The Relationship Status: The Big Day (2)

Stephanie

I had a great time! Honestly, I forgot how fun it was to go trick-or-treating and dressing up all goofy-like! And it was even better to have the whole group together!

In other news, Thanksgiving is coming up soon! For some reason, I always pictured Donnie cutting the turkey and Jordan passes the mashed potatoes, but Donnie jerks them from Jordan, so his face gets into the mashed potatoes! I'll have to check the plans with him. But it is a little early. Maybe we should all have a group meeting. Not to mention Christmas is gonna come around the corner, too! I love winter. And fall. They're just perfects seasons to spend time with your significant other!

You know what? I bet Jennifer could help with the plans. I leave my apartment and start heading down the hall to Jenn's place. As I walk, I feel fast thudding vibrations from the floor. It's gotta be the heater. I thought, and then I knocked on Jenn's door.

"Stephanie!" I hear someone call. I turn my head and see that it's Donnie sprinting towards me with his usual outfit, but with a backwards hat on his head and his beat up pair of Adidas.

I try to get out, "Donnie-?"

But then Jennifer answers the door. "Stephanie! What a lovely surprise! What's up? Oh. Hey, Donnie." She rolls her eyes at him.

"Stephanie, I really need to talk to you!" Donnie made it sound like he was in a hurry.

"Can't this wait?" I say, "I was just about to talk to Jennifer about Thanksgiving plans."

"That's just what I wanted to talk to you about," he says too quickly.

"Alright, then you can join us."

"Stephanie, I seriously need to talk to you. In private." He looks at Jennifer (she looked annoyed.) and then looked at me.

"Hey, Jenn, could you give us a minute? If you don't mind." I ask.

Jennifer let us go ahead.

"Great! Thanks, Jenn!" Donnie says, and he takes my hand and races us down the other end of the hall to the elevator.

I get concerned, "Uh, Donnie? Where are we going?"

Donnie talks to me while he pushes the "up" button, "Steph, this is kinda an emergency type thing. So, we gotta go to the roof."

"It's that bad?" I say, "Donnie, whatever I did, you know I didn't mean-"

"It's not you." He looks down, and then we get into the elevator with dead silence. That was new.

Once we reached the top, we race over to where the edge was where we'd let our feet dangle over and we'd talk. "My grandmother's in the hospital." He spits out.

I look at him sympathetically but kinda sarcastic, "I'm sorry, Donnie. I truly am, but why did we have to go all the way up to the roof for this?"

"Because," he looks out at the streets, "my mom wants me back at her place in Maine for Thanksgiving so I could spend time with the fam and see my grandma one last time. Just in case."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I really, really wanted to be with you guys for Thanksgiving. I really did. But I don't think I have a choice this year... I don't even know why they felt like moving all the way Maine as soon as I moved out..." He looks down sadly. He looked so cute when he was sad that I wanted him to smile, if that makes sense. I start to rub his back and he leans on my shoulder and sighs.

Then he looks up at me with his cute, hazel eyes, "What am I gonna do, Steph?"

"I'll see what I can do... In the meantime, we'll just have a fun time until you have to go. Right?"

"Right..." Is all he said and then he looked back out into the streets of Boston, "I love you, you know that?

"Of course." I kiss him and we start to head back inside.

Jenn was standing right next to the elevator when I came out. We jumped when we saw her face three inches from the elevator, "Anything you wanna tell me?" She said with her arms crossed.