Monday, 9th January 2023 – Part Two

Phoebe twirled in her dress and watched her uncle pace, then sit down, then stand up and check his tie, then pace again.

"Uncle Roy," Phoebe said.

"What?" he growled.

"How did you know you loved Jamie?"

Roy started and turned to her. He stared at her for a long time and then sighed. "You invited him to Uncle's Day, and he brought that gift and came from England training and I wanted to kiss him."

"Called it," Ruth said quietly.

"But why was that when you realised you loved him?"

Roy growled and sat down again. "You're going to meet someone one day."

"I meet lots of people," Phoebe said, taking off her shoes and sitting at his side with her feet tucked up.

Roy growled. "This will be a special someone and your niece will call him your best friend and you'll realise that one day you saw him sad, and you had seen him treated badly and you'll want nothing in the world more than to make it better. You'll offer to train him even though your knee is fucked and you can't really keep up anymore but you'll do it and you'll let him in and you'll cook for him and when his heart looks like it's going to get broken you'll try and help but you'll be scared because you feel too much and no one has ever been able to take that without being dragged under. You'll let yourself have just a little, just what he'll let you have knowing it will ruin you when he's pulled under too but not able to stop yourself even though you don't want to hurt him. But he'll pull you deeper until you realise that neither of you is going to drown and you'll remember the look on his face when he gave you a present he was nervous about and you'll realise there was no way you wouldn't even up married to him and you'll do it here or on the moon or wherever it makes him happy and you'll start looking for a fucking farm property because he wants to grow veggies and berries and have chickens when he's old and you'd give him the fucking world because your fucking heart isn't yours anymore it beats inside of a prick more than a decade younger than you and you don't even care because he's everything you want."

"That's really specific, Uncle Roy," Phoebe told him. "I don't know that I'm going to meet someone like that."

"Well, until you do none of them are worthy of your time," Roy told her, slinging an arm around her and hugging her to him.

Ruth walked over and sat at his other side, pressed a kiss to Roy's cheek, and then rested her head on his shoulder.

Roy held them both close for a long time.

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