to all the glowing eyes ✎ joshler

december 23 pt. 2

"do you want milk and sugar with that?" jenna asks, her gaze barely going over her shoulder to where josh is making breakfast sandwiches on the stove. she has a coffee pot on her hand, half of it gone from filling two cups with it. she's not one to take coffee right after she wakes up but a two shift day at work needs every last ounce of energy she can humanly give.

"yeah. two sugars and a bit of milk, please and thank you," the suddenly turned chef josh replies. he takes a mental note to remember the recipe since the sandwiches smell amazing and probably taste amazing too.

it's the dawn of the last day. not dawn since it's 8:37 am, but you get the idea. brendon and tyler are still asleep, somehow not being woken up by the kitchen sounds. it's a weird thing to just see jenna and josh hanging out alone. they're not exactly a compatible paring. still, food brings people together.

"so, did you and tyler talk things out?" she asks while setting the cups on the small dining table.

"i guess. we yelled at each other for a bit, but made peace at the end. it's going to hurt like hell to leave him."

jenna sighs and chooses to be a good person for this situation. she's been hostile towards the poor kid in the past, now it seems foolish of her to behave that way. "i think it's for the best, josh. you two need time apart to grow and discover yourselves."

with a simple scoff, josh shakes his head and turns off the stove. he puts the sandwiches on the plates and joins jenna on the dining table. "he's changes enough already. i can't imagine how much he'll change in the time it takes for us to find each other again."

"not to burst your bubble but you can't be sure if you'll meet each other again. that's not important, anyway, you can't speak for the way he is, y'know? when i met him, he only had 50 bucks for food, water and shelter, with nothing but two backpacks full of his things. i don't even know where he'd been sleeping before then, probably the bus station. he had to harden up to survive. i'm not saying this because i'm his friend, it's because people change to adapt to the challenges they face. he was all alone in the world for the first time. you probably would've done the same."

he takes bites out of his sandwich while jenna drinks her coffee. "he still could be the tyler i met, with the change and all. what about his parents, by the way? are you gonna tell me that changed him too?"

"if you're so curious, they know he's here. they even offered me guardianship of him a few weeks ago."

"what?"

the burden of knowing the truth has been a heavy weight on her shoulders. tyler doesn't know more than he's told by the lawyer that knocked at their doorstep less than a month ago. "they're still his parents, but they want me to have guardianship of him. i'll take care of him and be his legal guardian. it's not like having full custody of him, but it's close. i'll try to ask for custody if things go south. they don't want anything to do with him anymore though. they're even sending the rest of his things over once the guardianship thing is official."

"oh... does he know?"

she shakes her head. it hurts not being able to tell tyler the full story, even if he probably knows deep down already. "he knows i'll be his guardian, but not the other thing. his parents are the ones organizing the whole thing, they notified us the week after he moved in with me."

the sandwich on josh's plate is gone. he ate it all in practically one bite. his attention now has only his untouched coffe in mind. "i still think he changed for the worse." he takes a sip of the hot drink, getting his tongue burnt of just enough for it to be annoying.

"change isn't always for the best."

as much as he hates to admit it, jenna's right. he has no right to demand tyler to still be that scared boy he met. nevertheless, something deep within him wishes he still was.