I waited outside the car with Daisy in the baby stroller in front of me as Jonah locked his car. He then turned around and pocketed the keys, and then we were walking toward the town park.
The air was cold, and I was glad that I was wearing my coat, but the sky wasn't too cloudy and the sunshine was bright enough to make a nice day. A lot of people came to bask in what could possibly be the last ray of sunshine until spring came. Kids were playing mini soccer in the middle of the field, the adults preparing for a lunch picnic around, some others walking their dogs. Some couples were also hanging around with their young kids, and they smiled (albeit in a puzzled way) when they saw me and Jonah with Daisy, but I quickly shook my head mouthed, "Baby project," to them before they started to think that we were teenage parents, and I moved along without seeing their reaction.
"So," I started, glancing at Jonah who was stuffing his hands into his pockets, "what should we do today?"
He turned his head to me and shrugged. "I don't really know. Just thought we'd hang out a bit. What do you wanna do?"
"I have no idea," I said sheepishly. "Maybe we can just walk around and watch all these people until we find out what we should do?"
He cracked a small smile. It still amazed me to see the way his face lit up with his rare smiles. "Alright."
So we just walked in silence, breathing in the cold air and watching all the fun around us. At one point, Jonah offered to push the stroller for me. I let him take Daisy and the stroller, and it was my turn to stuff my hands into my coat pockets.
"How much of a trouble is she?" he suddenly asked, his nose turning up as he looked at Lily.
I groaned. "You have no idea. Her cries are even worse around midnight and no matter what you do, she won't stop crying."
"I can't just bury her under my pillows or something?"
I chuckled. "No, Jonah. She has everything logged. Neglect would give you a bad mark."
I took out my phone from my pocket and turned the video recorder on. Jonah immediately turned his face away when I aimed the camera at him, and I laughed.
"We're currently at the town park," I said to the camera. "It's pretty cold, but not too cold to have a nice day out. Baby's still 'sleeping' inside the stroller. Oh, and Daisy is the name we gave the fake baby girl."
Jonah pretended to gasp. "What do you mean fake?"
I laughed and shoved him in the shoulder. "Shut up, loser." Then I turned to the camera again, turning it around so it was shooting me. "Today is his first day of baby duty. I can't wait until he feels the torture that is a crying baby doll."
We stopped once we spotted an empty bench, and he immediately sat down. I gave him my phone, telling him to still aim it at me, and I turned to pick Daisy out of the stroller.
"Here's Daisy," I said to the camera, making sure that it captured the fake baby. "She may look like a cute little babyâif you're into creepy baby dollsâbut wait until she cries."
"I'm sure she's not that bad," Jonah scoffed.
"He's never heard her cry," I said to the camera.
I sat down next to Jonah, putting Daisy in my lap and making sure that the blanket was wrapped around her snugly. I was afraid that if she "sensed" the cold temperature, she would start crying in the middle of the park. I fixed the knit cap on her head, making sure it covered most of her hair.
"Jonah, say hello to baby Daisy."
There was a grimace on his face. "Hello baby Daisy."
"Come on, you'll be living with her for the next seven days. Can't you be a little bit friendlier?"
"It's a doll," he deadpanned.
I rolled my eyes at him. "Whatever. By the way, Jonah, I'm bored. What are we doing here?"
"I don't know. Having fun?"
I raised my eyebrows. "Do you know how to have fun?"
"I do know how to have fun," he scoffed.
"Uh-huh," I said skeptically. "I don't think I can ever put "Jonah Gibbs" and "fun" in the same sentence."
He sent me a dirty look. "I'll show you fun."
There was a smirk on my face as I let the camera aim at Jonah who stood up and speed-walked towards the playground. Once I realized what he was doing, I burst out into one of the loudest laugh ever existed in history.
Jonah stopped at the tall monkey bars and turned around for a second to see if I was watching, and then he jumped, holding onto one of the bar and swung from one bar to another. His feet barely left the ground, the show-off. After a while, he swung his legs up, hooking his feet on the bar and hung upside down, his arms flailing around.
And on his face was the widest grin I'd ever seen so far.
He safely landed on the ground, shaking his head for a while as if he was dizzy, and then he walked toward me, reaching his hand out.
