Red with Desire

One

One

Four Years Later

"The hem needs to be altered, it cuts off the defining line in your back" Amy mumbles as she stood behind me, staring at her dress, scrutinising every single thing.

This was a daily occurrence. Just going off this week, I have gone through this 4 times. But it's not like we have a choice. Amy and I had been working together for a while.

It only made sense that we work together and come out with a line of clothes that represented us both.

Only this time rather than doing fittings with models, Amy was fitting the dress on me.

" The dress isn't for me Ames," I said with a tired yawn. The days are just getting longer and longer and I'm finding it hard to keep up with all the jobs i need to do. Not forgetting that I have two growing boys at home.

"But it's for people like you, besides they all look up to you" She clarified, her tone light and airy to fight against my depressed mood. It was a constant battle between us both.

"Just hurry up so I can leave. The boys are waiting for me" I say with slight irritation as she continues to trace her dainty fingers down my back.

" I'm sure Nick can manage whilst your working" Amy retorts back. No intention to stop her work even with my sour mood. I am more than positive that she used to my aggressive mood changes and somehow she has managed to successfully work with me.

Nick has been a true partner in the last four years. He took great responsibility in becoming a father to the boys and I owe him a lot for all of the sacrifices he has made without even being asked.

Nick has given himself the impossible task of directing his own movie with James as his lead actor. James had found a miracle in his current girlfriend. She never seemed to stop working, planning these big-scale events.

But more than that she's been pushing James into a career he thought was unlikely to be something he wanted to pursue.

I had to rush this collection so that I had time to look after the boys since I knew that Nick's free time would last much longer. The thought of managing James in Nick's highly anticipated movie made me shiver.

Thankfully Amy packed up in less than an hour which left me with just over 20 minutes to get to the school to pick the boys up from their afterschool club.

As the boys grew up, both myself and Nick noticed that the boys weren't in love with sport. After James tried to get at least one of them into basketball because of their height.

Nick was the one that noticed them watching and following to a youtube channel of a group of choreographers. It was more apparent that they had an interest in dancing and we weren't going to let them think that they needed to hide that from us.

We paid for them to join a dance group session afterschool most days. They seemed to be making a lot of friends through it. It made me happy to see them do something they enjoyed so much.

I made it to the parking as quickly as I could. I noticed the boys saying goodbyes to their friends. Both myself and Nick decided to change the arrangement of Benny picking up the boys.

Nick noticed how all of their friends were getting picked up by their parents and saw how that affected the boys. Nick was always the best at picking up these things and mostly put me to shame.

" Hey boys" I said as they both slid into the backseat. They quickly closed the door and pulled on their seatbelts.

I narrowed my eyes at them as they sat back peacefully. Lucas was the first one to understand as he ripped off his seatbelt and leant forward to plant a kiss on my cheek.