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teddy-bea · 4 years

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inscribed on back of photo, mom’s cursive: Dale’s back from camp!! Teddy INSISTED on coming with us to the airport. She burst into tears when she saw her. She’s got the softest soul I’ve ever known.

i persist and resist the temptation

twins have a way of knowing things.

but this wasn’t about twins. this wasn’t about honey calling teddy, throwing her abruptly out of her sleep at three in the morning, arm fumbling around her nightstand for her phone and lifting herself up from under the nest of auggie’s arm to the accusatory, panicked voice of her twin, her honey, asking her, “are you pregnant?”

(to which she’d assured her she absolutely was not, she’d just been feeling sick since they’d gotten back from paris, and she had a doctor’s visit planned for the morning — but if anything, they were just hoping it wasn’t anything severe, anything like what their father was currently quarantined with.)

(fast-forward seven hours later, and her doctor is telling her that she — and her BABIES — are perfectly healthy. how’s that for twin telepathy?)

but this, again, is not that story.

this is about daily.

her name wasn’t actually daily — until she was sixteen, at least, when their parents let her legally change it from “remy” — but it’s what they’d all called her since she was born. apparently, it was because she’d cried when she was a baby. “daily,” her dad would always bemoan to her., and he’d always do it with a smile on his face because her dad did everything with a smile on his face. “she cries daily. daily, daily, daily.” and it had just stuck. she’d been daily ever since.

it suited her, really, because daily was a cool name. and daily remy graham was the coolest person teddy had ever known. and heck, remy had been a cool name too. daily’s destiny had preceded her.

she was loud, but she was gentle, she was outspoken, but she was kind. she wanted to be a rockstar when she grew up, and she settled for being teddy’s lead guitarist since she was fifteen years old and always told her that it was never “settling” in her eyes.

honey was her twin, olive was her best friend, auggie was her soulmate, her siblings were her life, but daily was her person.

she was the one who stood up for her — even if she was only eighteen to teddy’s naive sixteen — when her first record label tried to shortchange her in a lousy deal. she looked over every contract, combed through every deal, made sure teddy was never settling for less than she was worth. she cracked jokes with the band, the opening acts, was everyone’s best friend on tour, in the studio, online. you couldn’t not be magnetized by her. it had been the same way at school — she’d just been that good.

so, when teddy had been home for christmas, just before everything in their world had been rocked to its absolute core, teddy might have seen something that wasn’t supposed to be. a poem — not that that was rare, by any means, since daily always carried notebooks and a tablet with her, but this one seemed deeply personal. this one, teddy could tell, was about alex.

alex, who’d been daily’s high school boyfriend, who had turned into her college boyfriend. everyone joked that she and alex were going to be the next ollie and josie, the next big fat “lifetime of togetherness” to come out of the graham family.

until daily broke up with him out of nowhere before college graduation. he was going to propose, had asked her parents’ for her hand and everything. teddy and bixby had planned a whole, ridiculous engagement party, were already in the process of writing a song rhyming every possible word with “daily” that they could.

there was no doubt in their mind, in any of their minds, that she and alex were going to get married. they’d all set up a surprise party at the graham party when they knew that alex was planning the proposal, everyone hiding behind various furniture as if their entire family weren’t a towering forest of trees, and when daily came in — alone — shoving her keys into her bag, she’d looked at them in horror as they all came flying out from behind the couch with poppers and confetti, screaming out, “CONGRATULATIONS!”

“where is he?” bixby had asked with a furrowed brow.

daily frowned. “who?”

belly snorted from their twin brother’s side. “what do you mean who? alex, dumbass. mr. daily graham.”

“oh,” daily said, her face shifting ever so slightly. “we broke up.”

she said it like their dad used to announce rained out days in the park.

both her mom and teddy were moving for her at once, but daily backed up. “i’m fine. i thought i was surprising you guys by stopping by for dinner tonight,” she shot a pointed look at honey and teddy, “but apparently you guys already knew.”

“hey,” honey said softly, softer than usual. “you good?”

