Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Even though we weren’t supposed to tell our children we were proud of them because that put the focus on “our” feelings, fuck that nonsense.
I hugged Kira when she finished her last race, winning yet another gold. “I’m so freaking proud of you, kiddo! Are you proud of yourself?”
She was still out of breath, but the enormous smile on her face was all the answer I needed.
Her teammates running up to congratulate her on her win essentially pushed me out of the way, but I didn’t care. She was making friends. She was smiling, and that meant the absolute world to me.
Yesterday, Winnie’s mom texted me to ask if Kira would like to have a sleepover with Winnie after the meet and year-end party.
I honestly didn’t think Kira would want to go, but when I asked her, she was all over it.
So her sleepover stuff was in the car. It’d been ages since I’d had a night alone.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself.
Once everybody got changed, they headed to the podiums to accept their medals. My daughter was humble, yet also super smiley. Joy filled my chest to near bursting.
I’d questioned more than once if this was the right move for us, if I did the right thing leaving Eugene. But seeing her now, with friends and that gorgeous grin, just reassured me that it was the right thing to do.
With her neck weighted down from the medals, and faint goggle lines around her eyes, she approached me, bowing her head so I could remove all her medals.
“Meet you in the party room, Kira,” Winnie and Shante said with waves and smiles as they headed with their parents off the pool deck to the rented rec room across the center.
“See you there,” Kira replied.
“You’re sure you want to go to Winnie’s for a sleepover?” I asked once her friends were out of earshot.
Kira nodded. “Yeah, Mom. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, I’m only going to have one glass of wine, just in case you want me to come and get you.”
She rolled her pretty blue eyes—the same shade as mine. “I’ll be fine. Have some wine. You deserve it.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “You saying you’re the reason I need to drink?” I tossed her a smirk and tugged playfully on the end of her damp braid.
“No. Not me.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, not just me. Dad too.”
I didn’t have to ask if she’d heard from her father. I already knew she hadn’t. Damien also didn’t bother to reply to my text message yesterday. The yellow-bellied coward.
“Come on, you,” I said, looping my arm around her neck and kissing the side of her head, “let’s go celebrate.”
* * *
The party wasn’t anything crazy. It was just pizza, veggie platters, flavored sparkling water, juice boxes, and ice cream sandwiches for dessert.
Deacon connected music from his phone to a Bluetooth portable speaker, and everyone just relaxed after a busy and exhausting first half of the swim season.
“Do you have your guitar, Coach Deacon?” one of the kids asked, after everyone had stuffed themselves silly with food and were just lounging around chatting.
“I don’t,” Deacon said with a pout. “But I’ll bring it to the end-of-year party in the spring.
I promise.” His gaze flitted over to me, and heat instantly flooded my body—and I’m sure made my face bloom with color.
I was never one to easily steel my emotions and hide them from people.
This man flustered me to no end. I kept a mental tally of how much attention he paid to the other parents, and it sure as hell wasn’t as much as he paid to me.
Did they all notice? Did they all think something more than just parent-coach friendliness was going on?
The last thing I wanted was to give the new batch of swim team parents any fodder to hate me, or even worse, Kira.
Yes, Kira was a tremendous swimmer and earned every gold medal she won, but if they thought Deacon was giving her any kind of preferential treatment because of some underlying something between us, I’d be mortified.
I averted my gaze without returning his smile, sipping my can of strawberry-flavored sparkling water while gently bobbing my head and tapping my foot to the music.
I was ready to head home, and even though Kira was sleeping over at Winnie’s, I still had her sleepover stuff in the car, and I didn’t want to leave until she did, just in case she got cold feet.
Slowly, and I mean very slowly, families began to leave the party. I was yawning like crazy by the time Kira and Winnie came up to me to let me know that Winnie’s parents were ready to.
Many of us helped tidy up the party room so that the coaches didn’t have to do it all themselves.
I went in to grab an empty pizza box at the same time Deacon did, and our hands touched.
I was the first to pull away, like his fingers were made of flames.
“Oh, sorry!” I said, laughing awkwardly, reaching for a different box.
“All good,” he said smoothly.
