Overlap

Eponine

🌟December 2022✨

We were walking down the Royal Mile together when he said it. Me, Aaron and Gracie, the three of us wandering slowly, meandering down the hill. Occasionally we would stop to look in the window of one of the shops but Aaron had been to Edinburgh so many times before, he just kept telling me what was and wasn't worth my attention.

I didn't mind that, it was useful enough, especially with a little one who wouldn't stay settled.

She was not long turned 2 years old and for the first time she was really excited for Christmas. Probably because she was old enough now to understand it a little bit more. I'd written a little list for Santa with her, hand over hand, not that there'd been much the delighted little girl had actually wanted; snow, ice cream to see "Dopey and Cheeky," her affectionate names for Johnny and Van, and her very own Winnie Pooh. So that was one tangable thing I could get for her and wrap up to put under the tree, one thing which would need to wait for her in the freezer, and two things I just couldn't promise her. Snow? Hopefully, if we were lucky? And a visit from her uncle Johnny, and from Van? We were supposed to be staying with Aaron's family that year and though I'd tried to tell her that, tried not to dissapoint her too much, tried to explain that Santa couldn't just wrap people up and put them under the tree for her, she still had her heart set on seeing them.
So I wasn't really sure what I was going to do there. By the end of the day though that problem would have been solved, not that it would feel much like a solution for me. More like another wall going up in both our faces, another rejection, another thing to feel shit about. The world trying to make me regret her.

We stopped in the window of another cafe, there were pastries in the window and Grace pointed, started babbling away, looking to both of us with hopeful eyes which made me smile affectionately and Aaron shake his head with a soft chuckle.

"We can't go into every cafe Grace," he said with a smirk, looking at me, rolling his eyes.

I smiled along trying to ignore the creeping feeling I'd been getting often over the last few weeks. It had only been a little niggle at first, easy to dismiss as one of my usual paranoias. I'd found me and Grace came up against far more barriers, more hostility than I'd expected in the modern day. A lot of people didn't seem to trust us without her father around, a lot of people suspicious not just of me but of her, despite her only being an innocent, 2 years old and already being rejected by society over and over.

So I had a tendency to expect that rejection of us, even in places I knew we wouldn't find it.

Like Aaron, he wouldn't still be with me after all this time if he really had a problem with Gracie and I. If he really judged me for having a child and raising her without a father. He'd been around long enough that little Grace looked to him as her Daddy, it was him who had been honourably referred to as Da with big wide eyes and an affectionate pat on the face when he was holding her.

She'd learnt that word pretty late for obvious reasons but it was him she'd chosen to name with that badge only a week before.

But he hadn't seemed as happy as I thought he should. He had smiled, Id seen him smile, but it had been almost awkward and he hadn't praised her or shown her any acknowledgment until I'd taken the lead.

At first I'd thought perhaps he was waiting for my permission to take up that mantle but now I was beginning to question it. I kept convincing myself I'd seen him grimace or flinch when she'd called him that.

It hadn't happened again yet but I found the longer it took the more on edge I grew, convincing myself that it would happen again and that my little angel would end up being rejected all over again.

"Cake!" giggled the little girl, her hand pointing to the window as I turned away sighing.

"Cmon Gracie," I smirked kissing her cheek as I lead her away following Aaron up the street.