“Finally, I can breathe again.”- Derek
DEREK
Today is a huge day. We are having a carnival in the street, one that all the shop owners down here have worked tirelessly to arrange, with our fearless and always organized leader, Birdie Lennings (someday Fowler, and yes, we both realized how amazing that was as soon as we thought about it).
Once the shop’s expansion started to take off, Birdie quit her job at the marketing firm and was now my partner in business for the store. She’s the backbone of the whole operation, handling marketing and community outreach.
And between you and me, I’m pretty sure my customers love her a hell of a lot more than they love me.
Birdie has been working nonstop for three months to make this end-of-summer bash come together, to get the stores on board and willing to pitch in both physically and financially. Because it benefited the city, she even got a couple of grants approved for it, using them for the bigger ticketed items that are being used today.
It’s like chaos in the streets, and everyone we know, along with several hundred we don’t, is wandering around enjoying the festival.
Since we made up, the hardware store has been thriving under our new expansion. Not to mention, Birdie is still making fun activities in the store that brought in the loyalty of our customers.
People are coming back. They are feeling this push to support local businesses again, and I know I’m grateful for it, and so are the stores that are placed around the hardware store.
Rora holds my hand after we’ve played every carnival game we could find, and we wander around looking for Birdie. It’s not surprising to find her conversing with my friends and her family in front of the hardware store.
I sneak up behind her, letting go of Rora’s hand when she launches herself at her aunt, and bring both of my hands up to lightly tickle Birdie’s sides.
She jumps and spins around, her eyes dancing in anger and amusement. “Derek! Don’t do that.”
“What?” I slide my hand innocently around her back and hold her to me. There might be people trying to get my attention, there could be a fire alarm going off, people yelling in the streets, or a Martian could land, and I still would have eyes for only her.
“You know what,” she replies sternly, but her hands slip over my shoulders, and I know she’s not really mad. Not at all.
“I’m just showing you some love, baby,” I say, keeping my voice low, only allowing her to hear me.
There hasn’t been a single night we’ve spent apart since we got back together. Some might say we were moving too fast, but I can’t imagine being anywhere else. Even spending the night at my place feels foreign now, like it’s just not quite home anymore.
I like being at Birdie’s and helping her with the day-to-day. It’s like second nature for me to fall into their routine. I like doing the laundry and making dinner. I like giving her time for herself, something that I believe was very rare before I came into the picture.
I like that when we make plans, it’s always us together. It’s assumed that she’ll be with me at game nights, and it’sassumed that I’ll be there for every weekend boating trip, or at least the ones Birdie’s going on.
Since we started our expansion, and yes, I sayourexpansion because it wouldn’t have happened without her, there have been several weekends that we’ve continued to work and many weeks where we never took a day off. The hard work has been paying off because, as far as local construction goes, Fowler Hardware is now a well-known name.
“Well, you can show me love without tickling me,” she sasses back, snapping me out of it.
“Oh, I know I can, and I have many plans to.” I start to lean in, wanting to press my lips against her pillow-soft ones, and stop when I hear my name.
I’m almost irritated until I realize it’s Nora, smiling softly at us. “Sorry, I just wanted to give this to you.”
I frown at the wrapped gift and look back at her. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“Well.” She looks around shyly and says, “It’s really for the both of you. A very,verylate Christmas gift. I feel terrible we didn’t have anything to give you last Christmas and couldn’t find anything that seemed good enough.”
“Nora,” I sigh, not knowing how we got so lucky to call her a friend. “You don’t have to feel bad about that. I love giving gifts.”
“He really does, it’s his thing.” Birdie smiles at me, and my heart th-thumps in my chest again.
“Well, still, I want you to have this.” Nora motions to the gift again, and I smile, reaching down to tear the paper off. When I do, I pause at the contents, because inside is the exact same picture frame that Birdie framed the photo of my dad and me in, except this time, it’s a photo of me, Birdie, and Rora standing in front of the hardware store on Halloween.
Our smiles are large, and there’s so much going on around us, but the focal point is us three. My family.
I feel my emotions heighten when I look at it, wondering and thanking God we got as far as we did. We’ve done so much in a year, my entire life has changed for the better, and I’ll never stop being thankful for that.
“Oh Nora.” I glance up to see Birdie with tears in her eyes. She blinks rapidly and pulls Nora into a hug that she happily returns.
