Chapter 3 #2
I turn back to watch the boys cross what appears to be their finish line, judging by the cheers and high-fives. “I’m still going to keep an eye out and talk to Mike.”
Michelle makes a serious face, mean mugging at me as she points her V-ed fingers at her eyes and then the boys. “On it, Helicopter Mom Extraordinaire.”
Okay, so maybe I’m a bit more transparent about my overprotectiveness than I thought. But she’s got no room to talk. I had to convince her to let Liam play.
The boys’ cheers renew and I hear them call out, “Coach B! You’re here!”
The sun’s blocking my sight a bit, throwing the newcomer into a bright halo so that all I can see is a black silhouette. A very large silhouette. And then a deep voice gruffly says, “Sorry I’m late, guys. Had to finish chores before I could leave, but I brought snacks for after practice.”
“Yeah!” they cheer, not even knowing what he’s brought. If I were a betting woman, I’d lay odds he could bring them tuna fish in a can, tell them it was good protein, and they’d scarf it down. At least that’s what Cooper made it sound like when he was going all nutritionist on me this morning.
I grin slightly at the thought, and then the broad shape shifts and my stomach plummets. Not just to my toes but to the middle of the Earth beneath them. It can’t be. Please don’t let it be.
My past.
My dream.
My shoulda, coulda, woulda.
My . . . Bruce.
“Oh, fuck,” I whisper and I feel the heat of the other moms’ eyes glaring at me for daring to cuss in front of their snowflakes, even though there are no kids within twenty feet of us.
Michelle knocks my shoulder with her own. “Told you. Climb him like a damn tree.” She leans forward and glares at the mom on the other side of me, and distantly, I realize she said that loudly this time on purpose in solidarity with me.
“No, I . . . Michelle, I know him.” Her jaw drops a little at my lost expression. I pull myself together and grab her arm, hissing, “Michelle . . . I know him. That’s Bruce Tannen. My first boyfriend, my first love, my first everything.”
Delight makes her eyes sparkle. “Like in the biblical sense? That’s a story I have got to hear!”
I shake my head, trying to stand up. “I have to get out of here. I can’t see him. He can’t see me. I have to go.” Michelle arm-bars me across the waist, forcing me back into my folding camp chair.
“Nope, nu-uh, no way, just NO. Sit your ass down.” She’s using her mom voice on me, but since I’m a mom too, it should have zero effect on me.
But because she’s my best friend and I’m weak and feeling like the whole world just got yanked out from under my feet, I somehow do as she says, settling dumbly back into my seat.
“I’m going to get that story, but not right now while we have other ears,” she whispers, smiling sweetly, but we all know it’s saccharin-coated venom.
She’s got no problem with the other team moms, and neither do I considering I just met them, but we’re a team of two inside a team of many, and they are all listening intently as they pretend to watch their sons on the field.
And Bruce. They’re all watching Bruce, which makes possessive jealousy ignite in my belly like hot, sour lava. I swallow thickly, forcing it back down.
No, I don’t have the right to be possessive or jealous. He could be married for all I know, or sleeping with the whole team of moms sitting down the sideline, or the whole town. I don’t know, and I shouldn’t care.
But I do.
I’m stuck. I can’t leave, Michelle won’t let me, but I can’t stay because he’ll see me, want to talk to me, and I’ve got nothing good to say.
Oh, you know . . . been here and there, fucked up my whole life but got Cooper, who is my sun and moon and every star out of the deal, so there’s that. Makes the rest of the nightmare no big deal, you know? And besides, I’m mad as a damn hornet at you, so you can fuck off, asshole.
Or worse, maybe he wouldn’t even recognize me, wouldn’t even care. Maybe I’m just some girl he used to know way back when.
I consider getting up again and making a run for it, but Michelle hums under her breath. “Don’t even think about it.”
Shit. Is this woman psychic?
Helpless, I resort to the bad habits I worked and fought to lose and shrink myself, curling into my body and ducking my chin into my chest as I pull my knees up, resting my feet on the chair.
I let the curtain of my hair fall forward, obscuring my face, and will my presence to be unnoticed and unobtrusive. All moves I’m way too familiar with.
Through a stroke of karmic good luck, it works for a while.
I sit and watch the practice, my eyes jumping from Cooper to Bruce and back again.
The team is running a few plays, and the other moms cheer for their boys when they catch the ball, but I keep my mouth closed, not wanting to draw any attention.
Luckily, Cooper looks over once and I give him a thumbs-up and a smile, and he seems happy with that. He’s so easygoing sometimes, has no idea that I’m freaking the fuck out, and he never will. I’ll protect him from that at any cost.
As the practice winds down, my luck runs out. The boys give Coach Mike and Bruce handshakes, which is admittedly adorable, and then the boys all get fist-sized peaches from Bruce. “Thanks, Coach B!” they all say graciously.
