The Parent Project

Tuesday

"Joey it's not heavy," Lauren laughed, "it's got a plastic bottle, a spare diaper and a blanket in it,"

"Well sorry!" Joey laughed, nudging her hip with his. They were silent for a while until Joey chuckled quietly, "I kinda missed this little guy last night,"

"I'm very glad you get to keep him tonight, I have no idea how I'm going to get through a dance class on three hours of sleep,"

"Only three? Really?"

"Something like that," Lauren yawned with a tired wave of her hand.

"God," Joey mumbled as they approached the school premises, "well if you can get through a full school day, you'll have a few hours to nap before dance," he said positively.

"I wish, I've still got yesterday's homework to do."

"How about we do it together tonight? Many hands make light work," Joey offered, bringing Samson down to his chest as they approached the library.

"Okay, once we've picked him up tonight we can do it at mine?"

"Perfect," they both grinned at each other as they passed a few familiar faces cradling their fake babies with either tired smiles or sheer frustration on their faces.

Once they reached the library, a lot of babies had already been tucked up in their boxes and the two made a beeline for Samson's spot. Joey lay down Sam amongst the blankets just as the clock hit 9am and the bell rang for class. He pressed a kiss to his fingers and placed them on Sam's forehead, Lauren laughed but did the same before standing just as Meredith and Denise entered with their baby, Beth.

"Morning!" Meredith chirped.

"How are you still so happy?" Lauren cried, irritated by her friend's unending spirit. Joey laughed at her and threw his arm over her shoulder, rubbing her bare skin with his thumb.

"I bet Denise had the baby last night," he whispered before dropping his arm as if she were on fire as he realised what he'd done.

Lauren flushed and then looked over to where Denise was roughly tucking their baby in, a scowl etched on her features and yesterday's clothes making a surprise reappearance.

"Hi Denise," Joey grinned cheerily. The blonde growled, low and deep and then stomped from the room Meredith not far behind asking her to slow down. Together Lauren and Joey burst into laughter and followed the pair into the corridor. Once their laughter had subsided and Lauren had finished wiping her tears away she turned to Joey.

"Do you wanna have lunch with us today?"

"Sure, it's always on the quad at 1pm, right?"

Lauren hummed happily.

"Yeah, see you there," she waved at him as she darted into her classroom, her cheeks hurting from smiling so much and her tiredness almost gone.

-

By lunch time, the tiredness was back in full force. She found her group of friends pretty easily – half of them looked like zombies and the other half looked like fully functioning humans. She mumbled a half hello as she slid on the bench and looked around for Joey. It was weird, they had kind of fallen into their respective parenting roles pretty quickly last night and as such they were becoming fast friends. He had helped her bathe Sam (which was actually just running a flannel over his face and body as they weren't sure how waterproof the technology was) and he hadn't yelled at her when she'd accidentally attempted to drown Samson by leaving him in the sink with the tap on. It turned out they had a lot in common and shared the same sense of humour. It also seemed like they enjoyed hanging out together and it made Lauren super happy that she got the opportunity to get closer to Joey under the guise of schoolwork.