Officially Us

Epilogue - She has always been my mother.

I don't know why I chose this very moment to spring this on her.

Standing in the middle of a muddy football oval on a casual Saturday afternoon, telling Sadie that I have always considered her to be my mother.

I've known her all my life as my aunt. Technically speaking, she was my step-aunt, though it never mattered to me that we weren't related by blood. She's the one who's taken care of me every day for the last eleven years, and I've never even met my biological mum or dad. She's been the only parent I've ever known, and the best one I could ever have hoped for.

Seeing her today with her ex-boyfriend, Ruben, might have had something to do with my sudden confession. Seeing them together and imagining what it would be like to actually have a real family like everyone else.

Tanner and Morgan, Sadie's old best friends from school, who I met recently and loved instantly, tell me that I used to be very close with Ruben when I was only a baby. Even though I don't really remember him and I don't know much about him yet, I already feel like I do. Or at least I trusted that I would like him when I got to know him because I trust Sadie more than anyone in the world, and I can already tell how much she does. She never usually lets anyone get as close to her as Ruben is right now. No one who isn't me or my family, at least.

I can also tell that she likes him a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

We didn't know Ruben was going to be here today. I think Tanner and Morgan kept that a secret from us deliberately to surprise Sadie and Ruben. And, boy, was she surprised. And nervous. I've never seen her so nervous around anyone. Not in an uncomfortable kind of way, but just an excited one.

She smiles differently when she looks at him. It is both bigger and smaller at the same time somehow, and she couldn't take her eyes off him all day, so I was surprised her freckly cheeks weren't sore. Maybe they actually were because they always seemed to be a bit more pink whenever he came near her.

Ruben seems to look at her in a very similar way, only I don't think his cheeks turned pink like hers did. It was hard to tell considering he was already kind of hot and red in the face from running around for the last few hours during his footy Grand Final, which he and Tanner had both just won. But he did smile at her a lot, so wide he had deep creases in his cheeks, and he always looked directly in her eyes for a long time when he did. She has beautiful baby blue eyes and long, reaching lashes so I can understand why he would want to do that.

He also looked just as nervous as she did, his hands shaking like it was the cold middle of winter in Melbourne, not like the middle of spring that it now is.

Despite all their nervousness, they looked genuinely happy together; and Tanner and Morgan, with their baby on the way, looked just as happy for them. Morgan's stomach was so huge, I wondered how she didn't just fall forwards constantly with how big it was. She told me the other week when we met that it's a girl, and that she should be born within the next couple months, but hopefully sooner rather than later because she was getting sick of being pregnant. I think Tanner was, too, because Morgan could get really upset really quickly for no reason, and he said he was going broke because he had spent a fortune on ice-cream. Sadie always eats a lot of ice-cream when she's upset, too.

I wonder if their baby will have bright red hair like Morgan's, or brown like Tanner's. I've never seen a baby with glasses, but I'm sure it would be pretty cute if she needed them just like Tanner does.

I wish I remembered more about Tanner and Morgan from when I was little and they were around a lot. The four of them used to be best friends when they were teenagers—Sadie and Ruben, and Tanner and Morgan—only Sadie had lost touch with them for reasons I didn't really understand yet, and there was a long time between then and now when they weren't really friends. Sadie reconnected with Tanner and Morgan a few weeks ago for the first time in a decade, and since then we've pretty much been inseparable except for when they've been at work or I've been at school, or when Tanner had footy training. Apparently that's just how things used to be when I was little, too, not that I remember that far back.