Another Door Opens

63 - Eden is off her tits

- MILES -

My parents had invited me over to dinner last night when they found out I was alone for the evening, wanting to have what I initially considered to be a very premature conversation about my intentions with Eden without her around, which included providing me with my grandmother's engagement ring that she had apparently handed over to my father one day recently in one of her rare moments of clarity after Eden and I had gone to visit her. Apparently all my many instances of repeatedly gushing to my grandmother over the past year about Eden is one of the singular things she seems able to remember these days and, after meeting my woman last week for the first time, was convinced that I should make her my wife.

I say that I thought it was 'initially' premature because it seems almost laughable that I would even be considering marriage period given my lifelong---until Eden, I suppose---aversion to the idea. But after Dad passed on Nan's ring as she had instructed him to do, and looking down at it in my hands, I knew that Eden would love it. One day.

My mother could hardly stop laughing at me checking my phone every few minutes to see if Eden had messaged while we were eating dinner and she was on her way up to the Gold Coast. "You really can't do anything without her nowadays, can you?" she teased, making my father laugh too.

"Not true, mother," I started replying before getting distracted by my phone vibrating on the table and the screen lighting up, not with a text from Eden, but one from Wolfe with a video of River wearing the mini boxing gloves I'd bought him at the baby shower months ago, with Wolfe making 'ous ous' sounds as he moved his son's arms to mimic punches. My laughter at the sight of it completely distracted me from my reply to my mother.

"You were saying?" she prompted again with her eyebrows raised sarcastically as she spooned a mouthful of roast potatoes into her mouth dramatically.

"That one wasn't Eden at all! It was Luna and Wolfe's kid. Look," I said, showing my parents the video of River, and laughing all over again.

"Okay, that's actually pretty funny," my father admitted when the video finished playing. "But, all the same, your mother is right, son. You're a wreck without Eden around these days."

And so the teasing progressed from there, with my ability to be a functional human without my lovely girlfriend present being questioned with multiple sharp barbs being hurled against my person from both my mother and father all evening until I headed home with a potential engagement ring enclosed in my pocket, texting the hopeful future recipient of said ring to check in when I walked inside my boring Eden- and Hades-less house.

Miles: My parents think I can't be alone anymore without pining for you.

I miss her so goddamn much, and my parents aren't far off the money in truth. I can't wait for her to come back.

Eden: Well, that's because they're right, of course. I haven't even gotten to the club yet and you're already missing me.

I tried to deny it in my reply to her, which prompted her to tease me even more before I came to my senses and encouraged her to stow her phone away and just focus on a good time. I'm a big boy and can survive without her for the evening. Or pretend to for a while at least, which was actually so much easier once I knew she was having a good time later in the night.

She must be off her tits to be telling me she misses me. That, or she loves me. She's as emotional vulnerability avoidant in words as they come, but I've grown to be pretty proficient nowadays in being able to read her other languages she communicates with---through her smiles and her tender touches and her jokes and giggles and full-on diabolical laughing fits. So I know she does indeed care about me, even if she won't say it aloud.