Blue Plaid

Flow

In which Tyson learns to go with the flow. 

I’d never begged for anything in my life. Even as a child, if my mother said no to more sweets after dinner, I assumed she had a good reason. But here I was, five seconds away from dropping to my knees in front of Dani as I asked her one more time to do me a huge favor.

“Please, Dan,” I pleaded, jutting out my bottom lip in hopes that it would make me look irresistibly cute. It always worked on Stella, but mostly because she found the face hilarious and the fact that I made her laugh put her in a good enough mood to do what I wanted. “I’ll owe you big.”

Dani rolled her eyes. As much as she appreciated the comment, I knew she didn’t want our friendship to be a series of transactions. “I’m not gonna say yes so I can get something from you. I just think this is a really bad idea.”

“You’re not giving yourself enough credit,” I insisted. “You’ll be fine. Please? We’d really appreciate it.”

She scrunched her entire face, shaking her head slightly. “I don’t know…”

Sighing dramatically, I shook my head as though I was disappointed. “I really didn’t want to have to do this…”

Her brow furrowed in confusion, but before she could speak, I was crouched down, looking to the side, and extending my arms to indicate that Cooper, who was currently standing in the hallway next to Stella, should make his way over. He toddled towards me, his short legs making him unable to move very fast, but he had the biggest grin ever on his face when I enveloped him in my arms and stood so we were on Dani’s level once more.

“That’s so unfair,” she groaned. “You can’t use a cute kid as a persuasion tactic.”

“We’re desperate,” I shrugged, bouncing Cooper at my hip. He giggled, his big blue eyes staring at Dani and wearing her down.

“For the record, I was against using Cooper’s cuteness,” Stella piped up as she stepped into Dani’s field of vision. “But Tyson’s right, we are desperate.”

“You can’t be that desperate,” Dani sighed, tangling her fingers into her hair and raking it back backwards. “Surely you can find someone else to babysit.”

“The thing is…” Stella spoke, “This is gonna be our first time leaving him with someone else and we want it to be someone we know and trust.”

“You trust me?” Dani’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You probably shouldn’t.”

“Cooper loves you,” Stella assured her and I nodded in confirmation.

Rolling her eyes, she blew out a breath. “Cooper’s a toddler. He loves everyone.”

“That’s not true,” I cut in. “He tried to bite the cashier at the store the other day.”

Stella snorted, just like she had the first time I told her about the incident. I shot her a glare and she pressed her lips together to hold in her laughter.

“The point,” Dani glared at me, “Is that you can find someone else.”

“But we want you,” I pouted, jutting out my bottom lip and looking at Cooper. He soon mimicked my expression, his blue eyes wide as he stared at Dani. “Don’t we Coop? Please?”

“Peeeas?” Cooper sputtered. I wasn’t sure he actually knew what was happening, but he’d only just started speaking two weeks ago and we cherished every word that came out of his mouth. Much to our relief, his first word was not a curse, but instead ‘foo’, for the edible items we were trying to sneak past his lips. Since then, he’d become quite good at copying shortened versions of the words we were saying.

Stella beamed at him proudly, her gaze shifting to Dani to see if she was equally affected.

Shutting her eyes briefly, Dani inhaled before she spoke. “Well, I can’t say no to that, can I?”

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” Stella blurted out, making sound like one word. Stepping forward, she hugged Dani tightly, even pressing a kiss to her cheek for good measure before she clapped her hands together in excitement. “I promise; it won’t be that bad. Cooper’s like the lowest maintenance kid ever. If you give him his toys, he can entertain himself for hours. But if he does start walking around, you probably want to follow him because he has a tendency to knock things over. And we’ll feed him before we go, so you won’t have to worry about that, but make sure he gets to bed before like 9, otherwise he’ll be cranky in the morning, and...”

“Stel,” I cut her off, seeing that Dani was looking overwhelmed by the influx of information. “We can probably give her all the details later.”

