town. 'maybe we can talk tomorrow?"
I left her without an answer and didn't turn back even when I heard her call my name.
My leg finally accepts to stop moving and my eyes land on the framed photo of me and Bo. I laughed when she showed me the frame that's made of dolphins. She said she got it because they're my favourite animals.
I've never understood why out of all our photos she decided to frame this one. My face is half covered by my hair. We were at the beach and the wind was strong and my hair didn't stand a chance. Her own eyes are wide. Redish because she had had the smart idea of swimiming with her eyes open. She was trying hard not to blink. She blinks at the worst times in most of our photos and they end up looking funny and oddly adorable.
It's not a perfect picture. But it's ours and I love it either way.
I groan and place my hands on my knees.
'What will I do?'
...
The moment I hear the door open and close, I rise from the stair as if pricked.
"Lauren?" Her voice calls urgently, "baby, where are you?"
I don't even make it halfway across the room before Bo's arms are around me and I'm greedily inhaling that mixed scent of the Jasmine body wash she uses and something that always seems to stick to her clothes when she comes from work. I revel in tha fact that I know this.
I've spent Sunday afternoons with Bo under yellow covers that gave the illusion of spring sunlight. Smelling nothing but her scent. Seeing nothing but her eyes. Hearing nothing but her voice as she told me stories of her past and chuckled at the fantasies I made up for us.
Bo is familiar. Bo is unshakable ground.
"It's going to be okay. I promise." She places kisses upon my kisses into my hair and for the first time since this all started, I cry.
The sobs come slow, they come quick then I'm gasping and Bo is all that's all holding me up.
I feel fuggy. Like I'm too full of sadness and confusion and it's seeping from my very pores.
I hold Bo even tighter because I feel like everything is about to change.
Like maybe I'm going to have to lose her.
...
I will only continue this if I didn't completely mess up the plot with my utter lack of first person narration skills. So...yeah.