Meant for Me | ✔️

17) in the words

Sunday, 26th of August.

A D D I E

"Addie?"

"Addie?"

"Ads?"

I blinked and peered up at Zac who was standing beside the armchair that I was curled up in. Willa and I had come into the sun room to read for a little while but when I looked over at the sofa, worried that I'd zoned out for too long and she'd left, I saw that she was asleep, her book sat open on the floor beside her.

"Oh," I closed my own book and whispered. "That's so sweet. She must be exhausted."

"She's had a long afternoon. You look like you were asleep with your eyes open. You wanna head upstairs and have a snooze?"

I did feel tired but that wasn't the reason that I was having trouble remaining in the present. "No, no. I'm fine. Just day dreaming."

He held out his hand and I only hesitated for a moment before I took it and let him pull me up out of the seat. I hadn't even noticed that Keith was on the other side of the room with a tall glass of beer. As usual, he was staring out of the window.

"You alright, pops?" Zac whisper shouted.

He waved over his shoulder. "I'll keep an eye on her."

Zac wore a soft smile even though his dad wasn't looking at us and he kept his fingers laced with mine as we climbed the stairs. We passed my bedroom and carried on down the hall until we reached his. His room was simple. A nice pale blue with framed photos of his parents and canvas' with old cars printed on them. His bed was in the middle of the room and the sun was set enough that it wasn't sweltering and heating up the bed.

He climbed onto it and pulled me down with him, shuffling us both until my head was on his chest and his arm was wound around my shoulder. "What are we doing?" I questioned.

"Just relaxin'. That alright?"

"Yes. I suppose."

"So relax, I can feel the tension in your shoulders."

What I'd learned this afternoon did have me wound up so much that my jaw hurt from clenching it so hard. There was a chance that I was wrong. Perhaps Willa wasn't the baby girl that I'd given up for adoption when I was fifteen. America is huge. There were probably a lot of little girls given up for adoption on the 6th of May, 2009.

Still, I had a feeling. Call it a gut feeling. It was her.

Not to mention the similarities. When I'd first arrived, I thought that she reminded me of Margo. But perhaps it was a subconscious deflection, not wanting to admit that she had the same nose, skin tone and hair as me. But there were smaller things. The reading, which admittedly wasn't a rare trait to have, it just happened to work in this argument. She also did this thing when she was off in thought, her tongue would tap the top of her lip. Margo used to tell me if I did that, I'd get chapped lips.

"You wanna talk about it?" Zac offered, his breath warm on the top of my head. His hand rubbed up and down my arm and as wound up as I was, he provided a sense of comfort.

But I couldn't talk about it. How was I meant to bring something like that up? How was I meant to confess that there was a good chance I gave birth to Willa and it was a pure coincidence that I'd ended up back in her life?

I shook my head and snuggled in closer to him. "Just the usual."

"You think about her a lot, huh?" He murmured. "I notice that you zone out quite a bit."