"Come on," he said.
I nodded, leaving Daisy in the stroller just a couple feet away from the playground. I turned to see Jonah already skipping toward me to grab his camera from a hidden compartment under the stroller. He started filming, the camera pointing at me, so I held up my still recording phone so it could shoot his face.
"Alright, show me fun," I said to him, and he gave me a smirk before half-running toward the playground again, this time with me following from behind.
He sat down on one side of a seesaw, and I rolled my eyes at him.
"Come on, you're way heavier than I am, it's not gonna be balanced."
He stood up to glare at me as if he was offended that I called him fat. "Just sit down on the edge."
So I sat on the very back of my side of the seesaw, and he sat on the middle seat of his side to keep us somewhat balanced, and we started swinging up and down. I gasped and let out a surprised laugh when I was suddenly jolted up, holding my phone tightly with one hand so it wouldn't fall out of my hands.
After about ten minutes of swinging and lightly bickering on the seesaw, we moved onto the slide. We picked the tallest slide in the playground (it still wasn't all that tall for teens, but whatever), and Jonah went up first while I filmed him, and he slid down with a loud "whoooo!".
I laughed and said to my camera, "By the way, I never knew he was such a kid."
"C'mon, it's your turn!"
I went up to the top of the slide and sat there for a while, my camera aimed at Jonah who was standing expectantly down there. Then I slid down, and I let out another joyful laugh.
I couldn't remember the last time I played on a slide.
Jonah unexpectedly pulled me up by the hand and dragged me to play on the swing set. I was too stunned by the fact that he was holding my hand that I just wordlessly followed him.
We played around the playground for a while, trying out the rope bridge, the tunnels (it was too small for Jonah so I was the only one playing), the spinners (we spun around too many times that we both started to get sick), and we even went back up to the monkey bars, but instead of hanging on the bars, we climbed up so we could sit on top of it, only to jump down onto the ground afterwards. Jonah almost tried one of the spring riders designed for five year-old kids, but I convinced him enough that he would end up breaking the thing, so he stayed away from those.
After nearly an hour of playing around, we finally went up to the huge treehouse, bringing Daisy with us, who miraculously hadn't started crying on us.
Jonah went up into the treehouse to join me and Daisy after getting some food from the food truck near the park. He gave me a warm cup of coffee and some waffles, and we began eating in silence to restore the energy we'd drained after having Jonah's idea of fun on the playground.
"That was fun, right?" I asked, halfway through my breakfast.
He swallowed and gulped down his coffee before answering, "Haven't had that much fun in a while."
I smiled just slightly. "Me too. Wanna play twenty questions?"
He raised an eyebrow and said, "Sure."
"Okay, I'll start." I cleared my throat. I got my camera ready, and he got his, and then I asked, "Date of birth?"
He rolled his eyes at me. "December second. You?"
"November fifteenth. I'm older than you!"
"Year?"
"Ninety seven."
He stuck his tongue out at me. Stuck his tongue out. At me. "I was born in ninety six, so I'm still nearly eleven months older."
I booed at him. "Your turn."
He thought for a while. "Favorite ice cream flavor?"
"Why, you wanna take me out on an ice cream date?" I teased. He scowled. "It's strawberry cheesecake. You?"
He made a face at my answer. Then said, "Vanilla."
"Ugh, you're so boring!"
"Shut up. Your turn."
We asked random questions for a while; sometimes Jonah tried to be silly and funny but he was just really not and we ended up scowling at each other, but sometimes I would end up laughing at him anyway because his answers were so weird, and he glowered at me because I laughed only when he wasn't intending to be funny.
We ran out of lighthearted questions eventually. So I asked, "Why did you dump the soda all over my head?" I chuckled a little. "I mean, couldn't you just go for my shirt? You were so extra."
"I thought we were over all of that."
"Just answer it, Jonah."
"You dumped it on me first."
"On your shirt!" I defended. "Look at my hair. I had to dye it because I couldn't get rid of the stain."
"Well I threw my shirt away because of the stain."
"You could've get it cleaned at the laundry."
"You could've washed your hair with some shampoo."
"It didn't work," I said, even though I didn't try the shampoo and instead just dyed it right away. "Hence the hair dye!"