“why wouldn’t i be?” daily breezed. “it’s not like he was gonna propose to me.” she saw the looks across all their faces and grimaced. “all right, too soon.” she shot them a peace sign — which, if you’ve ever met daily, you would know is her international symbol for ‘not okay, but don’t ask — and headed upstairs for her old room.

teddy gave it a solid three minutes before she was heading up after her. honey was at her heels.

they weren’t the type of family who knocked — never had been — so teddy just stepped in and held the door open long enough for honey to follow her before lightly tapping it shut with her foot. she didn’t see how everything could have gone so horribly south so fast. alex had texted her ring ideas while she had been across from daily in tour rehearsals. she was juggling classes and graduation prep and her relationship with alex and tour prep… had it been too much?

“day, what happened?”

“you guys,” daily groaned. “there’s. it’s.” she looked up from where she was doodling line art into a notebook. “it wasn’t going to work, okay? i have so much shit going on with graduation and getting ready to leave across the country and—”

“—if this is about me—”

“—it’s not about you,” daily’s voice nearly broke. “it’s about me.”

something in honey’s stance moved, her jaw clenched and unclenched, her eyes softened. “oh.”

teddy looked from honey to daily before she was looking around daily’s bedroom, seeing the pictures along her dresser and bookcase that had changed in and out from over the years — there was still the picture of her holding belly when they were born, and the picture of her and honey and teddy and ollie all throwing their arms around crosby before he left for his volunteer trip to argentina. there was one of her and their parents and a photobombing bixby at her high school graduation.

daily had photos everywhere. she documented everything, carefully and methodically. her bedroom was a time capsule. her and teddy when teddy got her first record deal. her and teddy on stage at the first talent show they performed at together. her and her best friend naomi when they were six years old, laying out in the backyard with their hair hanging over the edge of the graham family pool. naomi at sixteen in her cheerleading uniform, face scrunched into a scream of a laugh, and daily with her arms wrapped tightly around her, muddy in her soccer uniform. her and naomi in a photobooth when they were twenty, studying abroad for a semester in florence — four photos of them getting closer, and closer, and closer still. there were two pictures of her and alex, with his movie star good looks and his eyes glued to daily. hers were off camera, always searching somewhere beyond her.

and it hit her. like a ton of bricks.

“oh, daily,” she murmured, sitting down beside her.

“we don’t need to have a seventh heaven moment right now,” she said with a laugh, but she was wiping tears away with the back of her hand. “like i said, i’m fine. it sucked, and telling him sucked, and the whole thing fucking sucked, but it’s fine. i’m fine. he’ll be fine. it’ll be fine.”

fine, fine, fine.

in my defense, i have none --

the tape fast-forwards to that very same bedroom, but it’s years later. there is no paris, not yet, but teddy is back in that house in los angeles, the one she has called her own since she was born. the one she and her six siblings have always come back to, would always come back to. she is back in this room, and she is looking for scotch tape to finish wrapping the last of her presents before tomorrow morning rolls around and everybody gets their gifts in shopping bags.

the journal is under her bed, untouched and forgotten about, but it’s there and it’s teasing her. she just takes a peek, just a little one. that’s all.

it turns out, a peek is all she needs.

-- for never leaving well enough alone

the tape is spinning once more, and it is early may. teddy is waiting for her sister to pick up on facetime, sitting in front of her keyboard with her leg jiggling nervously.

“down in front,” auggie teases, cereal bowl in hand. he kisses the top of her head once, and then once more, as the screen shifts and daily comes into view. he gives her a nod of a greeting and ruffles his hand through teddy’s hear before he’s slinking down into the den to start his stream.

“what was so urgent, o’ talented one?” daily hums, sitting up with her bedhead. there is a soft grunt from beside her, a muffled, “hey ted,” from a still-dead-to-the-world naomi. daily is off camera for a second but teddy can hear the soft, unmistakable sound of a kiss from anywhere, before she is standing up from the bed and moving through her apartment, the early morning light of los angeles streaming in.

“gotta remember time changes one of these days.”

“yeah,” daily snorts. “we both know that’ll never happen.” she grabs a coffee mug off the counter, moving around her kitchen and looking back at the phone. “what’s up?”

once she’s sitting down, teddy looks back down at the piano, and then back at her sister. “first off, remember you love me.”

“nothing good ever starts with that.”

