Done Adulting Vol. 2 Ch. 3

“Morning, Jamie,” Ella greeted him. It was Jamie’s last day at daycare for the summer; Amanda’s last final was that afternoon. As they had the past several summers, Ella and Jamie would be spending three days a week together at Jamie’s house under the watchful eye of Becky and Amanda, an arrangement that made the two of them happy and saved Stacy some money.

“Morning,” Jamie said glumly as he fell into the chair next to Ella’s.

“What’s wrong?” Ella knew Jamie’s moods as well as Becky and Amanda did. After all, they were lovers.

“Manda finally told me she was moving out.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking his hand. He put his head on the table. “Did she say when?”

“When the summer is over. I guess before she starts grad school.”

“What then?”

“Mom and Manda haven’t said. I think I’ll live with her part time.”

“So you’ll still see her most days?”

“I don’t know.” Jamie sighed and closed his eyes. “I ...”

“What?”

“I was thinking, last night, I was thinking I wished Mom had never made her my guardian.” Jamie sniffed. Ella’s brow creased. “Because then this wouldn’t feel so much like a divorce. It wouldn’t seem ... I just want things to stay the way they are.”

“I know,” Ella said as she ran her fingers through his hair. “So you didn’t talk about any of the details last night?”

“I ...” Jamie felt ashamed and still traumatized, the entire episode a blight. How hurt he was, what he’d said. He hadn’t ever made Manda cry. “I stormed out of the room,” he told Ella. “I lost my temper.”

“That’s okay sometimes,” Ella reminded him. Jamie was past the early phase of his littlehood, having spent the first year veering between moods as he figured out who he really was and how to live in this world, but he still had a temper, and he still sometimes lost it, and he needed reminders not to get too hard on himself when he did.

“I ...” Jamie choked on a sob. April noticed from the moment Becky dropped him off that Jamie didn’t seem his usual self, and she saw him sit down and immediately put his head in his arms on the table. With her other charges, April would already be at his side, but after Jamie and Ella had become a couple, she’d kept a greater distance, letting the two of them rely on each other except when she felt she was really needed.

“What,” Ella prompted Jamie quietly. “You’ll feel better if you tell me.”

“I told her ... I kicked Manda, and then I said I hated her. I didn’t mean to!” Ella was shocked but understood emotions run high sometimes. She put her arm around Jamie and rested her chin on his shoulder, shushing him. Other littles took notice. Jamie was popular at daycare.

“She knows you didn’t mean it,” Ella whispered to him. “C’mon, let’s go outside.” She guided him to his feet and toward the door, outside and across the playground to the grassy area in the back the other littles rarely went to, hidden from view by a small rise of the ground. Jamie had himself under control when they sat down on the grass, though his eyes were still red, mostly from last night.

“What happened this morning,” Ella asked.

“She left for her exam before I got up. Mom dropped me off today.”

“What does your mom say?”

“That everything will be alright.”

“It will be.”

“It’ll be different. I don’t want to live sometimes at Mom’s and sometimes at Manda’s.  I wanna be with both of them everyday.” Ella Just listened. “And now I ... What if Amanda doesn’t even want me, after what I said? She’s ... She’s moving on in life, and what if she doesn’t want me anymore, or what if she gets a new little?”

“Stop, Jamie,” Ella said, hoping to shut down Jamie’s catastrophizing. “Manda loves you more than anything in this world. She’ll always want you. She’s already forgiven you. More than likely, she blames herself.”

“It’s not her fault,” Jamie said sullenly.

“It’s not yours, either. People say things they don’t mean when they get upset.”

“I meant she’s just growing up. It’s not her fault it’s time for her to move out.”

“You should tell her that when you apologize.”

“I’m not sure I can look her in the eye.”

“Of course you can.”

“She’s picking me up today, after her exam.”

“Pretty early then, right?”

“Yeah. I should say goodbye to April and Jenny and some others.”

“You wanna sit a while longer?”

“I wanna turn back the clock to this time yesterday.”

“We’ll figure it out together, Jamie, the four of us. We have all summer.”

“What about long term?”

“What do you mean?”

“One day she’ll get married, have kids. What then?”

“One thing at a time.”

Jamie decided to wait in the reception area for Manda to arrive. Denise had moved on two years ago, and the person who replaced her, Erin, wasn’t as pleased with Jamie being in the reception area, but she endured it. Jamie didn’t often hang out there anymore. He didn’t need to. But on that day he wanted to greet Amanda right away, and he wanted to do it away from everyone else, so he said his goodbyes for the summer, packed his cubicle with April’s doting help, and waited in the reception area with Erin giving him the side eye.

When Manda arrived, the tension between them was thick, and the excitement at the first day of summer was missing. Manda held the door for Jamie, and the two of them walked to her car. “How was your morning,” Manda asked first.

“Fine. How was your exam?”

“I think it went fine,” Amanda said as she drove.

“Congratulations. On being done with college.”

“About last night,” Amanda started to say.

“Wait. Me first. I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it. I ...”

“It’s okay, Jamie Bear, I know you didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, too.”

“Can we go somewhere?”

“Let’s go to the park.” It wasn’t far, and when they arrived Amanda got the bag she kept for Jamie in her trunk, then got Jamie out of his car seat. She put him on his feet, and he responded by holding his arms up. She picked him up, and he put his arms around her neck.

“I really am sorry,” he said as she carried him across the grass to a shade tree they had come to like as their own.

“Tell you what – how about we both be done apologizing? I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job telling you, and we can just leave last night at that.”

“Okay.”

Amanda sat down in the grass with Jamie on her and leaned against the tree. “I love you very much, Jamie. You’ll always be my bear. You know that, right?”

“Mhmm,” Jamie said. Her words brought on watery eyes, and Jamie pressed his face into her tee shirt and inhaled her smell.

“And you and I are going to have a great summer together, you and me and Mom and Ella. We’ll make some plans together.”

“Like what?”

“We have our vacation planned. We’ll go to the zoo. We’ll see movies. We’ll sleep under the stars. Amy is going to be home this weekend, and I know she missed you. Rosie and Jane will be around. We’ll hang out with Aunt Mel. It’s gonna be a great summer.” They sat silently for a minute,

“I love you, too, Manda. I really am sorry.”

“Shh. It’s in the past.” She rubbed his back and he laid against her. She loved how he felt, small, firm yet so soft, and she focused on that. Their bodies felt familiar to each other. “Do you wanna go play?”

“I wanna take a nap.”

“Didn’t sleep well?” She certainly hadn’t.

“I guess not.” She reached for the bag and jerked the zipper open with her free arm, Jamie not moving at all to give her the use of her other hand, and she pulled the changing pad from the bag, flapping it open.

“Here,” she said, peeling him away from her. “Arms up.” She pulled his shirt off and laid him face down on the mat, lying down next to him so she could run her fingers up and down his back the way he liked until he fell asleep.