Single But Engaged ✔️

27: You stare at me when I'm asleep?

“Aiden, guess what just happened?”

“You’ve finally realized that you have a weird obsession with doing the laundry?”

“No, not that,” I answered blithely. “And hey, I do not have an obsession with doing the laundry.” 

At that, he stopped from clearing out the couch, to throw me a pointed look. “Really? You’re the most excited whenever we have to go to the laundromat.”

“No, I’m not.” But in the face of his cocked brow, I found myself caving in. “Fine. But it’s not like it’s weird or anything. I just think it’s really amazing to be able to spend so much time soaking in the scent of fabric softener and the freshness of clean clothes,” I explained, feeling myself smile just at the thought of it. “You get what I mean, right?”

“Yes, as I’m a midwife from the 1940’s, I completely understand,” he quipped, leaving me chuckling despite myself.

“You’re the worst, you know that?” 

But of course, that just made him chuckle. Although, a moment later, he was asking, “so, what really happened?” 

“Right,” I started, finally remembering what I’d wanted to say earlier. “Aunt Tilly just sent me a friend request.”

“Aunt Tilly?” He echoed, not bothering to hide the unadulterated horror in his voice. 

“Yeah, I just saw it now.”

“And you accepted?”

“Yeah,” I answered – albeit a little cautiously, a sudden sense of dread overcoming me. And it definitely didn’t help that Aiden was now staring at me as though I’d just told him I was about to give up both of my kidneys. 

Hence, I couldn’t keep from asking, “wait, should I not have? I just thought it’d be even more weird if I didn’t accept. Oh my god, do you think she’s going to start messaging me all the time?” 

Now that I thought about it, she’d seemed pretty keen on the whole ‘spend time together’ thing that night at the party. 

Dang it, had I dug my own grave without realizing it? 

While my thoughts were running in a panicked mess, Aiden was now saying, “no, I’m pretty sure she won’t.”

Well, phew. 

However, my relief was short-lived. “She’d rather settle for reposting your posts, or even worse, making posts about you herself, and then of course, tagging you for everyone to see.” 

“Seriously?” I questioned. If I felt a sense of dread before, then now, I was damn terrified. “But how come I’ve never seen any posts about you.” 

“Because she doesn’t know my account – or at least, the current one.”

“You have another account?”

“Yeah. Emma and I had decided to make new ones when she started posting baby pictures of us,” he recounted, visibly shivering at the memory.

A laugh burst through my lips at that. “That's so embarrassing.” 

“You think that’s embarrassing? She posted them side by side with our then recent pictures. One time, she posted a picture of me from when I was six months old where I had my mouth hanging open, and then right next to it, was a recent picture she took of me smiling. 

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she captioned it as: ‘from one tooth to full teeth. I couldn’t be more proud of you, nephew.’ And then lots of heart emojis. I mean, who does that?”