Chapter Eight
If you ever see me talking to myself
I'm just running through the words I have to say to you
Is it over, or is it too soon to tell?
I'm just trying not push myself away from you
-Talking to Myself by Chiddy Bang
I woke up the next morning expecting to get up peacefully, but instead I started falling off the bed and I frantically grabbed for anything that could get me to not fall on my ass. I didn't know what I ended up grabbing, but I pulled it down with me as I fell, successfully waking me up.
"What the hell!"
I jumped and looked next to me, finding Sage sleepily rubbing his eyes, disorientated and confused. He was the thing I pulled down with me. What was weird, is that the first thought that came to me wasn't why he was in my room, but why he was wearing the same clothes from yesterday; a muscle tee and jeans. But I did wonder why he was in my room.
Then I sat up and realized that I wasn't in my room, but the living room.
"What the..." I trailed off. I tried to think back to last night but I didn't really remember anything other than Sage and I sitting here awkwardly like normal but then after that I'm blank. We most likely fell asleep here.
I turned back to Sage to find him looking around him confusion, then it seemed like he began to piece together the pieces. He then looked down at his shirt and made a pout face. "I think there's drool on me..." He mumbled.
I quickly turned away from him. How embarrassing was that. "This is weird," I said, still looking away from him.
"Yeah..." He trailed off, scratching the back of his head.
Before he could say anything else, someone else interrupted. "Aw, you two are so sweet."
I turned to find Bryson standing at the entrance of the living room, mock cooing at us. He then rolled his eyes. "You two were wrapped up pretty tight there," he said as he walked past us and into the kitchen.
I glanced at Sage to see him standing up. "Fuck you, Bryson," he said.
I tried not to show any emotion on my face, but on the inside I had a billion questions. Although we were technically married now, Emma and I had never switched rooms, so I'd never slept in the same place as him before. I don't know why we never switched; it most likely had something to do with both of our pride. So what was Sage thinking about this? Would this make him turn into Bad Guy Sage? And a bunch more. If I didn't know better, I would think Sage was bipolar with how frequently his mood changed.
Bryson only laughed as he opened cabinet after cabinet, obviously looking for something. "I don't judge," he said absentmindedly.
I glanced at Sage as he stretched, revealing a little strip of skin where his waist met his stomach. I quickly looked away, scolding myself. Who cares about that little skin? Not me, for sure.
"Where is a freakin' pan?" Bryson muttered under his breath, then his head emerged from a cabinet with a skillet in his hand.
I watched in silence as he started moving around the kitchen, grabbing food and other supplies that I didn't even know we had in this place.
"Are you making food?" Sage asked, his head tilted to the side.
"Yeah..." I added.
Bryson froze, turned to us and raised his eyebrow. "Yes. Is that a problem?"
I shook my head, even though I was a little bit in shock. It was so weird to see someone as priveledged as Bryson, as boneheaded as Bryson, doing something for themself. I glanced at Sage to find him giving me the same look I was probably giving him; the 'This is Different" look.
I looked away then slowly walked upstairs, weary to leave Bryson alone with the oven. Upstairs I took a shower, brushed my teeth and completed the rest of my morning routine. I checked on Rose to find her alseep, so I just took the baby monitor downstairs with me.
What I saw surprised me.
I must've been in the shower for a while because everyone was now downstairs, sitting on the living room couch, each with plates piled high with food.
"Woah," I muttered and walked into the kitchen to find Sage being handed a one of the huge plates of food by Bryson in a kiss the cook apron.
"Welcome, Avery! So nice of you to join us!" Bryson greeted, smiling cheekily.
"What is happening here?" I asked as I watched Sage eat an entire bacon strip as he walked into the living room.
"Breakfast!" Bryson said. "Want some?"
I looked around again, then turned back. "Uh... Sure."
Bryson then proceeded to get a plate and pile it with waffles, pancakes, bacon, eggs, sausages, hashed browns and anything else in the book while I stared in shock.
"How am I supposed to eat all of this...?" I mumbled as I walked into the living room and took the empty spot in between Emma and Peyton.
"I'm gonna have to starve myself this week," Emma said as she took a bite of bacon.
