The poosplosion, where Liv totally fudged her Huggies to put it nicely, would have had me panicking if I’d been on my own with her. I’d have been cutting myself out of my clothes and trying to find a way to get her out of hers, too, without leaving big brown smears all over the floor. Still, I’d stayed calm and had gotten on top of that shit – no pun intended.
There comes a point in life where we need our control back, especially after three years of not having any because of someone else. I now had mine back and today had proved it.
I was also tired of holding back my feelings for Ellis, so I was going to take control of that, too. Right now.Chapter 11Ellis
Nothing could have prepared me for seeing Jose standing in a bra in her room. I had a high maintenance sister, so I got that women were sensitive about parts of their bodies – hell, men were, too. I’d done enough tattoos based on stories of strength, covering up scars because they were affecting the person’s view of themselves, and tattoos that covered areas people felt uncomfortable with. Hiding these with a design that distracted attention away from the problem area meant that the person was more able to accept them and not be held back by them. Sometimes tattoos were down to psychology, not just art, and I loved being able to do that for people. Obviously, there were some cruel assholes in the world who would pick up on it, though, so covering them up provided a shield against those people, too. That said, a lot of it was in the sufferer’s mind, and any person worth their salt wouldn’t be bothered by them if they saw the problem on that person. Jose thinking there was something wrong with her post pregnancy body was a good example of this – it was something to her, but not to me. I’d met Jose when she was pregnant, and I’d seen her as the bump grew. I’d also seen her just after she’d had Liv, and I saw her now. Those were the keywords when it came to Jose – I saw her. I didn’t want someone who was an image of what we considered perfection, I wanted Jose as she was, and in my mind and opinion, she was perfection. She had a heart that would melt icebergs, and I wasn’t being cheesy when I said that. She hadn’t known Tabby until a year ago, and going by the studies and forums that I’d read online over the last seven months, most people would be hesitant, distrustful, and resentful finding out they had a sibling who’d lived a different life to the one they had. Both women had been the opposite, because they’d found someone they were related to when it had always just been them, and they’d opened their hearts to create the relationship they had today. Jose also had a personality that made you wish the world was more like her – she was strong, she was classy, she was loving, she was level-headed, she was mature, and she enjoyed life to the fullest. She was also beautiful and smart, two things that hit you about her immediately. It might sound biased, but it really wasn’t – her strongest traits were the ones that made someone beautiful, and she really was.
And she’d stood up and kept her calm and dignity tonight, putting the world to rights for her and Liv. I still wasn’t happy about not being able to fight that war for her, but I saw why Tabby had told me not to – Jose had needed to do that for herself. Next time, though, I wasn’t letting her fight that war alone, and I doubted Tabby would be either.
Just then, she walked into the living room smiling.
“She’s out for the count,” she sighed, sitting down next to me on the couch. “I also put an extra blanket under her just in case she has anymore poosplosions.”
I did a cross between a chuckle and a wince on that one. Seeing it happen to a baby was one thing, having it all down yourself and cleaning it off your floor was another. “Do you think it happened because she’s not well?”
That possibility had hit me as I cleaned my floor and got rid of the bag with the crime on it, but the worry that I’d had this morning hadn’t accompanied it. This morning, I’d been scared out of my mind that she had meningitis or something really bad, and sure it had taken two doctors and Rose to convince me otherwise, but I was calmer about it now. The blowout could have catapulted me straight back into crazy-ville, but instead I’d accepted that her body was probably out of sorts and this was part of it. “More than likely it is,” Jose shrugged. “Her body’s already feeling crappy, so it’s not too hard to assume it’s related. She’s also cutting teeth just now, and they warn you that can upset their stomach’s, too.”