Skinny Love

27.| End

A waitress comes over at the sign of a new person and takes down what I want on a crinkled note pad.

When she walks away, I avert my eyes back over to the man sitting across from me. My best friend and my ex boyfriend and my first love, Ivor Hill. He's right here. "When did you get back?" I ask him.

"Last night." His voice sounds a little different, a little deeper. He looked slightly taller, and definitely more buff. The training camps and football playing obviously made him look more physically stronger then he already was; I don't know how they accomplished that. His hair is more or less the same, his skin tone a little lighter but the Arizona tan is still there.

"What about you?" He asks.

"Oh, couple days ago." I say. This shouldn't feel weird, it really shouldn't. But it does.

We talk, we spill details from our lives over the past 3 years and talk about each other and football and basketball and our relationship and even JJ.

He's doing great, JJ, they still call him JJ which is great because it would feel weird otherwise. Him and Ivor have been room mates the whole time.

And most of all, him and Ryden are still going strong long distance. They talk every night, visit, text. I knew they'd make it work.

By the time I look at the clock again, I realize it's already dark.

"How'd you get here?" He asks.

"Walked." I say, putting my phone into my pocket and finishing my hot chocolate.

"Let me drive you back," he says. "You're parents house?"

"No, no, you don't have to do that. I walked here I'll walk back." I don't want him to go through the trouble.

"It's cold and dark, let me drive you back, Em."

I reluctantly agree, and we walk outside and see a cool ass car, I don't know how I didn't notice it on my way in.

"Yours?" I ask, shocked.

"Of course." He replies.

We get in and start to drive in the direction of my house, we continue or conversation about everything and nothing in the car, all the way until my house.

He walks me to the front door, and waits until I get inside and lock the door.

I watch him linger for a second before he walks back to his car, gets in and drives away.

-2 years later-

"Henry!" I call up into the staircase.

A few moments later he runs out, brown curls flopping on top of his head, his honey gold eyes a nice contrasting his brown skin.

"Yeah, mama?" He asks.

We weren't necessarily found of the idea of kids, never really were. But when we met Henry, we knew he was our son.

He was just a kid, needed a place to stay. The second we laid eyes on him we knew we wanted him to come home with us. We fostered to adopt, during his time with us as foster parents when he was 2, he was taken from us by his social worker. She said his druggie mom wanted another chance. We went to court. There was no way in hell we were going to let them do that to him.

We adopted. When he was first given to us to foster at 7 months, he still didn't have a name. I don't know what they called him wherever he was before he was with us, but they never named him.