I glanced at her, shaking my head and smiling. I then began eating the amazing looking food.
"-and Avery were pretty snug last night."
I looked up at the sound of my name. "Huh?" I asked.
"I came down here last night," Matthew continued after swallowing a bite of food. "And you were both asleep. On top of each other."
I coughed, and coughed and coughed. So much that I had to get up and drink a glass of water. When I could finally breathe again, I told Matthew, making sure to look anywhere but Sage. "It's a narrow couch."
Matthew laughed. "Whatever. You both still looked extremely comfortable."
"I'm eating don't be gross," Sage said.
I shot him a look, and he gave me one of fake innocence back. I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't help but smile. Food, laughter, and Good Guy Sage. This was a perfect way to start my morning. Until, a couple hours later, another challenge was unfortunately thrown our way
We'd all ran out of fresh diapers and there were none in the usual places that held them (cabinets, under tables etc.). I wasn't the first to notice this however, and just as I was about to march to Chris and demand an explanation, he came over the loudspeaker.
"Contestants! It seems that we've reached a problem! No more diapers! It seems like you're going to have to go out and buy them yourselves!"
I waited for him to say something that actually made sense, but I soon heard the familiar beep that signaled the end of the message.
"What does that even mean?" Sage said, looking at me.
I gave a shrug. "I don't know." Did Chris literally mean that we had to get real diapers for the baby? Weren't the ones we were using now... different?
Suddenly, I noticed something slide under our door. I narrowed my eyes and walked over to it and picked it up. It was a credit card.
"What is it?" Sage asked, appearing behind me.
I handed him the card as I opened the door and peeked outside. No one was there. "I guess we use it to buy diapers?" I turned back to him to find him studying the card, then he looked back up at me.
"So who's going?"
I raised my eyebrow, confused. "Both of us?"
"Why do we both have to go? Shouldn't it be the mom who does this stuff? They know more." He said.
My jaw dropped without my control. "That's so sexist of you."
He sat on his bed. "Being truthful is sexist? Moms are better than dads. I'm a man and I can admit that."
I looked at him and shook my head, though I guess the reason that the statement sort of offended me wasn't known to him. He didn't know that my dad had raised me since my mother died, and done a great job of it if I do say so myself.
"Well, we're both going no matter what you believe," I said. "Now get up and let's go."
Sage raised his eyebrow at me, probably contemplating on whether or not he should comment on the authority that had entered my voice. He seemed to think not, because he stood up, went to his closet and put a baseball cap on top of his head, stuffing his hair inside. Then, he put on a pair of dark shades.
I didn't comment on his attire, and we went downstairs, outside and into his car (which was so pretty it almost hurt my eyes).
"So, where are we going?" He asked.
I looked up from Rose, who badly needed a diaper change. "I don't know, Walmart? Does Walmart sell diapers?"
He only shrugged and continued driving. After about fifteen minutes, he spoke again. "We can go to StopMart," he said. "It's right here and it's basically a rip off of Wal-Mart."
I nodded and he pulled into the store parking lot. StopMart was considerably smaller than most Wal-Mart's but I didn't think we would have a problem finding diapers.
We stepped out of the car, and were followed by two camera men who drove here with us in opposite cars. When we entered the store, Sage seemed like he was trying to shrink himself down by walking a little more within himself and pulling his hat down every few seconds.
"What's with you?" I finally asked, pulling his shirt so he would stop walking.
He glanced down at my hand still on his shirt and I pulled away quickly. Awkwardly. He looked back at me, as if he didn't realize that he had been looking at my hand and spoke up. "I don't need anyone recognizing me."
As he said those words it suddenly clicked in my mind and I wondered why it had taken me so long to see. Then I looked back at him. He was wearing another muscle tee. "If you're trying to hide yourself you couldn't have done anything to cover up the tattoos that could easily identify you."
He looked at his arm as if just realizing what he was wearing. "Well this is awkward," he finally said.
I stared at him, and couldn't help but laugh. No matter what he was still a boy and boys lack common sense.
"Let's just go get the stupid diapers," he said, grabbing my elbow and pulling me along.