He scowled. "I already told you I was sorry."
"Yes, I know, I just want to know why."
"You just caught me on a bad day, alright? And you were so damn annoying and the soda was cold so I just dumped it all over your head. I didn't really think about it."
"Alright, and the water a few days after?"
"You pissed me off, so I decided that I wanted to piss you off." There was a slight tinge of pink on his cheeks. "Alright, that's more than one question. My turn."
I held my chin up as if to say, "Bring it on."
"Do you like me?"
I paled and my whole body froze up. "What?"
He blinked as if he just realized what he'd just asked. "No, no, no, it came out the wrong way," he backtracked and cleared his throat several times. "I mean, uhhh, do you not dislike me? As in, uh, you know. Not that kind of like-like." I would've laughed at the mortified look on his face, but only if I wasn't also mortified myself.
"Oh," I said, subtly letting out a relieved sigh. For a second, I'd almost thought that he knew that I was secretly crushing on him big time. That would've been so awkward. "Well, yeah. I do like you. But, you know, not in the like-like way," I told him, my face heating up at the blatant lie. "What about you?"
His face was turning red. "Well, I don't dislike you anymore, so."
"Well, that's good."
"Yeah."
I cleared my throat. "My turn. Are we friends?"
"I think so. Do you think we are?"
"I think we are," I said, twirling my half empty cup of coffee. "You've never had friends before?"
He looked down and quietly said, "Not really, no." Then he looked up. "My turn."
"Alright."
"What did you think of the proposal last month?" he asked rather shyly.
A smile blossomed on my face as I recalled the whole proposal, from the moment I saw Grace until he walked away after slipping the ring into my finger. "I think the idea was really romantic."
He smiled back a little. "Did you like it?"
I nodded. "I did. It was very cute. And the ring was beautiful, too," I said, playing with the engagement ring on my finger. "My turn. Did you write the wedding vow yourself or did you get it online?"
I should've taken a note of how many times Jonah had blushed today. "Well, I wrote it myself. Kind of asked my sister for some help, though."
I was happy to know that he did, in fact, write it himself.
"My turn. You didn't read the vow you'd written down, did you?" he asked, but it was more like a statement that needed my confirmation.
"Yeah, I didn't."
"You made it up on the spot," he stated.
I shrugged bashfully. "It was stupid."
"Well, it was good," he complimented.
"Thanks," I said. "My turn again. Why don't you have any friends?" I knew that he obviously heard me, but he stayed silent. Feeling a little bit bad that my question was too personal, I took it back. "You don't have to answer it."
Then he slowly shook his head. "No, no, it's fine. It's just, I don't know." He lifted one of his shoulders lightly. "I just never saw the purpose of having friends, and..." He gave me another shrug. "I've never been good at the whole friends thing."
"But we're friends, aren't we?"
"Yeah."
My heart pounding in my chest, I give him a smile, and he tentatively smiled back.
"Okay, my turn," he said, and he paused as if to make sure if he should ask the question. He eventually asked, "Why do the songs I listen to always make you sad?"
I was silent, not because I didn't want to answer his question, but because it just simply confused me. Did I always look sad whenever I listened to the songs he played in the car whenever he drove me home? I didn't think I could even remember what songs he played in the car. My forehead was knitted, and I honestly had no answer to his question. "What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "I don't... I don't know. I just feel like you always become sad whenever you recognize some of the songs I listen to. You don't have to answer it, you know."
"Well, I..." I trailed off, still confused. "IâIâ"
That was when Daisy decided that she was tired of being silent. Jonah nearly jumped twelve feet off the floor when the piercing sound of Daisy's cries broke out, and he immediately covered his ears with his hands. I simply just sighed and crawled over to Daisy, holding her in my arms as I tried to find out what was wrong.
Jonah looked, for lack of a better description, freaked out. His eyes were wide and his mouth was agape as he stared at the spawn of the devil in my arms. He even scooted away from Daisy and I, but I just crawled closer to him with a smirk.
"I think it's time for you to start your baby duty," I announced triumphantly.
Bug-eyed as he stared at the baby, Jonah obviously didn't share the same excitement I was feeling.