𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒓 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 || baxter radic (discontinued)

21.

𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒂'𝒔 𝒑𝒐𝒗

Despite arriving at home and wanting to spend time with Joey and my parents, I also really just want to hide away in my room and not come out for a week. The travel day back has made me exhausted and all I want to do is sleep. Preferably next to Bax, but that's up to him on where he wants to sleep.

He puts his things in one of our guest bed rooms—the one closest to mine. But I'm not really sure what that means. I don't know if he wants to be separate and I've become too much or if he wants to hide his things from me so I don't continue to steal it all. Either way, I'm definitely in my head about it all.

"You're over thinking again." He pulls me into his chest. "And the look on your face is telling me it's about me. So spill."

I ramble at first, beating around my thoughts before I finally tell him how I'm feeling. He assures me that he'll spend as much time with me as humanly possible because after this trip there is no way of knowing what exactly is going to happen between us. We have no idea when we will get to see each other again. It was only fair that he make the most of the situation, just like we have for the past few weeks.

There's a knock on my door hours after Josh and I have napped and found comfort in being able to relax. It's way too early in the morning—no one should be up—but Joey is. "Come in Joe." I call out and it startles Josh. He's seemingly been mindlessly scrolling on his phone not paying attention to the world around him.

She runs in and jumps on the bed. "Am I going to get to spend time with my best friend without you attached to her?" I glare at her. Her jealousy was definitely showing, even though she pushed me to do this—enter this relationship.

"That's not very nice." I mumble as I sit up, peeling myself from Josh's grasp.

"He's stolen you from me for too long. I would like to catch up with you not through a phone screen." She narrows her eyes at me. Obviously somewhat annoyed for whatever reason she's curated in her mind.

"Stell it's okay." Josh runs his hand along my back. "Go have some girl time. I'll call my parents back home and let them know how everything is going here." He leans forward, kissing the back of my head, spending me off.

"Okay, he's a keeper." Joey nods her head at him as we walk out of my room.

"I heard that." He calls out. Joey send him some snarky remark back. I know that I will definitely have my hands full for the next few months but I guess I'm going to have to deal with it. I put myself in this situation.

I spend the new few hours just spending time with Joey, catching her up on everything and her telling me everything that's been going on. A phone call was never enough to give us our true feelings about it all. Being able to see her face and get her true feelings past a screen was everything I had been asking for.

Even though she was giving Josh a hard time, she really enjoyed that I was actually getting to share my time with someone. She's never seen me successfully be with someone without drama and pain. With Josh, the only worry was the goodbye. It would suck at first and eventually we would figure it out. And if we didn't then we would just end up like the rest. There is nothing wrong with a few good months of time together. Nothing about them was terrible and I would like to keep that memory always. I don't want the good times to be tainted. And I don't think they ever will be.

"You're going to come home with us after the trip right?" Joey asks after a long deep dive into Josh and I.

"Yeah. Don't worry Joe, you'll get undivided Stella time soon." I laugh trying to lighten the mood. "But for now if I don't get to sleep I'll never have a normal sleeping schedule."

"You never have had one Stell. That doesn't exist in your world. Even when you're filming you're barely ever sleeping and filming random hours of the day. You are, one of a kind." She ruffles the hair on top my head.

"It's been my life for as long as I can remember. I guess I'm just used to it." I shrug and I climb out of her bed and leave her to get sleep of her own.

When I return to my room, Josh is fast asleep. I don't want to wake him, but I really just want to sleep in my own bed. I carefully climb under the blankets, but he stirs and wakes before I'm settled in.

"Goodnight." He mumbles, burying his head into my back as his arm flops around me, pulling me tightly toward him.

"Goodnight." I chuckle and close my eyes, hoping that sleep in on the horizon.