When we reached the diaper aisle, we realized that this wasn't going to be as easy as we thought. It turns out that there are dozens of types of diapers, and they had specific sizes. The size part I should've known, since babies aren't all the same size, but for the better part of my life I'd grouped diapers in the one size fits all category. The only difference I was aware of was diapers of babies and diapers of toddlers who were almost potty trained, the famous "I'm a big kid now" jingle in mind.
Sage had two types of diapers in his hands with a frustrated look on his face. "How many months old is Rose?" He asked out loud, but didn't face me.
"Does Rose even age?" I countered.
"This is all so confusing," Sage whined. "I don't like this."
I looked at Sage to find him pouting in the most adorable way. He looked generally upset. I was suddenly overcome with the feeling to make everything better for him so that he would never be sad.
Weird.
"Well," I said, clearing all of those crazy, fan girl thoughts. "This isn't our money; we could just buy a bunch of different kinds of diapers and see which ones work."
"That's... pretty smart," Sage said.
"Wow, is Sage Kingsley complimenting me someone get this on camera- oh wait! We already did!" I joked.
He rolled his eyes, but I could still see the amusement in them. "Ew, no. Forget I ever said that."
I smiled at the fact that Sage was being Good Guy Sage today and playfully shoved him. "Whatever, let's just get a cart."
"Two," Sage added.
We went to the cart section, picked up two and rolled them back to the diapers and began throwing everything into the carts. When the carts could take no more, we rolled them to checkout. We began loading everything onto the conveyor belt and the cashier pressed the button to move everything along.
"That'll be- Oh my gosh."
I looked up at the cashier, confused by her words then realized she was looking at Sage with the same look Aubrey gave everyone.
"You're Sage Kingsley," she said.
Sage looked almost pained as he said, "No, I'm really not."
The girl completely ignored him, turning to me. "And you're Avery Fisher. And that's Rose!" She was borderline hysteric now and it didn't seem that she was going to calm down anytime soon.
"I'd really appreciate it if you didn't make this a big deal, Ellie," Sage said, making the same sort of pout that he'd made moments before.
Ellie seemed to have gotten the exact same feeling I had gotten, because she almost looked like she was going to cry. "No, no, it's no big deal. It's just Stars Unedited," she said, almost whispering.
Sage nodded, then slid the credit card in the slot. He pressed a few things on the screen, then put all the bags into the carts and started pushing both of them, obviously not needing my help.
I studied Ellie as she blinked, in a daze at what just happened, then I shook my head and followed behind Sage to the car. After loading everything in, I spoke. "Well that was close," I said.
"Now you see why I disguise myself," Sage said as he stepped into the front seat.
I scoffed. "Not very well."
He looked at me, narrowing his eyes and half smiled. "Whatever," he said.
I looked at him for a while, with a half smile, and he looked back at me. I liked being able to talk to Sage like this; I didn't have to be guarded and watch everything I said, even though I still sort of did because I embarrass myself extremely easy. But staring at each other soon became weird and sort of awkward so I eventually looked away and we spent the rest of the ride back in silence.
When we got into the driveway, Bentley and Aubrey had just arrived home and were walking into the house, Bentley carrying a pack of diapers in his hands.
"What size did you get?" I asked him.
He blinked and scratched his hair, it was up in a ponytail. "There are sizes? We just got the cheapest one."
I shook my head and laughed as we walked into the house, Chris was standing at the door, beaming at us with his hands behind his back.
"Hello," he said.
We all muttered varied forms of hello's warily. He then pulled from behind his back a weird looking package of diapers. Our baby diapers.
"Good job!" He said. "Now this is your reward." He handed me the package of diapers, then said. "There are extras up in each of your rooms."
As Chris walked away, I looked back at the diapers. "That was the stupidest thing that's ever happened to me.
Sage looked at me. "Most definitely."
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Hey guys! This didn't take too long, right? It's a little on the short side but the next couple of chapters will be on the long side so stick out for those.
But yeah, tell me what you think! I'm loving Sage and Avery's relationship, like it makes me sooo happy. Why can't I have that? Alright, guys, thanks so much for reading!
Comment! Vote! Fanimos!