“i just. i saw…something, at christmas. and i kind of decided to run with it.”

daily’s eyebrow quirked up. “what kind of something?”

“a poem kind of something?”

and then daily’s face went pale.

“just. look. you’ll never sing it — even if you should — so. i thought i’d take a stab at it. if you hate it, it never sees the light of day. okay?”

daily sits back, taking a sip of her coffee. “all right, maestro.”

i’m doing good, i’m on some new shit; been saying yes instead of no. i thought i saw you at the bus stop, i didn’t, though

we were something, don’t you think so?

#instagraham #the daily graham #words

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teddy-bea · 4 years

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were there clues i didn’t see?

“are you sure about this?”

she spun around to look at him, leaning up on tiptoes even though it wasn’t necessary, her arms roping around his neck right where they belonged. “how many more times are you going to ask me that?”

“at least nine.”

“yes, i’m sure.” teddy turned back to face the mirror, smoothing down the skirt of her dress and glancing at auggie’s pensive expression looking back at her. “i mean, you have to admit it. this is the boldest i’ve gotten yet.”

auggie looked tired. he’d looked tired since she’d shaken him awake at one in the morning in the middle of a three-way phone call with belly and honey, telling him that she was going to drop the album within twenty-two hours. he looked like a deer in the headlights. auggie - who ran his own fake teddy graham fan accounts just to entertain himself and gas her up - auggie, who always teased her relentlessly about “when’s the single coming out?!”

auggie always joked about teddy dropping a surprise album - he just never thought she’d do it. but why not now? why not right now?

she had taken promo photos and videos for spotify verticals a couple days before, she had told auggie that it was just so she could get them out of the way before she wasn’t able to.

“it’s not obvious, right?” she asked, nose scrunched, eyebrows furrowed. she turned back to him, ignoring her phone buzzing and buzzing and buzzing and placing her hand against the small swell of her belly.

“no,” he replied. “but, like. your fans are fuckin’ bonkers.”

she shot him a pointed look, lips twisted into a small smirk. she leaned in until her forehead was pressed to his. “yeah,” she crooned. “you’re one to talk.”

his smile was painfully bashful. “i’m just saying. it’s, like. it’s there. and some of the lyrics? and i don’t want these articles to come out and just make you-”

“baby,” she stopped him softly, breath catching for a moment at the word. “the tabloids call me pregnant five times a year. at least. like clockwork. i can take it.”

“what about that mimosa picture you posted last month?”

“so they’ll call me a bad mom, like, a lot.”

“i’ll kill ‘em.”

“i know you will,” she murmured, and she kissed him. and then she kissed him again. “do you think i’ll be a good mom?”

“you’ll be the best mom,” she could hear the tears stinging his eyes, crackling into his voice. “i still can’t believe you’re mine.”

“my little thread of gold,” she said softly, fingers tracing down to their twin bands. it had been paris, just as the world had shut down, before everything had been lit on fire. everything happened in paris. by the time they were home, holed away at one of her estates up in the hills of maine - an estate she never let the world know about, only her family and the friends she considered family and her sweet sip of summer wine, her august.

(august, who had a song she was bold enough to call his own name in the hopes nobody would catch on - even if his online persona, also named august, had already been blowing up twitter air waves declaring he and teddy were clearly “having an august wedding.” maybe she wanted the world to know. maybe she was tired of hiding.)

by the time they were back at the estate in maine, she had a ring on her finger and three heartbeats where there used to only be one. but this was still their own little world, a private quarantine bubble - a cocoon of one another. she had her muse and she was running like hell with it.

within her songs she laced the expressions “rosy-cheeked” and “briar-patch,” she sang about pinks and blues in the form of sunsets, having a child by way of loving someone just that much that you would hypothetically do that for them. she sang about august - as a month, as the end of a season, as the end of summer love, as the loss of innocence, as growing up.

“still got time to back out,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her throat, a hand delicately resting against her belly. she felt his grin against her skin as she laughed.

“my public awaits,” she replied, pulling away just enough that she could look at him and really see him, the flecks of gold in his eyes and the constellation of freckles against his skin. “this is a good thing,” she promised him.

this was still their world for now.

for now, for now, for now. for as long as they wanted it to be - for as long as it could be.

and she was holding on tight.

#words

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