24. Twenty-four
Twenty-four
What felt like hurt in the dark reveals itself as anger in the morning light.
Campy did, in fact, piss me off.
I refuse to talk to him. Refuse to think of him. Refuse to acknowledge the way he so easily answered his phone and left me hanging—left us hanging.
For every person sacrificing, there’s someone that isn’t, that never will.
This is all a mirage. Fake, like we decided it would be.
I can’t even blame him—though I do—he’s doing exactly what I asked him to: being nice in front of the kids, showing up, and being chatty.
Camp is doing what I wanted, and I hate him for it.
Other than the mishap in the shower, everything has gone according to plan.
And as for the shower, I know now it was clearly a mistake. Or a dream. A very wet dream.
And him asking to kiss me? That was the drug candy.
There’s no other explanation. Because if there was, why on earth would he take that call in the middle of the moment?
A car honks and I remember I’m driving.
With an apologetic wave, I turn up the radio, voices from the latest podcast filling the speakers.
THE PERFECT MOM PODCAST WITH ABBIGAIL BUCHANAN
EPISODE 261: The Art of the Pivot with Greg Brownwell
My fingers tap an agitated beat against the steering wheel as Abbigail introduces the guest, his book, but I can’t focus. I can barely hear over the blood pumping through me.
When I pass through town, by Irma’s gallery, Reed’s Harley, and every other spot that triggers me, I turn the volume up.
Abbigail: Alright, so, Greg, you’re a bit of an anomaly. A doctor that goes by his first name and spends more time on a surfboard than in an office.
Greg: Sounds right.
[Light laughter.]
Abbigail: I love that. Well, I don’t want to keep you from the waves out there in California, so let’s jump into it. Your book, Stop Building Dams and Go with the Flow —which, love that title by the way—is all about pivoting with life’s ebbs and flows. If you had to summarize the central point, what would it be?
Greg: Ahh, yeah, okay. Cramming three hundred pages into a short paragraph, no pressure. [Light laughter.] In all seriousness, here’s the takeaway: We make choices, form opinions, draw lines in the sand for our future self, but life changes—including us and other people in it—and we should constantly reevaluate. Allow.
Abbigail: Allow?
Greg: Allow. Allow ourselves to reconsider. To move the lines in the sand. To change our minds. To pivot. There’s an art to it. Sometimes we think, “Oh, if I change my mind, people will think I’m wishy-washy,” but if it’s done right, you’ll come out happier and won’t care. I’ve watched thousands of waves in my life, and none of them care what the last one did. They go where they go. And the sand on the beach doesn’t resist it, it changes, and it’s beautiful just the same. At the same time, I’ve watched people—surfers and swimmers alike—try to fight it, try to be a kind of dam against it, but there’s no fighting it. Water always wins, and life will too if we don’t adjust.
I glare at the radio.
Abbigail: Okay, so can you give the mamas listening an example of how this relates to their lives? How is it applicable?
Greg: Sure. Maybe when you have a baby—even before you have a baby—you think, “I’m going to be the kind of mom that only feeds my kid organic whole foods,” but then the baby becomes a kid, and suddenly the only food they will eat is a shit-filled chicken nugget. Do you stay the mom you thought you’d be—feeding only organic food that your kid won’t eat—or do you pivot and give them chicken nuggets? Neither is wrong, of course. Sure, the organic option is better for the kid, but if they aren’t eating and every meal is a battle, is it really worth it? Is it really even better?
Abbigail: Oh, gosh, I feel that example in my bones as I have two of my own very picky eaters here at home.
Greg: Right? I’d say most parents end up with at least one. And this thought process can be applied to our adult relationships too. When we get married or meet our partners, we are one person. But life changes us—waves against the sand—and what we think relationships will look like often doesn’t match up. We need to allow ourselves to adjust expectations. To change our minds about what’s working. To look at our life, ask ourselves what we need now, not what we needed five, ten, fifteen years ago, and go with it. We can either go with the flow and make purposeful adjustments or build dams and block progress.
Abbigail: Pivot.
Greg: Exactly.
“No!” I shout, slamming the podcast off.
