Avery and Josh’s co-parenting relationship

Avery and Josh’s co-parenting relationship is amicable rather than romantic: they never dated, but a one-time hookup during Avery’s junior year of high school led to Marco, the child who binds them together. Their arrangement is shaped by Josh’s irregular work at sea and by the practical choices that brought Avery and Marco to Sowell Bay.

Origins and Move to Sowell Bay

Avery explains that she and Marco moved from Seattle five years earlier, when Marco was ten. Josh had taken a job in Anacortes, and Sowell Bay lay halfway between his work and their former home. The move also served Avery’s own plans: she had long wanted to open a paddle shop, something she says she could not have afforded in Seattle.

Before the move, Avery had worked a succession of odd jobs; when Marco was little, she was mostly occupied with being his mother. Her account places the family’s circumstances within practical constraints—Josh’s employment, the distance between places, and Avery’s wish to build a livelihood of her own—rather than describing the move as a consequence of a breakup.

A Relationship Without a Romance

When Cameron assumes that an ex-partner must be a bad guy, Avery corrects him: she and Josh never even dated. They hooked up once during her junior year of high school, and Marco became the lasting connection between them. Avery presents their shared parenthood plainly, without recasting their past as a failed romance.

That distinction informs her characterization of Josh. She calls him a good friend and explicitly says he is not a bad guy. The relationship is therefore marked by an unusual combination: its origin was brief and casual, but the bond created by their child endured, without the two becoming a couple.

Work, Distance, and Shared Parenting

Josh works as a deckhand on a fishing trawler, and his schedule is unpredictable. Avery says he does not see Marco much during the summer, a concrete limitation on their time together that she attributes to the demands of his work rather than to hostility between the parents.

Avery’s account offers no detailed custody schedule or description of particular parenting arrangements. What it does establish is her candid, non-antagonistic view of their continuing connection: Josh’s absences matter, but they do not make him a villain in her telling. Their co-parenting relationship remains organized around Marco and sustained by an apparent friendship, not by a romantic partnership.