Forever and Always

Chapter 51 - Forever Young

I woke to my alarm on Friday morning, unhappy with the oncoming school day barreling towards me. I slammed the off button with an annoyed groan, crawling out of bed and throwing on the first pair of clothes that I could find. I trudged downstairs, too tired to do any surfing, so I pulled out my phone and called Levi, knowing he would be awake.

He picked up almost as soon as I hit the call button. "Good morning, Baby. You're up early, huh?" He asked gently, yawning softly as he spoke. "I'm being a bad kid and skipping my eight o'clock," he chuckled.

"Oh yeah? How come?" I asked him, sitting on the couch in the living room, propping my feet up onto the coffee table.

"Honestly?" He asked. "I missed you. And I knew I wouldn't be able to focus on my fucking classwork with you pestering my fucking brain."

"Seriously?"

"Is it a crime to miss my fiancee?" Levi scoffed. "How's Poppy adjusting?" he asked. I shrugged, knowing he couldn't see me.

"She's doing well. She loves Max. You got my pictures last night, right?"

"Yeah. The one of you and Poppy on the pier is my background."

"Really? I asked, shocked that he had changed his background for the first time in the time I had known him.

"Yeah. It was time for a change of scenery. And I miss you both more than anything. So it's nice to see your faces."

"Aww, well, that's super sweet of you, Levi."

"Eren, have I ever told you how enchanting your eyes are?"

"I- uh-" I stammered, taken aback by his blatant flattery. "Well-"

"Well I'm about to tell you again," he snapped. "They always distract me if I look at them for too long, hence the obnoxious pink cast on my arm. They keep me up at night. You're haunting."

"Levi," I muttered, rubbing my eyes. "You can't just go around saying stuff like that."

"Why not? You're the first person to make me realize I'm in love. I should be writing sonnets for you."

"Please don't."

"Okay, good. If you wanted me to write you a fucking sonnet, I would probably have thrown up in my poor trashcan again. One of these days, it's gonna get sick of me puking in it all the time, ya know. I'm gonna have to find a new trashcan," he chuckled. "It's gonna be bad."

"Whatever," I snorted. "I love you, silly."

"I love you, too," he yawned.

"You're tired. Have you been sleeping okay? You slept okay the other night, right?"

"I mean, I woke up a couple of times, but yeah. It was a normal night. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night."

"Why didn't you get much sleep?" I asked, furrowing my eyebrows.

"Bad dreams. I tried so hard to get some sleep, but every time I nodded off, it was the same bad dream."

"What was it about?"

"I don't wanna talk about it," he muttered.

"Levi, we are getting married. You need to start telling me this kind of stuff."

"No I don't, Eren. I could die without telling you about some shitty dream I had last night," Levi snapped, and I rolled my eyes.

"Fine. Don't tell me, but at least give me a reason why you won't tell me."

Levi was silent for a long time before I heard a loud sigh over the receiver. "I don't want you to think I'm a bad person. You wouldn't be incorrect, but you're the one person I wouldn't survive disappointing."

"Levi, you know that no matter what happens, I'm still madly in love with you. Right? You don't have enough faith in me."

"I have plenty of faith in you," he argued.

"Apparently not enough if you're afraid to even tell me about a bad dream you had," I snapped back at him. I saw what appeared to be a tiny head of thick black hair emerge from around the corner and shuffle to the kitchen. "Go talk to Farlan if you want somebody that you can tell everything, apparently." As soon as I said it, there was a wave of regret that went with it, but I couldn't back off now that I had made it that far.

"Eren, I-"

"No, it's fine. Whatever. I gotta go. Poppy's awake. Bye."

"I love you," he said softly before I hung up the phone. Instantly I felt bad for not saying it back, so I texted it to him and went to find where my daughter had wandered off to. She sat in front of the refrigerator, playing with some magnets that sat within her reach.

"Hi, Sweetie. What are you doing up so early?" I asked, getting down on my knees so that I could be at her eye level, pushing a smile onto my face, despite how awful I felt. She looked up at me with a smile.

"I'm not tired, Daddy. I couldn't find you. So I came here."

"Oh. Okay, then. Do you want some cereal? Or some yogurt? Are you hungry?" I asked, patting her soft hair. It was exactly like Levi's hair, in both color and texture. She had genuinely inherited nothing from her mother aside from the dimples. Even the color of her skin was more Levi's shade of translucent white as opposed to Isabel's ivory complexion.

"Yogurt!" She chirped. "Please," she added as an afterthought. "Can I please have fruit in it?"

I nodded and stood, slowly opening the refrigerator as to not hit my daughter with the door. I pulled out a tub of vanilla yogurt and blackberries. "Blackberries okay?"

"Yeah! Blackberries are my favorite!" She nodded. I lifted her into her high chair and scooped some yogurt into a small bowl for her, rinsing off and tossing in a few black berries.

"Honey or no honey?" I asked, putting the fruit and yogurt back into the fridge, eyeing the pantry, where I knew the honey was kept.

"Honey, please," she grinned. I did as I was told, squeezing the honey from the container into the yogurt.

"It's a bear!" she exclaimed, pointing at the bottle of honey.

"It is!" I smiled back. "Good job. What sound does the bear make?"

"Rrrrr," Poppy growled, curling her fingers into little claws and giving her best impression of a bear.

"Good job," I nodded, holding my hand out for a high five, stirring her yogurt up with my other hand. She slapped my hand as I passed her her breakfast. "There you go, Poppy!"

"Thanks, Dad," she said, her little dimples drilling into her rosy cheeks as she smiled at me.

"Do one thing for me, Poppy," I started, though I was more musing to myself than I was talking to her. "Never grow up. If you're anything like your parents as a teenager, I might die young of a brain aneurysm."

"Okay," she chirped. "What's that?"

"Where your brain kinda explodes a little bit."

"Ew! Daddy, that's scary!"

"Be a good girl, and my brain won't explode."

"Okay. I will."

"I love you, Sweet girl."

"I love you too, Daddy!" I knew I should call him back and apologize. He didn't deserve the harsh words, but I also was still trying to swallow my pride enough to admit I was wrong.