The confession, if you could really call it that, was simple. Rae was worried, for a second, that she'd taken it out of context, and that she'd made a fool of herself by assuming that he'd meant it in the same way she had. Maybe she shouldn't have just come out and said it like that. Maybe she should have let things play out, let the conversation continue on a normal pace. Maybe she was just so ready to explode from the thought that maybe he loved her too that she'd fooled herself.
She'd blame the fact that she'd just stumbled up the stairs on the fact that her mind was swimming in a thousand different directions because of this, not the fact that she hadn't gotten a decent night's sleep in almost a week now.
As she finished the trek up the staircase, with her hand firmly on the railing to keep from tripping again, she pulled in a deep breath and headed down the familiar hallway to her boyfriend's room. She looked down at her son as he leaned against her in his strap-carrier, envious of the fact that he didn't have a care in the world. Sometimes she wished she could be that simple-minded. Instead, though, she was definitely far from worry-free.
After taking a second to adjust the carrier in her hands, she started the walk down the hall to Topher's room. There was only so much time she could take getting there, so much time before she had to face the inevitable.
Maybe you're panicking for nothing, she thought. Maybe, for once, something in her life would go the way she wanted it to. She looked down at EJ. "What do you think?" she asked him as he looked up at her, brown eyes wide and smiling. "You think mommy's panicking for nothing?" She was sure, if that expression was actually translated into words, it'd say only one way to find out, and she chuckled and kissed the top of his head. "I know. Gotta stop being a wuss, right?" she asked him as she looked at the door to his room, a few doors down.
Standing up straight, she walked toward the door to Topher's room and knocked on the door. Honestly, it didn't occur to her until then, how odd it was to be knocking on the door. She hadn't done it before, and starting now felt really, really strange, but it was too late to take it back now. "Mommy's overreacting, isn't she?" she muttered to her son. Besides, Topher shouldn't even be getting up to answer the door. What sense did that make?
Rae pulled in a deep breath as she reached for the handle and opened the door, and was surprised to already see Topher standing in the middle of the room. She blinked and looked up at him. "You're out of bed..." she pointed out arbitrarily.