Chapter Four Barrett
Chapter Four
Barrett
“I’m not quite sure where we went wrong with you two. Were we too strict? Not strict enough?”
I laid my head back on the couch and sighed. “You were plenty strict, Mom. I think it just . . . happened.”
She snorted. “This does not just happen, son. I saw one of those videos online; people are so clever with what they notice, you know?”
“So I’ve been told.” I tried not to sigh again, but when one calls their mother for advice on how to handle the kids who are pissed at him, this is not the direction one wants the phone call to go in.
Suggestions of help were the expectation; instead I was getting a full breakdown of why I was so uptight.
“These two girls—women, I suppose—have a whole channel—or profile, whatever you want to call it—dedicated to just you and your brother. Isn’t that something?”
I smiled grimly. “It’s something, all right. I don’t think I want to know what they were talking about.”
“Oh, it wasn’t bad. After the game on Sunday, one of the girls made such a fuss about how she saw you smile at one of the players, and she went back and compiled footage of every time you’ve smiled on camera in your professional career—even when you were still playing. Can you believe it?”
“People are incredibly bored and have developed a crippling need to be seen online because it makes them feel significant to a toxic degree. So yes, Mom,” I said evenly. “I can believe it.”
There was a slight pause. “Aren’t you going to ask how many times you’ve smiled on the sidelines?”
“No.”
“It was a short video, son.” She made a concerned humming noise. “I don’t remember you being like that when you were younger. I have lots of videos of you in college; when you and your brother played at Oregon, you smiled all the time. Maybe I should send her some of that.” She paused.
I focused my attention on deep-breathing exercises. I could list plenty of things that had changed since then, since a time when I’d smiled more. Smiled easily.
Tenuous though it was now—like we were inching out onto an iced-over lake and hoping it wouldn’t break—in high school and in the early years of college, I still had a decent relationship with my twin brother.
I hadn’t married Rachel yet; that came right after college, when she told me she was pregnant with Bryce.
She had changed things between us more than anything had.
It was difficult for me to extricate my feelings toward my ex or label them properly. Our marriage, though it had lasted close to a decade, was like navigating an abandoned minefield, except I was the only one setting off explosions.
I didn’t hate her, but if we’d been married much longer, it might have danced right up to that edge. But even admitting that made me uncomfortable. The sound of my kids upstairs in their bedrooms filtered down into the family room. Bryce laughed at something, and I closed my eyes.
I couldn’t ever really hate Rachel, because she’d given me the two best things in my entire life.
“I’m failing them, Mom,” I admitted. “That whole situation with Jill and then the neighbor just made it impossible to ignore. What if I don’t know how to do this by myself?”
“Oh, nonsense. You’re not failing anything. You have two wildly intelligent kids who can run circles around most adults, and they know they’re safe with you. Why do you think they act out so much?”
A wry laugh escaped before I could stop it. “Is that why?”
“Yes,” she insisted. “They know, deep down, you’ll always be there for them. You won’t send them off to live with Rachel, because you love them more than anything in the world.”
I thought about Maggie’s face when we’d gotten home a couple nights earlier. I’d tried to apologize to them, too, but she merely swiped at the tears on her cheeks and marched up to her bedroom, saying she had homework to do and it wasn’t necessary to tuck her in.
I’d waited, of course, until her lights were out and I knew she was sound asleep before quietly entering her room. Crouching next to her bed, I’d swept the tangled hair off her face and watched her sleep for a few minutes, my heart breaking into a million pieces for her and her brother.
“How are they supposed to know that?” I asked. “I work a hundred hours during the season, Mom.”
“Because you found a place that would allow you to be home for a good chunk of those hours. Took less money, too, didn’t you?”
“A bit, yeah.” I scrubbed the side of my face, unwittingly thinking about the slew of articles at the end of a rough season. “Though if you ask anyone, it was probably a mistake and I’m ruining Buffalo because of it.”
“Nonsense,” she said again. “You just need some more time to settle in. And that has nothing to do with your kids.”
“Doesn’t it?” I sighed.