The weight of a boulder crushes my chest. Like Greg the stupid surfing doctor did that interview just to torment me in my Goldfish crumb–covered minivan.
Pivot?
I scoff.
Yes, Camp has made an effort, but I’m not some kind of pushover. It’s too late for adjusting expectations and purposeful adjustments . There are lessons to be learned. Big-picture things. Heads must roll.
By the time I park next to Scotty’s old Bronco, anger is rolling off me like Greg’s Pacific Ocean waves.
I get out of the minivan and slam the door, locking it, only to realize I don’t have my bag or water bottle, and unlock it. Muttering as I gather my things, dropping them all in the middle of the parking lot, muttering some more.
To hell with Camp. And Greg. And the whole damn state of California.
Blowing out a breath, I face the building in front of me. Kudzu vines stretch across the old brick and around a door propped open with a rock. Loud music pounds through the air, and a neon sign in the shape of a pair of boxing gloves hangs in the window. Fight Club. Of course.
I need this, I realize. I need to punch myself back to reality.
Scotty appears at the entrance, my athletic opposite. Where I’m wearing black cotton leggings and an oversized T-shirt, she’s in red spandex shorts and a crop top with her hair in a short French braid and looking like she belongs to an actual fight club.
I smile; she doesn’t.
“Everything okay?” I ask, looking over her shoulder at the bodies moving around bags and a ring. Shoulders bounce, fists fly.
She bounces on the balls of her feet, gloves tucked under her arm, distracted. She looks how I feel.
“Fine, yeah. Sorry. Just, you know. Fight club?” She laughs ironically, but it’s forced. She’s not telling me something. “How cliché, right?” She hands me a clipboard with paperwork. “Fill this out and then we can go in.” She pauses, her eyes darting around the parking lot. “You tell Camp you were coming?”
I snort. “No. He’s doing some kind of team building thing with the coaches”—I roll my eyes—“and Lyra’s watching the boys. He’s being—”
“It’s fine.” She cuts me off, bouncing in place again.
When she catches me watching the movement, she stops.
“You roasting coffee beans again?” I ask, stilling my pen on the paper as I recall that weird phase of hers. “I haven’t seen you this jacked up since you were drinking all that caffeine.”
She looks away. “You’ll see.”
I shake my head, sign the last form—a waiver that says I won’t sue them if I die—and walk inside. That’s when I see. All of them.
“Sonofabitch.”
“June Cannon?” a familiar face says, blocking my view as he steps in front of me while also shocking the hell out of me.
Though I want to rip heads off, the smile I give is genuine.
“Ford Callahan?” I ask, incredulous, giving him a hug, now completely understanding Scotty’s bizarre behavior. A grade ahead of us in high school, star football player, current police officer . . . and, once upon a time, Scotty’s brother’s best friend and her not-boyfriend boyfriend.
“I heard you were back in town. And a cop. It’s been too long,” I say, taking him in, smile overtaking my face despite that just over his shoulder, Camp is jovially throwing punches as all his coaches gather around him. And Dani. Team building.
Ford grins. “It has.”
He, like every other man in this stupid town, has aged like a vampire. His hair is buzzed short, and his ageless baby face is now covered with a slight scruff of beard. His contagious smile covers his face—dimples and all—and his dark blue eyes shine. I’ve learned there are two kinds of police officers: those that eat the donuts, and those that do not. Judging by the way his athletic shorts hang, his T-shirt clings, and his forearms flex when he breathes, Ford Callahan does not eat the donuts.
My eyes cut to Scotty; she gives me a tense eye roll. She sees Ford is hot and is pissed about it.
“Way too long.” He glances at Scotty. “We should all get together. For old times’ sake, you know? At the lake or something. Grab a drink. Catch up.”
My eyes shift from Ford—slowly—to Scotty.
Before I can say anything, she lets out the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard, making the people immediately by us stop what they’re doing and look. Ford and I both stare at her as she laughs like a crazy person until tears drip down her face. As abruptly as she starts, she stops, jerking her chin back and looking at Ford. “Shit on a shovel, Ford, you’re serious,” she says, venom in her voice. She steps toward him, a fraction of an inch from them touching, eyes locked with his. “I would rather eat a maggot-filled asshole out of a corpse than catch up with you.”
