23 September 2012
"I'm home" Tiffany called, her arms full to the brim of post from their mail box. "Hello?" she called again after there was no reply. "Upstairs" Joe said, bustling her up the stairs, with letters flying out of her grasp with every step they ascended. "Joe, what are we doing?" she asked "Ellie and Serena are asleep, I need to ask you something" "Can I not go and see if Serena's alright?" "Please, T. Come in here" he said, ushering her into the guest room. "What's up then?" Tiffany said, dumping the mail on the bed and sitting alongside it. "I'm going to leave Ellie" "What?" Tiffany spat, dropping the letter she'd just picked up to inspect. "I know" he said, sitting beside her. "Why?" "I don't want children with her" "Then just tell her that, trust me it's not worth breaking up over" "There's more," he began "I'm obsessed with Nate's life" "Oh?" "I want to replicate it so badly. I want the child, the house, the life... His life is so perfect" "You want to know what to do?" "Yes" "Be spontaneous. Nothing Nate and I have done was planned. It was all either a mistake or a consequence of something else happening" "Tell me what he did" Joe asked, edging closer on the bed so he could absorb this information. "When we first started dating it was an affair, so that was a mistake. When he got me pregnant the first time, that wasn't planned. When he proposed that was a result of the pregnancy. When I got pregnant with Serena it was slightly planned, but not to the T. Sometimes the spontaneous things he does for me are ten times better than the planned things" "So what should I do?" Joe asked. "I'm not going to spell it out to you, but I'll go and stay at my mother's tonight with Serena, and I'll leave the whole house to you. You can do whatever you want with her: have dinner, watch a film, literally anything. Just be spontaneous with it" "Thanks" Joe said, kissing his sister-in-law on the cheek before skipping downstairs to see his girlfriend with these new, fresh eyes.
"Mother?" Tiffany sang as she stepped into the familiar surroundings of her mother's apartment. "Hello! What are you doing here?" she replies from the living room. "Nate's at school tonight for his exams, and I wanted Joe and Ellie to have a quiet night. You don't mind if we take my old room do you?" "Of course not, come here darling!" her mother cooed, taking the baby from her carrier. "Umm mother," Tiffany began to ask as she was lead into the living room, dumping all her's and the baby's things by the door "Who's in the shower? Have you got someone round..?" "No no no! Just you wait until you see who it is" her mother beamed, turning her attention back to the baby. "Okay" Tiffany said sceptically, sitting alongside her mother to continue playing with her daughter. "Hey, where did the cleaner leave my clothes?" a male voice asked from the vicinity of Tiffany's ensuite bathroom, and sure enough, it came out into the open plan living and dining area. "Oh my god!" Tiffany called as she recognised who it was. "Tiffany?" the man called back, advancing further into the living room to see if I really was her. "Will! I've missed you so much!" she cried, hugging Will tight despite his lack of clothing and wet body. "Let me get some clothes on, then I'll come and talk some more" he said, clutching the towel tightly against his waist and jogging back into his old room, when his mother called "Second drawer down" to him. "Why's he back?" Tiffany asked her mother, years of prolonged absence welling up in her eyes. "Things didn't go as according to plan as we'd hoped at Yale" "Oh?" "He slept with the wrong girl and now he's being accused of taking advantage. He's taken most of his end of year exams luckily, but he's been told to return here for a few weeks until our lawyers can calm the situation down" "Why didn't he tell me? Actually, why didn't he talk to me at all?" Tiffany asked, referring to the four months of no conversation that had occurred between them. "I'm sorry about that" he said from behind her "That whole situation has been going on for a while, and I knew you had your own problems with Nate and you were in the late stages of your pregnancy so I didn't want to over burden you or stress you out or anything" "You wouldn't have" Tiffany said, getting up to hug him again. "You could never stress me out" "I'm pretty sure I could" he laughed, before she lead him over to her pride and joy. "This is your niece. Serena, this is your Uncle Will. You're going to have to sort yourself out, because you're her role model now" "She's so beautiful, T. I'm so proud of you" he said, taking the baby from his mother and holding Serena close to his chest, which she snuggled up against. "But Nate's her role model, not me" "Trust me, she'll go off Nate and I as soon as she can talk" Tiffany said, glancing at her mother, remembering their past "But she'll never hate her uncle" "Where is Nate?" Will asked, tickling his niece's cheeks. "He's got an exam tomorrow so we let him stay at school. Will, I'm so happy to see you again. Tomorrow, we'll have to sit down and sort this whole mess out; there has to be some kind of hole in their argument" "Thanks, but it's a bit of a lost cause. The judge will always empathise with the woman for some reason" "They'll empathise with a woman, yes. If I plead your case then I'm pretty sure they'll empathise with you too" Tiffany said, pondering her method already.
Love You Too: PART 107 • Opuss № I