“Barrett, your kids act out because that is what children do at their age. They think they’re almost adults, so they test the limits of everything. You and your brother did the same thing.”
“I know Griffin did,” I answered dryly. “Not sure I followed in his footsteps.”
“No. You never dared break the rules, always wanted to do things the right way because you were afraid of what would happen if you didn’t,” she said, and it sounded just sad enough that I felt a lump in my throat. “Have you talked to your brother lately?”
This was the minefield my parents had to navigate, and guilt over that gnawed at my insides.
“No,” I admitted. “I, uh, messaged him when he broke his arm in the preseason, and we’ve texted a few times since then, but that’s about it.
He’s busy. He’s got Ruby now, and he’s back on the field.
You know I’m the last person he wants to hear from. ”
“I don’t know that, no. I think you’d be surprised at the reaction you’d get if you tried.” She sighed. “The kids text him; he’s told me that. I know he’d love to see them again once the season is done.”
“I have to get through the next two games first, Mom. Figure out what I’m going to do with the kids. I hardly have time to sleep, let alone interview someone else to watch them until the season is over.”
“Well, your father and I can fly in the day after Christmas. I leave tomorrow to help your aunt Billie after her surgery for a little bit, but as soon as I’m back from that, we’ll get a flight to Buffalo.”
One of the kids ran down the hallway upstairs, and a door slammed, the muffled sound of their voices filtering downstairs. “Thanks, Mom.”
“They do all right at the office this weekend?”
“Yeah. Bridget already told me she’s getting a massive raise if childcare is now part of her job description, but they love her, so it went fine. Bryce was asleep on my office couch when I got done with film Thursday night. Reminded me of when he was a kid and I could never wake him.”
She hummed. “And they sat in the box at the game today?”
“Yeah. With Bridget and Janie.”
“It was a tough loss, son.”
“I know.”
There was a telling pause, and I stared up at the ceiling, waiting for what was undoubtedly coming next. “Your quarterback stepping in between two guys taking swings didn’t help my nerves. Especially when he shoved that lineman twice his size.”
I closed my eyes. “Mine either.”
“Still think it’s unfair they gave him a flag for that.” She sighed. “You didn’t look too happy with him on the sidelines.”
Only my mother would’ve been able to see through that. Archer, hot off the fight and the flag—both of which triggered his impulse-control problem—came jogging off the field with his fist raised like he’d scored a fucking touchdown instead of costing us fifteen yards.
He’d met my gaze unflinchingly, only dropping his when my jaw clenched ominously and one of the veteran players pulled him aside.
I was not the coach who’d get in his face, yelling and screaming.
Public berating wasn’t my style, but most guys who’d played under me for a long time knew that my silence was sometimes far, far worse.
“I need him to be a calming presence in moments like that,” I said. “Not make things worse. The second he interjected himself, the entire offensive line got involved.”
“Your brother was always the one stepping in the middle of the fights,” Mom said lightly. “You always stayed back and pulled your teammates away.”
Another difference between us.
“It was messy at the end of the game, but they’re a young team.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Still learning how to keep composure in big moments.”
“And afterward?”
I snorted. “I’m assuming you saw my postgame press conference?”
“Maggie is a natural with the media,” she answered diplomatically. “My personal favorite was when she started choosing which journalists asked questions and then answering them for you.”
“Yeah, everyone loved that. But she wasn’t supposed to be up there with me, and she knew it the moment she marched up to my chair.”
“She still punishing you?”
“With every inch of her being,” I answered wearily.
Mom hummed. “She must have loved that neighbor.”
My jaw tightened instinctively. An unwilling image of Lily’s face played like a movie in the back of my head—flashing, angry, dark eyes and full lips on an irritating loop that I couldn’t rip from my subconscious. “That makes one of us.”
“Oh, come on, how bad can she be?”
“She slammed the door in my face when I tried to apologize. She was letting them ride mattresses down the stairs. Who knows what else they did. She’s a menace,” I said hotly.
“Dearest son, one of the great loves of my life, I have seen you try to apologize,” Mom said with a smile clear in her voice. “You are good at a lot of things, honey. That’s not one of them.”