“Right,” Stella said, shooting Dani an apologetic glance. “It’ll be good.”

Nodding, Dani gulped, and I could tell that internally, she was freaking out just a little. “Yeah, it’ll be fun.”

“What do you think, Coop?” I asked the toddler sitting atop my bicep. “Are you excited to hang out with your Auntie Dani?”

He nodded rapidly, causing all of us to laugh, which in turn caused him to join in giggling in excitement.

“Alright, well we should probably head back up if we wanna feed him before we start getting ready,” Stella said. “Thanks again, Dani. You’re a lifesaver.”

“It’s all good,” she laughed, “Where are you guys going tonight?”

“Movie premiere,” Stella replied casually, as though informing Dani about the weather. “One of the head designers of the brand I model for did the wardrobe, so basically everyone that works for the company is invited. And I’m forcing Ty to come because I hate going to things like this alone.”

I was actually pretty nervous about the whole ordeal. It would be the first time Stella and I would willingly subject ourselves to paparazzi and I wasn’t sure how it would all play out. I actually had a lot of questions about what exactly she planned on telling people about me, but I hadn’t gotten up the nerve to spit them out.

“Right, so you can just come up around 7:30?” Stella asked.

Dani nodded, gulping. “Alright, I’ll be there.”

All of us, including Cooper, wave goodbye and walked back up to our flat. Because it was a public event where Stella was representing a brand, she had to be dressed to the nines, which meant a hairstylist and makeup artist came over to do her up before we left.

I watched it unfold, fascinated as I fed Cooper his dinner. They brought bags and boxes full of various hair instruments and a rainbow of makeup colors that came in tubes and compacts and little cylinders. From my vantage point at the kitchen table, I could see Stella’s reflection in the bathroom mirror, her eyes closed and lips pressed together as the makeup artist painted silver powder over her eyelids.

The hair stylist, who arrived before the makeup artist was finished, offered to do my hair while he waited. Cooper had already eaten and was in the middle of acting out a story with his stuffed animals on the floor of the living room, so I figured why not.

He sat me on a barstool in the kitchen so I could watch the toddler playing and rubbed some sort of wax from a round container onto his hands before weaving his fingers into my hair and combing it every which way. About ten minutes later, I was certain he’d actually ripped some of my hair from my head, but he took a step back and nodded, apparently satisfied with his work.

“It looks good?” I asked, a little skeptical.

He looked a little offended that I would question his work, but he nodded nonetheless. “Yes. She’ll be very impressed.”

My lips parted to ask who ‘she’ was, but I saw his eyes shift towards Stella’s ajar bedroom door and decided to keep quiet. We hadn’t really discussed the fact that the general public seemed to think we were a couple, but I figured if it didn’t bother Stella, I didn’t really care either. So I shrugged and thanked him as I slid out of the chair, shooting him an apologetic glance. “Do you mind watching Cooper for like five minutes while I change?”

It wouldn’t take me too long to get ready and I knew Stella would appreciate me being good to go once she emerged from her room.

The stylist nodded, looking a tad apprehensive as he gazed over at Cooper, but waved me along anyway. I rushed into my room to see that Stella had closed off my access to the bathroom, so after putting on the suit and shoes that Stella’s stylist had brought me a couple days ago, I checked my hair in the mirror above my dresser to see that the hair guy had loosely slicked it back from my forehead.

It made me look kinda sophisticated, so I gave myself a nod of approval and grabbed the black silk tie I was supposed to wear, slipping it around my neck before heading out to make sure Cooper was alright. Walking into the living room, I was surprised to see that the makeup artist had taken the hair stylist’s place as temporary babysitter. Apparently I took a lot longer to get dressed than I anticipated.

A knock on the door distracted me from completing the last part of my outfit and since Cooper and the makeup artist looked content with the stuffed animals, I went to answer the door.

Dani stepped inside as soon as I pulled it open, her eyes dropping to scan my body upwards, her lips pursing as she nodded. “Damn, Kingsley. You look hot.”

