I felt her nod against me.
“That’s how I feel about you, Ellie,” I said. “Besides, I kinda hate the word baggage. We should retire it. Life gets hard for everyone at one time or another. It’s just called being a human.”
“Retire it?” I could feel her smile against my chest. “I like that.”
“Good.” I softly stroked her back until we fell asleep.
40. Ellie
I woke up to the sound of a muffled voice talking. It was quiet, like the voice was coming from the other end of a phone call. At first, I thought it was just part of my dream, but then I heard it again…
“Is someone there with you?” a woman’s voicequestioned.
I shot up from where I laid on his chest and fixed a death glare on TJ who had the phone up to his ear.
“Uhh, sorry, Mom,” he said hesitantly while keeping his eyes locked on mine, trying to communicate with me through them.
I felt my body sag with relief and put a hand to my head to stop the blood rush from sitting up so suddenly. For a second, I thought… No, I didn’t even want to go there… it was only his mom… wait, his mom?
I shook my head urgently at him. I didnotwant his family to know about me. It was way way too soon in my book.
“Yes!” he saidbrightly.
I punched his arm, and then immediately shook my fist out because I hurt my thumb.
He grabbed my hand back and kissed my thumb, but I tried to pull away from him.
“Don’t,” I mouthed to him, gesturing to hisphone.
“There’s a girl here that I like, but she doesn’t like me all that much right now apparently,” he said into the phone, smiling despite the angry look I was shooting at him.
“I don’t know why she doesn’t, Mom,” he continued. “She’s very sassy.”
I rolled my eyes and watched him as he talked. This train was pulling away from the station and I felt like I was barely hanging on.
“She’s a bit of a brat, but that’s alright because I’m a brat tamer,” he repeated to her, which earned him another shove. His smile never wavered though. He loved toying with me. He was like a little kid whose cuteness saved him… because if he didn’t look so cute when getting on my nerves, I’d probably be completely over him at this point.
I could tell he started to talk with his dad on the phone after that, because it dissolved into hockey talk that I couldn’t follow verywell.
I located the remote for his tv sitting in the corner of his room on the ground and turned on an episode of Friends on mute.
When I heard him say his goodbyes, I pushed myself to a sitting position and moved to put my hair up in a messy bun. Only problem- I pulled it a little too far and snappedit.
“Damnit,” I cursed.
He looked up at me in question.
“My ponytail snapped.” I showed him the now useless rubber string. “It was at the perfect tightnesstoo.”
“Perfect tightness?” he asked, intrigued.
“It’s always too tight at the beginning and gives me a headache, then it slowly loosens and becomes perfect. I’ve kept this same one for months. Now I have to start allover.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like a Champagne problem as T-Swift says,” hequipped.
I looked at him in shock for the second time this morning.
“You think I didn’t pay attention to what you played in the rink, Ms. Sassy Thing?” he smirked and rolled onto his stomach, grabbing the pillow and puffing it up between his strong forearms.