I moved over to another table and gathered up all the leftover juice boxes. They’d probably just be used for the next party. “Is there somewhere we can put all of this leftover stuff?” I asked.
“We have a bin in this storage closet here that the rec center lets us use,” one of the other coaches said, opening up the closet and leading me through, then unlocking the big bin.
I unloaded my heavily weighed-down arms into the bin, spun around and ran smack dab into the titanium-hard chest of non-other than Coach Deacon himself.
Dammit.
“Oh, sorry!” I exclaimed—again.
“All good,” he repeated, this time with a chuckle.
Dear god, I needed to get the hell out of there.
The smell of him alone was making my brain short-circuit and my panties way too freaking damp.
They would probably freeze to my skin when I went outside in that nasty weather.
It was calling for snow and lots of it over the next few days.
We’d have a white Christmas at least, but I wasn’t looking forward to having to shovel my driveway or venture out onto the roads with all the idiots who couldn’t be bothered to get snow tires.
Without saying another word—or at least anything coherent—I shuffled past him and inhaled deeply when I emerged into the main room. But his scent still lingered in my nostrils, and those butterflies in my belly woke up and were ready to party.
I avoided him for the rest of the time we were in there cleaning up, even though I knew he was trying to catch my eye. Every time I felt his gaze on me, I pivoted away.
Did I encourage this by chatting with him, and showing him my phone, telling him about Damien and … oh shit! He was coming over for Christmas dinner. How did I not see how freaking bad that looked?
I needed to figure out a way to cancel.
“Come on, Mom,” Kira said. “I need my bag out of your car.”
Nodding, I made sure I wasn’t abandoning the coaches with more cleanup—though plenty of parents didn’t lift a fucking finger—and headed toward Kira, Winnie, and Winnie’s parents.
“Put your hood up,” I said to my child as we approached the front doors.
“Your hair is still wet, and it’s freezing outside. ”
“That’s an old wives’ tale, Mrs. Robinson,” Winnie said. “You can’t catch a cold from going outside with wet hair.
I smirked. “Well, I’m an old wife, so …” I tugged my hood over my head as well and thanked Winnie’s dad for holding open the door. Then we all ran to our vehicles. Luckily, Winnie’s parents weren’t parked too far from me, so it wasn’t an icy hike across the parking lot for Kira.
“Call me if you want to come home,” I said. “I know you told me to get shit-faced drunk, but I’m not going to.”
She smirked at my exaggeration. “Just be kind to yourself, Mom. You’re going through a lot, too.” Then we hugged. I kissed her cold, rosy cheek and watched my daughter climb into someone else’s car and drive away from me.
She would be fine. She was strong, resilient, and I needed to start giving her more credit.
Piling into my RAV, I sat there for a while, waiting for it to warm up. I pulled on my leather driving gloves, my fingers icy and stiff at first before they defrosted. My butt was the first thing to thaw, thanks to the seat warmers, then the windshield.
I took a mental inventory of whether I had wine at home or not, and decided it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to hit up the liquor store on my way home.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I headed in the opposite direction of home, since the better liquor store with a more diverse wine selection was five minutes south.
I wasn’t even a quarter of a mile away from the rec center when I nearly drove off the road because of who I saw walking on the sidewalk, already half frozen.
Signaling to pull over to the right, I threw on my hazard lights and climbed out of my car.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at Deacon over the wild wind.
It wasn’t raining at the moment, but the wind was nasty.
“My bike was stollen,” he said, looking nearly hypothermic and incredibly sad.
“Get in,” I demanded.
He shook his head. “No, I’ll be fine. The bus stop is only another half mile.”
“Get. In,” I said again, using my stern mom-voice.
Nodding and shivering, he didn’t argue and headed to the passenger side, opening the door.
I ran back around and climbed in behind the steering wheel, throwing the heat on full-blast. I also had to remove my jacket, though, otherwise, I’d boil.
“Someone stole your bike?” I don’t know why I was asking a redundant question, but it was the only thing that came to mind.
He nodded. “Yeah, they used bolt-cutters to cut the lock.”
“Fuck,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Do you want to go report it to the police?”
Shaking his head, he held his hands out in front of the vent to thaw them. “It won’t do any good.”
“It might. If the bike shows up at a pawnshop or something?”