"Yeah I live for little moments like that..." -- Brad Paisley 'Little Moments'
6
Tessa sighed as she rolled over in bed and kicked something solid in the process. What was that? She opened her eyes a tad and saw a large lump laying across the foot of her bed. She poked it with her foot again, and it moved. When she saw the shaggy brown hair, she realized it was Teddy... He had never left last night. Oh crap.
"Ted!" She whisper shouted at him and nudged him with her foot again. "Ted, get up now!"
He rolled over and looked at her, "What?"
"Get up now!"
"Why? Its too early."
"I don't know, maybe because your wifey's going to be triple pissed when she finds out that ONE: you came over here and hung out with me last night and TWO: that you never left and slept here."
"What?" He groaned as he rolled over and fell off the end of the bed. "Ouch."
She couldn't help but let out a little laugh. "Come on, get up before everything really hits the fan."
His phone began to ring and he instantly froze, a look of fear on his face, to which she also couldn't help but laugh. He pulled it out of his pocket to answer it, "Hello?"
"Hey Ted. Um... Where are you?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I just got home and your car isn't here," Jessica said with a boatload of attitude.
"Well, I wanted some breakfast and I'm tired of cereal so I'm on my way to McDonald's," he lied.
"Its awfully quiet for you to be in your car," she didn't believe him.
"Well, here, you want to hear the radio?" He rolled his eyes as he practically dove across the room to Tessa's stereo and turned it up loud so Jessica could hear it.
"Ok, ok. Don't bust my eardrums," she said annoyingly. "I'll see you when you get home. Love you."
"You too," he sighed as he pocketed his phone and quickly left to head to McDonald's so his lie would at least look a little like the truth. "I'll talk to you later."
She nodded silently as she watched him leave. It made her wonder if maybe things were going to be like this from now on. Maybe he would get to spend time with her... Jessica just wouldn't know about it. And they weren't doing anything wrong, so what was so bad about Teddy spending time with Tessa - his friend?
- - - -
"So she called to check up on him?" Lauren asked as the three girls browsed through wedding magazine after wedding magazine to find ideas for Lauren's upcoming wedding.
"Well not really," Tessa told them, "He did kind of stay at my house last night. We just fell asleep watching TV and the next thing I know, I'm kicking him in the side so he'll get up and then she's calling him."
"So did she know that he didn't go home last night?" Hailey asked.
Tessa shook her head. "No, see, she was out all night with her friends Whitney and Rachel... He said she's been doing that a lot lately. And she got this job in Macon, where one of her friends works, and so she wants to move there so they can be close to her friends, so it started this huge argument."
"Girl you need your own reality show!" Lauren laughed as she tore out a page from her magazine and put it in a pile.
Tessa rolled her eyes, "Trust me, its not as fun as you think."
"SO!" Hailey said as she also tore a page out and laid it in the same pile as Lauren's. "I think that they will split within... Three months. Who wants to bet?"
"Three months? I don't even give them that long!" Lauren said. "What do you say Tessie?"
"I can't believe you guys are betting on one of your friends' relationships." Tessa laughed as she tore a page out and started her own pile. "I don't want any part of this."
"Oh come on!" Lauren laughed. "Its all in good fun. And why are you making your own pile over there? This is my wedding we're supposed to be planning."
"Hey, I just want to pretend like I have some hope of ever getting married," Tessa sighed as she found another picture she liked and ripped it out.
"I was just kidding," Lauren laughed, "Lighten up a little."
- - - -
Tessa laid out her blanket in the backyard in preparation for a little writing. She had so many ideas over the past few days, but little time to actually write them down. She had finally found names for all the characters, and a setting, and even a storyline.
After about an hour of writing, she felt like she had totally drained her brain of every idea she could come up with, so she closed the notebook, placing the pen inside, and then rolled onto her back to stare at the sky. The clouds passing by were big a puffy like cotton balls, and every now and then, a dark grey one would pass by, warning her that a storm would be coming soon.
"Watcha doin'?" Teddy's voice came from the other side of the fence, in Marshall's backyard.
"Staring at the clouds." She called back, "What are you doing?"
"Escaping for a little while," he told her. "Jessica just left with Rachel for Macon. She'll be gone the rest of the week so I'm free to do what I want."
He had climbed over the short fence and was now sitting next to her, the slight breeze blowing his dark hair out of his eyes.
"You know, I never would have thought that you would have gotten with someone like her." She told him. "You always seemed to have more of a free spirit."
"I guess we all do things we think we want sometimes... And we don't realize that its not what we want until we've already done it." He sighed as he laid down next to her to look up at the sky as well. "Do you have any regrets?"
"No regrets." She said. "I think everything is supposed to happen for a reason. No regrets."
"Not even the time you wore that tube top and performed on stage?"
She poked his side playfully, "I can't believe they let you see that! I'm burning that tape."
"No, its good. Really," he said. "If you ignore the huge fashion mistakes you and Marshall made."
She poked him again and they both laughed together for a bit before falling into a comfortable silence as they watched the clouds move in at a rather fast pace.
Tessa wondered what the two of them looked like as they laid out there together. She wondered if someone would think they were together or if they looked like they were just two friends enjoying the late afternoon sky in the beginning of August. Regardless of what it looked like, she loved little moments like this.
"This sucks." She said, not realizing she was thinking out loud.
"What does?" He let out a little laugh at her sudden randomness.
"Ted... Why did you go through with it? After we kissed... After I showed up at your wedding... After how obviously miserable you've both been... Why?"
He shook his head and shrugged. "I've never thought about it. I just felt like it was the right thing to do... To go through with it."
"Why?"
"Because... She said she was pregnant." He rolled his eyes. "And I didn't believe it because it was just obvious that she wasn't. But I proposed anyway because I thought it was supposed to be that way... That maybe she was that one person for me..."
"Wait - she lied to you to get you to propose?"
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah."
"And you knew, but you still went along with it?"
He rolled his eyes and again and nodded his head, "Yeah. Lame."
"Teddy... Seriously... Where you drunk?"
"I wish I was," he laughed as he sat up. "I... Um... I have to go."
He was acting weird as he stood there in front of her, acting like he wasn't sure of what to say anymore. So he didn't say anything. He just walked back across the yard, climbed over the fence, but instead of going back inside Marshall's house, he went straight to his car.
After watching him leave, she packed up her things and made her way back to her own room, where she found that she was once again full of new ideas for her story... Thanks to the hour and a half of cloud gazing with Teddy.