My mouth opens, stunned, but she grabs my hand and jerks us away, leaving Ford gaping as we march toward someone wearing a shirt labeled Trainer.
“Before I come unglued about Camp being here,” I say, stumbling as she drags me across the gym, “please know you handled that like shit, and I’m going to force you to talk about it at some point in the future.”
“Go fuck a showerhead,” she spits at me at the same time we approach the trainer. His square chin jerks back, eyes wide. Leave it to Scotty to shock the meatball-shaped meathead covered in ink.
“We’re here to learn to kick some ass,” she tells him, matter-of-fact, eyes one shade shy of red. If she wasn’t my best friend, I’d be scared shitless.
“Okay,” he drawls with a slight chuckle, rubbing a mangled-knuckled hand over his shaved head.
He launches into an overview about what we will be doing, but my attention goes to Camp, bouncing around with boxing gloves with his coaches. A trainer stands in the corner, demonstrating a move, then they all repeat it. Laughing. Team building.
I want to puke.
While I was having a minivan meltdown minutes ago over our situation, he’s . . . fine. Completely unaffected. Whether Camp and I are together or not has absolutely no impact on his happiness, and it raises my temperature by fiery degrees.
I would just love to hear Surfer Greg’s thoughts on this. No, I decide, I would not.
Camp spots me from the ring he’s in and shock covers his face for a split second before he smiles and waves.
Fake. So damn fake.
While he’s looking at me, Dani playfully punches the side of his head with a big red boxing glove, and his attention instantly snaps back to her and her too-swishy ponytail.
My eyes cut to Scotty. As the muscled meatball talks about the importance of warming up, she’s glaring at Ford.
We’re both powder kegs ready to explode for very different reasons. But maybe not. She hates Ford; I hate Camp.
“Yeah, so listen,” I say, cutting off the safety speech, and peeling my shirt off so I’m in a sports bra like Scotty, ignoring the fact my boobs look nowhere near as perky as hers. “We don’t need five minutes of jump rope, and I signed a waiver that said I won’t sue you if I die. I don’t want a warm-up; I need to beat the hell out of something. Let’s start there.”
A smirk tugs at Scotty’s lips. “What she said.”
I don’t know how long we’ve been punching the bags, but I’m quite sure all the pent-up anger I’m harboring would allow me to do it forever. The gloves are hot as ovens around my hands, my shoulders scream with every swing, and sweat is dripping into every crevice, but I don’t care. I’d hit this bag until my hands fell off and I die of dehydration if they’d let me.
Then Camp’s there, next to me, watching every hit as he drinks from his water bottle.
“Didn’t expect to see y’all here,” he says with his stupid drawl. “Scotty.”
She grunts from the bag next to me but doesn’t stop the heavy blows she lands on it.
“You and Dani seem to be having fun,” I say, breathless as I throw another punch. And another.
He snorts next to me. “We are.” I cut my eyes to the stupid smirk that’s on his stupid face under his stupid mustache. “You jealous?”
Yep.
As fast as the word pops in my brain, I do what I need to: I take Surfer Greg’s advice and pivot. Literally. I spin from facing my bag to facing him and deliver a gloved hook straight to his jaw, sending his water bottle flying to the ground, spilling across the floor.
The shocked look on Camp’s face is there as fast as it’s gone, then it’s amusement in his eyes as he straightens, rubs a palm on his cheek, and stares at me.
I punch him again.
His amusement turns to a laugh.
The sound is gasoline to my red-hot rage.
“Asshole,” I mutter.
When I pull my arm back again, sending a red glove shooting toward his face, he blocks it and grabs my wrist with his hand, stopping me with his strength.
My breath is fast and shallow as I glare at him, standing calm and amused. Like seeing me so wound up is the best thing ever.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” a voice says from behind me. “Sparring only happens in the designated areas, folks.”
“Sorry,” Camp says, not taking his eyes off mine. “My wife here was just pretendin’ .”