I’m already standing, my back to the wild gaggle of sweaty boys as I try to fold my chair and forcefully shove it into its handy carrying bag so that I can get the hell out of here. Usually, this is a task that’s quick and easy, but right now it’s ridiculously hard.
From right behind me, I hear a deep voice that sends shockwaves through my every nerve ending, making them buzz with memories. “Thanks again, everyone. Good hustle out there today.”
My shoulders climb to my ears and my cheeks heat as they stain pink. I know the other moms are looking at me, waiting for the show, but I’m determined to not give them one.
Choice one: play it cool, fake it until you make it, which is easier said than done.
Choice two: make a controlled-pace run for it, which is crazy but preferable under the circumstances.
If I toss back a breezy ‘gotta go’ over my shoulder, it’ll just seem like I’m a busy mom, which I am, but not so busy that I’m rude to the men volunteering to help my son.
Rock, meet hard place.
Hard place, fuck you very much.
Choice three and the one I most don’t want to pick: turn around like a damn adult and take my lumps, praying that he doesn’t hate, remember, or even care about me. That’s the best option, though the preferable outcome, I’m not sure which of those I’m hoping for.
I steel my features, willing my shoulders down and back like I’ve practiced.
It’s the reverse of the bad habit I used to have.
Instead of making myself invisible, I choose visibility, choose the image I want to project.
Strong, confident, capable. And when I force power into my every cell, only then do I turn around.
“Hey, Bruce.” My voice doesn’t waver even one iota, and I’m strangely proud of that fact, given the way my knees are shaking.
His eyes follow the sound of his name on my lips, and I see the moment recognition lights his eyes before they go dark. So dark and deep . . . and empty. Like the ocean at midnight on a moonless night, pitch black and hard, a bit scary, even, but not in a way I’m used to.
His jaw clenches once, twice, three times before he takes an audible inhale. I almost think it’s in preparation to yell at me, but then he rumbles, “Allyson.”
It’s not a question or even a greeting, just a statement of fact, my name through his rough vocal cords, but it does something to me.
Something terrifying, something unwanted, something that makes my heart and my pussy clench. Because damn it all, after all these years, all the pain and the heartache and everything that’s happened because and not because of him . . . I want him.
“Small world, huh?” I’m stupid, as stupid as that saying, considering we live in what used to be a small town but has grown so much while I was gone. Grown enough that I didn’t even consider that this blast from my past would rise up at pee-wee football practice, of all places.
Bruce grunts, which I take as agreement. That I’m stupid? That it’s a small world?
I find my tongue, managing to speak normally. “Guess you’re the Coach B I’ve been hearing so much about all week? You and Mike are all Cooper has talked about.”
“Cooper your boy?” Bruce asks as he looks down to my side where my munchkin is happily slurping on a peach. If I’d given him that, he would’ve asked for candy peach rings instead, but Coach B gives it to him and he’s chowing down so fast his chin’s already dripping.
“Yeah, he’s mine.” There’s so much tied up in the simple statement. More than anyone even knows. But it’s the damned truth. Cooper is mine and no one else’s. Especially not his father’s. Never his.
Bruce’s lip tilts up as he talks to me but looks at Cooper. “He’s a good kid. Got a big mouth on him, but he’s a good egg.”
Something seems to pass between them, and I wonder what Cooper said that got him in trouble, because sure as I know my son, that’s what Bruce is alluding to.
Saying kind things and putting good into the world is one of the things I try so hard to instill in Cooper, but it’s hard to put a filter on an unfiltered kid who lives big and bold with little regard for civilized society.
“Thanks.” I don’t know what else to say. So many things dance on the tip of my tongue, but none of them want to take that risky leap into the air between us. So I stick with stating the obvious. “Still here in Great Falls? I didn’t know that.”
His face turns to stone before my very eyes and the temperature drops ten degrees. With the August heat blasting down on us, it should be a welcome reprieve but instead feels painfully frosty.
“Yep, still here.”
He turns to the boys, clearly dismissing me, which stings. Even Michelle raises a brow in question at the cold shoulder. “Okay, boys, practice on Tuesday. Let’s go for the team yell we worked on.”
All the boys crowd together, one hand to the middle in a messy stack of sweat, dirt, peach juice, and germs. “On three . . . one, two, three . . .”
“GO WILDCATS!” they scream as one.
Well, mostly together, at least.
They start to disperse, practice over. A few of the moms tell me goodbye, probing eyes still flicking between me and Bruce like they don’t want to leave too soon and miss anything.
I help their cause and gather Cooper up, along with my chair that never did go back in the bag, but I can do that at home.
“Let’s go, honey.”
Not looking over my shoulder feels like a major accomplishment, but getting in my car and pulling out of the parking lot feels like a reminder that I lost something. Something I didn’t even know I still wanted.
Cooper is doing a play-by-play of practice for me from his point of view, his small voice filling the car as I mutter the occasional ‘uh-huh’ and ‘hmm’, and my mind wanders.
To the past.
To the last time I saw Bruce.
To the last time I loved him.