So if time alone with Theo will keep her from imploding any more, like we're hoping it will, then I am about a thousand percent happy to let them have it. I'm supposed to be babysitting, anyway, which I don't think I can even call babysitting anymore since I don't get paid. Which is understandable, but it would have been nice if someone had prepared me for that the first time it happened, so I could have figured out another way to zen myself through five hours of temper tantrums and thrown oatmeal.
But Theo calls me halfway through The Princess and the Frog. “Stop cheating on your girlfriend, “ I say.
“Taylor Hilarious Cipriano. How you doing, kid.”
“I'm good. Hanging with Alexis and Tiana.”
“Tiana?”
“Princess.”
“Stop cheating on your boyfriend,” he says.
“So what's up?”
“Tayloooor,” Alexis whines, pointing at the TV.
“Hang on, sweetie, just a minute.”
“Can you come out?” Theo says. “Josey wants to talk to us.”
“What's going on?”
“I don't know. She just said she wants to talk to both of us about something.”
And I feel like we both know exactly what's going on. And that we're just going to sit here on opposite sides of the phone, while he's sitting somewhere right next to her, and pretend that we don't know for as long as we possibly can.
“I can't,” I say. “My parents aren't here.”
“Just you and Alexis?”
“Uh-huh.”
He goes away from the phone for a second, talking to Josey, voice muffled, then says, “Maybe we can come over there? Just let Lexie watch TV for a little while?”
Josey has never been to my house before. “Okay.”
“Okay. We'll see you soon.”
I set Alexis up for the rest of her movie with a few stuffed animals and enough snacks to last her through the apocalypse and meet Theo and Josey at the front door. It's a chilly day, by Florida standards. Theo's wearing his soft blue hoodie that I just love.
“Come in,” I say. “Hi.”
Josey looks over my shoulder into the house. “Your sister's here?”
“Yeah.”
“Let's talk out here.”
Well, that's a fantastic sign.
I grab a sweater and we all sit on the porch swing, Josey between us. She's as skinny as she's always been, but she's gained a little weight around her face, I think. It makes her look younger. More like me, maybe.
We swing back and forth for a while, just a tiny bit, scraping our heels against the ground. Josey's staring at our feet and we're staring at Josey.
I've opened my mouth to say you should just say it when she does. “I need to break up,” she says.
I heard it coming, because I am not an idiot, so I don't know why I'm now feeling this very physical pain that I wasn't a second ago. I feel punched in my throat and my stomach at the same time, and all of me in between, chest and shoulders and arms, feels so empty that I might fold into myself like a paper bag.
And I am sitting here thinking all of these things, identifying all these feelings in an orderly fashion, because everything in the world has slowed down, the birds sound like they're singing at half-speed, the swing is swaying in slow motion, and Josey has turned towards Theo and away from me, and I being dumped while no one is dumping me.
It's been a quite a few months since I was this confused—or maybe just since I cared—about exactly how much Josey and I are together, because I would like to know how much I am losing.
This is so messed up. This arrangement I'm in or am no longer in is so messed up because I shouldn't be sitting here watching my boyfriend try not to cry from being dumped when I am not dumping him, and I am so mad at her, I am so mad, and I want to turn it around and dump her—you can't fire me, I quit—except I don't know if that's even something I can do and because I do not, I do not, I do not want to break up with this girl.
I hate her.
I love her.
I need her.
“Why? Theo says.
“Because I have to focus,” she says. “If I don't get into Penn...if I don't get into Penn because I wasn't giving a hundred percent because I'm in a relationship, then I'm going to hate myself forever and I'm going to hate you forever, and I don't want to hate you. I can't hate you. I don't know what I would do.”
She's still talking to him and not me.
Why did she even want me here? Theo could have just told me after the fact. They didn't have to come to my house.
I'm supposed to be watching The Princess and the Frog.
“You shouldn't be alone right now,” he says.
“Why, because I'm pregnant?”
“You haven't even told your parents,” he says.
“I told you. It's a medical condition. Two weeks from now I get it cleared up. It's not a good reason to be in a relationship.”
“It's not that simple,” Theo says. “You know that. It's simple but it's not that simple.”
“I'll be fine,” she says.
Theo's taking breaths that are both big and fast, through his mouth, and I wish Josey weren't in the middle of us because I want to go to him so badly. “This is...this is really bad,” he says.
“I'm so sorry,” she says. “I am so sorry.”
“Then don't do it?” he says.
She leans forwards over her knees, head in her hands. “Please,” she says. Now that she's bent over, Theo and I
