Friends With Benefits

Epilogue

This task was so tedious, boring and choring and dreary, and yet it was very often the most interesting part of my week. Oh woe, how sad my life had become when the grocery shopping was the highlight of my existence. It was a chance to get out of the house, at least. One of the only places outside my own home where I really felt all that comfortable.

I trawled the aisles, with my baby gushing and chuckling every now and then when I pulled a funny face. I collected some veg for the weeks' dinners, a good amount of fruit. I enjoyed eating a healthy diet, and Peighton loved her bananas. I picked up a few ready meals, though. Guilty pleasure. Ruskes, another of my guilty joys. Peighton would always whine when I ate them because she regarded them as 'hers' and it made her angry. I liked furrowing my brow back at her and seeing her slap her little hands on the floor as she growled and whinged. She was adorable when she was mad, just like her mother always had been.

"How about this?" I found myself asking her as I brandished different baby foods. She kept shaking her head. I'd made her taste the chicken dinner one on one occasion, not realising it was fucking disgusting, and now she was suspicious of anything in a jar. I chose a few for her and dropped them into the trolley, continuing my search. She started whining a little while later, so I gave her her dummy and picked up some cereal, some porridge. God, my shopping list made me sound like such a dad, like, a typical British dad. All I needed was some sort of moustache.

I had never been able picture myself being a typical dad sort; always imagined I'd be the 'cool' dad. Now I knew that was never going to happen. The thought alone of my girl, when she was older, bringing some upstart of a boyfriend home and expecting me to be 'nice' made me feel sick, made my knuckles clench at the idea unaided. I could see where parents were coming from. Could see why mum had worried about me so much, disallowed me from going off on trips alone and things. I was so protective of my little Princess because the mere image of any harm coming to her killed me on the inside. She was my whole world now, my everything. I couldn't breathe without her.

I remembered, as I picked up some orange juice, the first time I'd left her with my mum for the night. It was Liam's 20th birthday, the August after she was born. The boys had practically killed themselves trying to convince me to come along and I eventually caved in and agreed to leave my precious girl with 'Gwan' for the night. I think I'd genuinely forgotten how to function without knowing what she was doing every minute, every second. I'd called every half an hour all night to ask if she was okay, ready to leap in the car if she had even so much as a sniffly nose. I worried so much about her, and wondered a lot if it would ever get easier to let her go. I was pretty sure I already knew it would never be.

"Baby aisle," I chirped as we took the next turn, me and Peighton, "An aisle all for you, Peigh, eh?"

I chucked her under the chin and her bright blue eyes peeked up to meet mine as I smiled widely. She reached out a little hand and patted my chest and kicked her feet against me again. She had attitude, my girl. She was telling me I wasn't funny.

"I'm not funny, am I?" I asked her in a low voice and she dropped her eyes and tilted her head to the side in an almost shrug of her shoulders. I chuckled under my breath - she knew so much more than people gave her credit for. She was a smart one.

I picked up some nappies and other various baby things that I'd never had to even consider in my purchases before this year. I imagined what my reaction might have been if you'd told me at sixteen, seventeen, that I would have a baby now. I would have been horrified. It was funny, because I couldn't imagine now not having Peighton.

"Cookies," she gabbled as we passed the biscuit aisle. I rolled my eyes. The one word she had mastered. I blamed Niall Horan for that one.

"No cookies, not today," I asserted, shaking my head as she whinged and battered me with her little fists. She liked getting her way. I didn't quite know which parent that came from; maybe it was in equal halves.