i needed a girl

Jess, a few weeks ago: I was thinking today. And I think you needed a girl first more than I needed a boy.

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We're packing up our apartment, which has left it looking as though a tornado may have blown through about fifteen minutes ago. Boxes - assembled and not - everywhere, food storage extracted from its quiet corner of the apartment, bags of donations for the Salvation Army piling up, bookshelves unassembled, other shelves empty and wiped clean. All this freneticism really stresses Annabelle out (she is SO her mother's daughter), so I try to pack her around with me as I pack other things into boxes. Yesterday, as I organized my nightstand drawers, going through stacks of papers long forgotten and hardly needed, she sat next to me. She found a tube of chapstick and an old watch, an item for each hand. Occasionally, she put her hand on my leg and looked up at me, as if to say, "Hey....you know I'm still here right?" I'd kiss her, she'd bump her head against mine in what has become her own little nuzzle, and we'd keep packing, Belle patiently waiting for me to finish, an item in each hand.

And I couldn't help thinking, oh how I needed a girl, this girl in particular.