Blue Plaid

Acceptance

In which Tyson comes to terms with his feelings.

//

Unemployment was horrible. I don't why I was surprised by this fact, but I was. Maybe I thought it would be like a vacation; that I'd get to spend my days playing Fifa and hanging out with Cooper while I figured out my next move. But the problem was that my next move wasn't easy to figure out as I hoped it would be.

Of course, I knew that I wanted to cook and at some point, my dream had always been to open my own restaurant, but at the present time, I didn't have nearly enough funds to make that dream come true. In the meantime, I needed to find a job that would pay the bills, because although Stella's recent sponsorship bonus from SXB was sufficient for us to live on, I hated not being able to pull my weight.

On the plus side, not having somewhere to go for a night shift meant that I got to spend more time with Cooper and Stella. And I really did mean to include Stella in that thought process because the truth was, the more time I spent with her, the more time I realized that I was developing the world's most massive crush.

Stella was beautiful, a fact everyone, including herself, knew, but she was also vivacious and loyal and witty and she challenged me in a way that kind of made me want to be a better person, a discovery I found equally exhilarating and terrifying.

Which was why I didn't hesitate to agree when she asked whether we could go back to her family home in Texas for thanksgiving.

It was a pretty last minute decision because Cooper got the sniffles and we weren't sure whether he would be over it in time for us to fly down there, but when we woke up two days before Thanksgiving to find him happy as a clam with no signs of sneezing, we booked our plane tickets right away. And that's how I found myself walking through the Dallas airport the morning of a holiday that I had never grown up celebrating.

Stella pushed Cooper in his stroller through the crowded airport, the strap of his bag slung over one of the handles, as I carried my duffel bag full of clothes on one shoulder and hers on the other and we shuffled along on a mission to find her father.

"Can you slow down a little?" I called out from where I was struggling to keep up behind her, panting as I adjusted the duffel bag straps on my shoulders.

"Sorry," she laughed, pausing to allow me to catch up and slowing her pace once we started moving again. "I guess I'm just excited to see my family. It's been a while since I've been home."

I could relate. I hadn't been back to Australia in a while, partly because I hadn't been able to afford it and partly because I hadn't had the time off from work. Now that the job thing was no longer an issue, all I needed to do was scrape together the money to go back and see my family. I texted my mother pretty much every day, but nothing really beat seeing her in person.

"How long?" I asked, reaching up to adjust the olive green beanie pulled over my hair.

Stella's eyebrows lifted just slightly in surprise, probably because we never really talked about our families, or anything incredibly personal besides work. It was a fact that I figured I should work on if I wanted my little crush to blossom into anything more. I hadn't yet admitted it to Stella, but there weren't many times a day when I wasn't thinking about kissing her, but I didn't want to make any sort of move on her without knowing that it was something she'd be cool with, so I was waiting for our relationship to go from its current state of lukewarm to full on burning hot. The fact that over the course of the past few months, we'd already progressed from arctic level coldness to this current state was huge and I was eager for it to continue.

"Almost a year," she admitted, turning her gaze forward, her eyes searching through the upcoming glass doors for any sign of her father. "I've missed them."