“Thanks,” I laughed my eyes drifting back to Cooper for a moment as I pushed the door shut. “He’s already fed, so pretty much all you have to do is keep him entertained until he falls asleep. Shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Alright,” Dani nodded, chewing on her bottom lip as she glanced at the toddler before scrunching her nose in disgust at my tie. “Do you need some help with that?”

Grinning sheepishly, I nodded. Seeing as I spent most of my professional life in a kitchen, I wasn’t particularly used to wearing ties and was therefore hopeless in all things fashionable.

Shaking her head in mock annoyance, she smirked as she tied the piece of silk to perfection, her tongue poking between her lips in concentration. Just as she finished, pushing the knot up to cover the very top button, her eyes flicked over my shoulder and her jaw dropped.

“You look gorgeous.”

Craning my neck over my shoulder, I looked to see what she was talking about and found myself staring because Stella did, in fact, look like a goddess. Hair twisted back into a simple up do, she wore a full sleeved lavender gown covered in beaded embroidery with the appearance of a plunging neckline which was actually covered with sheer fabric.

Dani’s hands slipped from my tie as I turned to face Stella fully, unable to close my slack jaw because I was having a little trouble breathing.

“W-wow,” I stuttered, cursing myself for becoming a bumbling i***t. It was always a risk to do so around Stella because there was a greater likelihood that she would call me out for it. “You look amazing.”

But apparently she appreciated the compliment, her cheeks even darkening a little in color as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks. You look pretty gorgeous yourself.”

I patted down my tie, my mouth suddenly dry as I tried to think of something else to say, but thankfully Dani broke the tension.

“Well, why don’t you beautiful people get going,” she said and I could tell she was doing her best not to smirk. “I think I can handle it from here.”

Nodding, Stella went to squat beside Cooper, not bothering to be delicate with her expensive looking dress and ruffling his hand and kissing his head to say goodbye. I followed suit and we were soon headed downstairs, where a large black SUV was waiting to whisk us away.

“This is pretty cool, isn’t it?” Stella asked once we were on course to the theater. “All of it is awesome, but riding in cars like this never gets old.”

I nodded as I stared at her in amazement, thinking it was incredible that she lived a life where limos were part of the job, but she never seemed to be jaded.

She reached over and squeezed my hand when the car came to a stop in front of the venue, shooting me a serious look. “The red carpet can be kinda stressful, so just…stay close to me ok?”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I nodded and thanked the driver when he pulled open the door to the backseat. As soon as we were visible, the screaming and camera flashes began.

Stella held tightly to my hand after I helped her from the car, squeezing my fingers as she began to walk down the red carpet. I knew the fact that we were making intimate contact would spark all sorts of rumors, but it wasn’t something we were unaccustomed to anyway. People automatically assumed that because we were raising a child together, we were also dating and Stella hadn’t really responded to the speculation. Seeing as I had no love life to speak of, I didn’t really mind.

Because Stella’s publicist didn’t want to risk her being asked potentially personal questions, she didn’t do an interview on the red carpet, instead opting to simply pose for pictures every few steps. I stood back and watched her expertly work the cameras when they wanted her alone and slipped my arm around her waist and held her close when they wanted us together. It was my first time at a red carpet event and I didn’t know exactly where to look, but Stella whispered softly in my ear, making jokes to force me to laugh and keeping my attention glued on her instead of the multitude of flashing lights.

When we finally stepped through the front doors, we both let out sighs of relief, looked at each other and laughed.

“Come on,” Stella grinned, pulling me towards the theater entrance. “Let’s go have a good time.”

The movie itself was a drama about the politics in the world of fashion and although the acting was spectacular and the storyline fascinating, I couldn’t pay too much attention because I too often found myself sneaking looks at Stella.

We never really talked about our relationship after the night we decided to be friends. Probably because neither one of us had the guts to admit that we might possibly like each other more than we let on. I wondered if tonight we would finally get to the point where we would have that conversation.

