Piggy Back - The Only Way To Travel

When Jess and I left work, I drove directly over to the school. I had promised Josh that I would bring Jesse to see him.

After searching for about 10 minutes for a place to park, I finally stopped my car about four blocks away from the school. “I hope you like to walk,” I told Jess as I released him from the car seat.

We had only gone about a block when Jesse wanted to get up, “But we are almost there,” I told him. “It’s just over there.” But he didn’t care, he wanted to get up and he wanted to see his daddy.

I picked him up and was carrying him but after the next block, he started to get heavy and I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry him the whole way like that. Damn, I thought to myself. You are way out of shape! As I tried to put him down, I decided that I was going to take up some form of exercise.

“No Ama, I get up!” Jess said when I put his feet on the ground.

“It’s just for a second Jess,” I told him and he finally let go of my neck. Turning around, I squatted down in front of him, “Want a piggy back ride?”

“Yay!” Jesse jumped on the spot and came over to get on my back.

I have to say I found it a lot easier to carry him like that, plus he was having a ball yelling, “Get up Ama!”

There were a lot of people milling around outside the school, oh! It must be half time or something. Jess and I made our way through the people towards the gym.

At first I didn’t see Josh; I thought that he might’ve been in his office or back with the team in the change room. “I think we’ll have to-”

“Daddy!” Jesse yelling into my ear as I was speaking. “Ama, see daddy! Daddy!” He called out again, as he pointed off to the right.

I spotted Josh as Jess called out to him again, he slowly turned his head like it wasn’t certain if the call was for him. When his eyes fell over Jess and me, he smiled and excused himself from the people he was talking too and jogged over to us. “Hey,” he wrapped his arms around the two of us, giving both of us a kiss. “I was starting to worry that my parents didn’t get there in time.”

I went to tell him that I ran into Hank when Jesse said, “Baby took Mis’er Bear daddy!”

“What?” Josh glanced at me as Jesse repeated himself.

“He said that the baby took Mister Bear.”

Josh reached around me and took Jesse off my back, “What baby?”

“Baby and man.” Jesse turned to point to me. “Man kiss Ama!”

Both of Josh’s brows shot up, “Who kissed Anna?”

Jesse shrugged, shaking his head. “I no.”

Josh turned to me, his hand lifted to my arm. “Who kissed Anna?” He repeated as he led me away from people, into a quiet corner.

“It wasn’t a big deal Josh,” I told him.

“No?” He took a deep breath, “Then why not tell me about it?”

I shrugged, “We ran into Hank and Jenna; Jenna would be the baby that stole Mister Bear. We were talking for a moment and then I told him we had to go meet you, he said bye to Jesse and me, then he -”

“Kiss Ama there!” Jesse leaned over and pointed to my cheek.

I nodded, “Yeah, he gave me a kiss on the cheek.”

Josh didn’t say anything and I kind of got a little worried, I went to say something but we were interrupted by Cassie. “Aunt Anna!” She threw her arms around me and gave me a hug, “I didn’t think you’d be here today. Did you come to see Ben play?” I told her I came so Jesse could see his dad. “Oh,” Cassie glanced over her shoulder at Josh, who wasn’t looking too happy. “Umm, I’ll just go I guess.” She waved bye to me and flashed Jess a smile and said, “Cute bear.”

Once Cassie left, Jesse wanted down. When Josh put him down, he started after Cassie who was standing not that far away with some friends. Jesse tugged at her pants and she looked down in surprise. While she knelt down and talked to him, I turned my attention back to Josh.

“Are you upset with me?”

Josh shook his head, but his attention was on Jesse. I felt like crap, it wasn’t a big deal. It’s not like Hank had other intentions when he did it. You did nothing wrong, there was no way to know he was going to do that anyway. You didn’t ask him to kiss you.

All of these thoughts were running through my head, I was getting upset that Josh wasn’t saying anything; he was pretty much ignoring me. Even that I tried to reason out, he hasn’t seen Jess in a while, he misses him. But even as I rationalized it, I found that it didn’t help my mood. I wanted to say something to him but I didn’t know what. So I stood there, with my arms folded over my chest and this fake smile on my face.

It wasn’t until I was grabbed from behind and yelped in surprised that Josh seemed to remember that I was there.