Stay, For Me

Thirteen

"It's okay Eddie," I replied, "you don't have to apologize for how you were feeling last night. You've been under a lot of stress lately and I can't imagine how hard it must've been to find out what happened to your friends from the army. Besides, you're the one who helped stop my panic attack and made me feel better. I love you Edmundo Diaz."

"I love you too Buck," Eddie whispered, "I will always be here to help you when you need it."

"Well I do need your help," I stated, "I wanna go get my stuff. Alicia gave me until the 31st which is next Thursday. I don't really wanna leave it 'til the last minute."

"Alright let's go," Eddie responded, "Chris is at school until three, so we've got all day. Might as well take both vehicles that way we can get all your stuff in one trip."

"That's a good idea," I remarked.

The two of us headed over to the apartment and started loading the boxes of my stuff into the vehicles. Eddie had helped me pack the rest of the stuff that hadn't been put into boxes yet. A couple hours later, all my stuff had been cleared out of the apartment. I made sure to thoroughly clean the apartment so that Alicia didn't have to hire someone to do it. Once the apartment was clean, Eddie and I walked down to Alicia's office to let her know. 

I knocked on the door and waited patiently for Alicia to answer. A few minutes later Alicia opened the door and greeted us.

"Good afternoon Buck," Alicia greeted, "and you must be Eddie, I'm Alicia Garrison, Buck's landlady and manger of this building."

"Eddie Diaz ma'am," Eddie said with a little bit of formality, "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise Mr. Diaz," Alicia stated, "my apologies for keeping you gentlemen waiting, I was on a very important call with a business partner."

"That's quite alright," I responded.

"What can I help you gentlemen with on this fine afternoon?" questioned Alicia.

"I'm bringing back the keys to the apartment and letting you know that my stuff has been cleared out." I stated, "We also cleaned the apartment top to bottom so you won't have to bring someone in to do it for you." 

"Alright thank you very much gentlemen," Alicia replied, "let's go take a final walk around up there and then I'll write the check to return your security deposit and then you'll be free to go."

I handed Alicia the keys as she stood up, we followed her up to the apartment. She did a quick walk through and nodded approvingly. She finished her walkthrough and pulled out the black leather bound cheque book and placed it on the counter before she wrote a cheque for $5,000. She carefully removed the cheque from the book and handed it to me. I took the cheque and folded it before putting it in my pocket. Eddie and I left the apartment and headed home to start unloading my stuff. On the way home we stopped at the bank and I deposited the cheque into my account. We got home and brought all the boxes inside, I immediately started unpacking stuff. 

"Babe I'm going to get Chris from school," Eddie said as he wrapped his arms around me.

"Alright luv," I replied, "drive safe I'll see you later. I love you babe."

"I love you too mi amor," Eddie whispered gently.

Eddie left and I went back to unpacking. A little while later the front door opened and I could hear Eddie and Chris shuffling around in the hallway. I had gotten a lot of stuff unpacked but there was still a lot to unpack. Eddie came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my torso as I kept removing stuff from boxes and putting it away. After a couple minutes Eddie released me and began helping me unpack my boxes. Most of my stuff ended up mixed in with Eddie's stuff, which actually made me happy because it meant that our lives were truly intertwined to one another now. It only took a few hours to get all of my stuff unpacked, a process made significantly easier by Eddie and Chris helping me to get stuff unpacked. Eddie broke down the boxes and drove them to the recycling plant, before picking up pizza on the way home. The three of us sat and ate the pizza, it was almost as if the previous night didn't happen. After dinner, Eddie pulled up Prime Video on the TV and pressed play on the latest episode of Merlin. We sat on the couch and watched a few episodes with Chris. At the end of the fourth episode of Merlin that we watched, Chris got up and went down the hall to get ready for bed. He called out saying he was ready for bed and Eddie and I went to his room and tucked him in. Once Chris was all tucked in Eddie and I went back to the living room and began watching Yellowstone.