I didn’t bring it up when the movie ended, instead clapping along and making small talk with various executives at the small reception afterwards. At some point, Stella realized it was all becoming a bit overwhelming and said her goodbyes before directing me back to the car, where we both collapsed with exhaustion once inside.

“Not so bad, huh?” she asked me, reaching back to pull her hair from its up do, allowing it to fall in waves around her shoulders.

“It was fun,” I nodded, loosening my tie and sighing in relief when my top button popped open. “Not what I expected though.”

I hadn’t realized that so much of Stella’s work as the face of a brand involved charming basically everyone she met. She was spectacularly good at it and I’d watched with awe as she gushed and giggled and made people laugh. She had them eating out of the palm of her hand about five minutes into the conversation.

“I’m starving,” she groaned. “Do you mind if we stop and get some food?”

Being the worried parents we were, we’d been keeping in constant contact with Dani through text messages the entire night and had been informed that Cooper was fast asleep, Dani was watching a Friends marathon, and that we needed to chill out because everything was fine. So since our baby boy seemed to be in good hands, I nodded and we directed the driver to the nearest twenty-four-hour deli, instructing him to pick us up after an hour.

We slipped into opposite sides of a booth with creaky leather seats and placed our burger and shake orders with a waitress who shot us questioning looks, most likely wondering why we were so dressed up.

“Hey, so there’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, sipping quietly on her chocolate milkshake.

My eyebrows rose slightly as I twirled my straw around my strawberry version of the same drink. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to be the one to initiate the dreaded conversation. But my anticipation was shot down when she started down an entirely different path.

“What do you think Cooper should call us?” she said, hollowing out her cheeks to suck in more cool liquid. “Like, he’s just started to talk, so he hasn’t really given us names yet, but at some point, we are going to have to decide.”

She was right, of course. It wasn’t a decision that we’d had to think about until recently. But as Cooper’s speaking skills became more advanced, some sort of agreement had to be made.

“Maybe he can call us by our names,” I suggested, shrugging a little.

She tilted her head to the side, considering the comment, but shook her head after a moment. “I feel like that’s kind of weird. I get that we’re not biologically related, but we are his parents now and he should know that. I think we should just let him call us mom and dad.”

It was a completely logical response. After all, we were the only parents Cooper would ever really know, so raising him to call us by our names would probably be confusing as hell. Still, I didn’t know how I felt about completely erasing the memory of my best friend.

“But what about…”

“Georgia and Eric?” she finished my thought, nodding sadly when I whispered yes. “I thought about that too. But we can’t change what happened, Ty. Whether we like it or not, we are the ones that have to decide what’s best for Cooper. And I just feel like he needs to feel safe and secure and loved and having him treat us like we’re just friends that he lives with won’t do that for him.”

It was honestly one of the most mature things I’d ever heard Stella say, but I could tell she was being sincere by the fact that her gaze didn’t waver.

“Alright,” I agreed warily, wondering what it would feel like the first time he called me daddy. “You know, at some point, he’s going to figure out that we’re not his biological parents. It’s not like he really looks like either of us.”

“I know,” Stella sighed, smiling in thanks at the waitress as she set our plates of burgers in front of us. “And when it comes to that, we’ll tell him the truth.”

“And what do we tell him about us…”

“What do you mean?” she mumbled through bites of her burger, her full cheeks a sharp contrast to the elegance of her dress.

“I mean,” I continued, unsure of why I’d started this topic of conversation in the first place, but figured I might as well keep going. “We’re not married or even in any sort of romantic relationship. Don’t you think he’s going to wonder what we are to each other?”

Furrowing her brow, she shook her head. “No, the only people that care about that stuff are adults. As long as we’re not at each other’s throats twenty-four seven, Cooper’s going to be part of a fully functional family. Who cares about the labels?”

I supposed that was one way to look at it. Plus, it completely negated our need to have that dreaded conversation. As we had done with everything in the past, it seemed that Stella I would just be taking things as they came.