22. Twenty-two
Twenty-two
“Lyra, I’m so sorry. Seriously. I didn’t read the paper or didn’t remember that’s where your class was going or-or-or.” I set my fork down, trying to find better words to apologize over dinner.
She rolls her eyes, filling a fork with mashed potatoes. “I do not want to talk about it.”
I nod. “Okay, well, I get that, it’s just, I really need you to know that when Scotty gave me the gift certificate, I never dreamed that it would be the same—”
Lyra drops her fork, folding her hands on the table. “Why do you even have that suit?”
“What suit?” Hank asks.
“The one that shows her entire butt,” Lyra snaps, not pulling her eyes off mine.
The boys scream, and Camp, my steadfast dinner guest, chimes in with an out of character, stern-voiced, “Boys. Lyra. Enough.”
I let out a breath. “Okay, one it didn’t show my entire butt,” I lie. “And two, I bought it because . . . I don’t know why . . .There was this podcast about moms dressing differently. Being-being-being different. I just wanted to do something . . . different. Crazy, I guess.”
“Well, you sure nailed that one,” she mutters, picking up her fork again, raking her food across the plate.
When I open my mouth to respond, it’s Camp that speaks. “Let’s do Today’s Best, huh? Boys? You start.” As the boys start talking about terrorizing the girls in their class, I give Camp a relieved smile, which he returns with a quick wink. An unexpected lifeline.
Pretend , I tell myself. We are pretending.
“Your turn, Mama,” Ty says.
“Hm,” I say, swallowing a bite of my salad. “Definitely the massage I got. You, Lyra?”
“Leaving the resort,” she says with an eye roll. “Dad?”
He leans back in his chair, scrubs his knuckles across his mustache, and says, “I’d say showin’ up to the pool at the resort.”
When Lyra groans, despite myself, I laugh.
“Ms. Mitchell says we’re bad kids,” Hank tells me as I tuck him in. “Rotten and can’t be saved.”
I fill my cheeks with air and release it with a puff. “That’s not true.” I pinch the blankets tightly down the length of his little torso. “You are . . . spirited. And sometimes you make choices that are less than ideal . . . like the spitballs. And the lighters. And unscrewing the wheels of her chair.”
“What about the permanent marker mustaches?”
I laugh under my breath, kissing Hank on the head before moving to Ty’s bed. “ And the mustaches. But you aren’t bad. That’s not nice of a teacher to say something like that to a kid.” I pause, deciding that not nice is the nicest thing I’d call that witch. “And maybe she was having a bad day when she said that.”
Why do I keep defending this woman?
Ty nods, folding his arms over his spaceship-covered blanket. “She said you can’t control us because Daddy was a baseball player, and you think the rules don’t apply to you.”
My eyes narrow.
“Okay, you know what.” I kiss Ty on the head, forcing my instant shot of anger aside. “That’s not true either. Dad playing baseball has nothing to do with this. We just need . . .” My gaze moves from Ty in his bed to Hank in his. “Practice. You know, nobody knows how to be a parent. This is the first time I’ve ever had twin four-year-olds, I’m still figuring out how to make you stop with the mustaches and the lighters.”
They both giggle, warming my whole body like heat from a bed of coals. Because, as much as I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, these kids, these two red-headed boys that are pieces of me—extensions of who I am—are not bad. Even on days I think they might be, I know they aren’t. They are good. The best parts of me.
And the wildest.
Even as hard as some of the parts of life have been, I can’t imagine ever changing any of it if it meant these two wouldn’t be here with me now.
“I’m glad you’re my mama,” Ty says with a yawn.
“Me too,” Hank echoes, curling on his side.
My heart expands to the point of pressing bone.
“Me too.”
Camp finds me in the laundry room, sorting clothes and pulling a deadly collection of objects out of the boys’ pockets.
He leans a hip on the dryer, hooking one bare foot across the other as he folds his arms over his chest. Lopsided smile on his lips.
I cut my eyes to him, pulling an arrowhead out of Hank’s shorts. “Don’t start with me, Camp.”
He chuckles. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
My hand in Lyra’s jean jacket, I feel the edge of a plastic bag and pull it out. Four squares of what looks like some sort of fruit snack. I open the bag, smelling. The scent, candy sweet, is also skunky. I hold it up to Camp, my eyebrows pinched. “What the hell is this?”
He scrubs his knuckles across his mustache. “Looks like edibles.”
“Edibles?”
“Edibles.”
I scoff. “I heard what you said, Camp. What the hell is she doing with them?”
He laughs under his breath. “I’m assumin’ getting stoned.”
“Getting stoned?” I ask in a whisper-hiss.
“Gettin’—”
“I swear to God, Camp, I’ll cut you with this arrowhead if you repeat me one more time.” I pick up the dagger-shaped stone I just pulled out of Hank’s pocket. “How are you so calm? Our daughter has drugs. Probably because I mentally scarred her today at the pool. And you’re, just”—I gesture to his calm stance against the dryer—“standing there?!”
Camp chuckles again, wordlessly taking the bag from my hand. He moves methodically, looking at me—studying me like he’s weighing his options—then opens it, takes one of the gummy squares out, and pops it in his mouth like a piece of popcorn.
“You’re eating one?” I whisper-shriek, looking over my shoulder toward the empty house. “What the hell, Camp?! You don’t know where these came from. They could be laced with fentanyl! You could die!”
At this, he drops his head back and laughs, loud enough he could wake the boys.
“I’m 99 percent sure they came from Danny Griffen, who probably stole them from his dad, who makes them in his garage.”
“Billy makes edibles?” I ask, whisper-shrieking again, picturing the guy we went to high school with doing such a thing. And, even all these years later, it seems pretty on-brand for him considering he got sent to the principal’s office regularly for smoking weed in the bathroom. And supplying the entire high school with it.
Including Camp.
And me.
He pulls another one out, proffering it to me, which I scoff at.
“You don’t have to take it, J.” He pauses with a slight shrug. “But it might make you tellin’ me about where you bought that bathin’ suit easier.”
When he clicks his tongue, I flip him the middle finger and glare at the blue cube in his palm.
“What about the kids?”
Am I really considering this?
“The boys are in bed and Lyra is gone. Studyin’ at Kimber’s. What is she gonna do anyway—yell at us for stealin’ her edibles?”
I blow out a breath, knowing from every angle this is an irresponsible thing to do.
Yet, like a big red button that says Don’t Push, it’s devilishly tempting. I know I shouldn’t. Know this drug-laced piece of candy is off-limits. I’m a mother. I have two kids that were told they were bad and a daughter that currently hates me because her friends saw my ass. I’m in a fake happy marriage with my husband, who is now smiling in a very real happy kind of way, offering me some kind of marijuana candy and a high I haven’t felt since I was in college. And, dammit, as much as I don’t want to do it—know I shouldn’t do it—I want to.
Nostrils flaring, I yank the gummy out of his hand and toss it in my mouth, the taste of berries and weed nipping at my taste buds.
When I say, “I hate you,” he grins.