♡Emerson Taylor♡︎
-3 years later-
"I'm just going for a little mom!" I call into the room after her.
"Okay!" She responds.
I've been back already two days for Christmas break, I've seen Ryden but none of the rest of them. We're juniors in college, we've got bigger things to worry about than each other.
I decide I'm going to take a walk around the town, up to our town's public square.
I'm in slightly heeled black boots, jeans, a long-ish over jacket and my mid-length hair is slightly curled.
I wasn't back this year for Thanksgiving, so this is my first time here since last Christmas. I wish I could come and see mom and Tom more often, but it's a fourteen hour car ride.
Ivor and JJ of course excelled at Ohio State in the football department, and so did Ben and Oliver in New York.
JJ's already been given draft offers, by teams I know he's wanted. I haven't heard much about Ivor, though.
We all still talk in the group chat sometimes but about random stuff, not life altering futuristic decisions. We lost that in freshman year. I still talk to Ryden of course, a lot more than the rest of them. Even though our picture still hangs in my dorm.
My room mate ended up being amazing. Her name is Luna, she's a physiology major. She's neat, does her homework, reads, and doesn't have a boyfriend who's in the dorm constantly.
I honestly probably couldn't have made out with that better.
I'm walking through the square for a minute, seeing subtle changes in layouts and buildings. Admiring the book store coffee shop that I'll have to visit later. But I've heard Dory's passed, so I think her nephew might run the place now.
Before I get to Dory's or anywhere else I hung out at in my youth, I see a new small diner and decide that's what I'm going to try out, I'd kill a family of seven for a coffee right now.
I walk in and hear the bell ding above my head, signaling to the staff that a new costumer has walked in.
I'm about to keep walking to the bar-ish looking thing to sit and order, when I hear an all too familiar voice.
"Hey, Taylor." For a second I don't want to turn around, scared that it's a dream or that he'll disappear if I look.
Still, I turn. I'm met with the eyes of Ivor Hill. It's been four years since we broke up in high school, but now standing in front of him, it feels like it was yesterday.
"Hey, Mr. Hill." I stammer, bewildered.
"Coffee?" He asks and gestures towards his booth. Against what it probably my better judgment, I sit with him.
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.
So we did, Henry Elias Hill.
"Can you go get your dad, honey?" I ask and he smiles before doing a post toddler run into the next room.
My husband walks into the room with our son moments later. "Hey baby," he says, adjusting Henry slightly on his hip.
Our two and a half year old son giggles against his neck.
"Hi," I smile. "I have to go."
He nods, used to my sporadic job schedule. But when a case comes up, I have to leave. Someone's life is on the line.
"Okay," He sets Henry down. "Go say bye to mommy."
Henry waddles over and hugs my leg, "bye mommy!" He says and kisses my knee quickly.
"Bye sweetheart," I say.
Then we tell him to go see what's on the tv and he runs out of the room.
"Be careful," he tells me. "Please."
"You know I'm always careful." I say.
"If only that we're true," he chuckles, resting his lips onto my forehead and kissing it softly.
"I love you," he says.
"I love you," I say back, he kisses me once more. Only this time on the lips.
"I'll see you after," I say.
"You better Agent," he jokes.
I ended up graduating Stanford top in my class with an English and phycology degree. Later, I got my sociology degree and then went to The FBI Training Academy.
I grab my small overnight bag, and start to leave the house where I live with my son and husband; I'm going to my base where my team will fly out of to get to the new kidnapping case. I look down at the engraved necklace on my neck and bracelet on my wrist.
The bracelet reads: "Ti amo piccola" which means "I love you baby" in Italian.
It was a gift from my husband. The necklace on the other hand was hanging next to my lego one this morning, inscribed is the same word that was there in high school.
Hill.
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Word count: 1,863
So like hey lol. I hope you all got the ending you wanted, please don't hate me 🤪
If this seems really rushed at all, my bad but like yeah.
I felt like at the end I would have so much to say but once again, I'm at a block for words.
Thank you I guess to the people who started reading in the beginning and have been voting and commenting since.
The people who were reading along like that have informed me on multiple occasions this weekend that they're crying so I don't know how to feel about that.
The ones who added my book to tbrs and read when finished, well guess what lol.
Did the title make more sense now? I added Skinny Love by Bon Iver as the last song and if you dumb asses haven't been playing the songs for the last couple chapters well then that's your loss.
If anyone thinks the name "Henry" is like generic and ugly, please thing about Coach. I don't know how many people caught that before since a lot of you are pretty dumb but that's okay.
There were actually multiple ending I had in mind like:
1. Em is an NBA coach and Ivor is in the NFL
2. it's there biological kid
3. Ivor died but I couldn't bring myself to do that
4. Tom died but that was off limits too
5. they didn't end up together
There were a few more but I don't remember them right now.
In the last day I wrote 4 chapters, I'm swaggy like that.
I literally can't think of anything else but I know there's so much.
It's going to be so silly and goofy of me to mark this as complete so that'll be fun.
I'm still going strong with the odd chapter word count numbers. Even the chapter that didn't have an authors note was an odd number.
The word count of this book (including authors notes) is 63,263 which doesn't even compare to most of the books I've read, but cut me some slack.
I don't know when the next book will be up, I think I might wait until it's finished to publish it but prolly not. So like don't push that please.
Can someone leave in this comment a short review or a ?/5 stars so I can but it in the description? >>>>>
The Italian in this book once again was from Google Translate so please any fluent speakers don't come for me. It was google.
I'm trying to think of something else to say, to tell you but likeeee
Again, the second book will be out when it's out, don't beg. Well beg, but not for that. My bad.
I'm going to leave you off there, I guess.
Toodeeloo 🥺✌🏻
Author and shit <3