His emphasis sends a thousand needles into my bones. I jerk my arm out of his grasp and meet the trainer’s narrowed eyes as his chin jerks back. “Pretending? That looked like a real hook to me.”
“Yes, well . . .” I wipe the sweat on my brow with my sweatier forearm before dropping my gloved hands by my sides, eyes going back to Camp. “Sometimes pretending makes things confusing, and we forget the real reason we are doing things, and that people always show their true colors when nobody else is around.”
Camp steps closer. “Oh, really? Because I thought when people ask for pretend that’s exactly what they want and nothin’ else matters because they’ve already made up their mind, regardless of what is or isn’t or what other people do or do not want.”
“Okay,” the meatball says, dragging the word out as he eyes us both. “Not sure what any of that means, but no sparring unless you’re in the designated area. Got it?”
I roll my eyes, nod, and resume trying to kill the red bag hanging in front of me.
“June, listen—”
A whistle blows from across the gym from the middle of the ring and silences whatever lie Camp was going to say.
“Anyone want to do a sparring demo against Ford? He’s professionally trained and will be demonstra—”
“Me!” Scotty shouts from next to me. “I’ll do it.”
My eyes widen, but she doesn’t look at me. She marches toward the ring in the center of the gym, tattoos on her spine peeking out from the bottom of her shirt. She looks like she’s about to burn the whole place to the ground.
Ford pauses as he adjusts his gloves, gaze locked on her as she approaches. Tension thickens with her every step.
She slinks between the ropes of the ring, punching the tops of her gloves against each other like she’s done this a thousand times, she and Ford staring at each other as we all move to the sidelines.
“Hey, June!” Dani whispers as she steps next to me, eyebrows wiggling like this is the best thing ever. “Camp didn’t mention you were coming. It’s fun, right?” She grins; it irritates me.
Something in this room turns me into a psycho, because I hear myself say, “Camp’s married. To me.” Dani’s grin crashes, mouth dropping. “Just so you know.”
She looks like a kid who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar but says nothing.
Ha!
Jack steps up to her other side, oblivious. “Hey, June.”
I flick him a quick smile, then revert my focus back to my best friend, who, according to the tingly feeling on the back of my neck, is about to do something completely unhinged.
The trainer—a dark-haired man slightly less meatballish but just as muscled as the trainer that was talking to us earlier—starts addressing the room, demonstrating some movements. Behind him, Ford leans toward Scotty. His mouth moves as he quietly says something to her I can’t make out. She tenses. Looks at me.
I dip my chin, eyebrows raised.
Like I’ve just given her some kind of green light, her arm pulls back before snapping forward, landing a heavy blow to the side of Ford’s face.
Then another.
And another.
Easily weighing forty pounds more than her, he does nothing to stop her, fight back, or move.
Ford stands and takes the hits like he deserves them.
A wave of hushed mumbles sweeps through the crowd as we watch. The shocked trainer spins around, steps in front of Scotty and pushes her back. “Hey!” he snaps. “Hey! Cool it or you’re out! You hear me?”
Scotty’s chest rises and falls, her breath audible and face red.
“I’m done anyway,” she says, not looking away from Ford.
The gym is silent as she undoes her gloves and drops them in the middle of the ring before slipping out between the ropes and taking long strides toward the door, picking up her duffle without even stopping.
I turn to follow her, and Camp grabs my arm, eyes pleading with a question he hasn’t asked.
Big picture, big picture, big picture.
Dani, Jack, and a couple of the other coaches chuckle about Scotty’s performance. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” one of them says with a laugh.
I don’t bother explaining the scorning. How Scotty's brother died and Ford took off like a thief in the night. There’s no point.
Without saying a word, I snatch my arm from Camp’s grip, grab my bag, and chase Scotty to the parking lot where I find her already at her Bronco, drinking her water in gulps.
I lean against my minivan, squint at the sinking sun, and let the silence hang. Each of us processing the level of crazy we just displayed.
“That escalated quickly,” I finally say without looking at her.
She laughs under her breath. “I haven’t seen him in years. It’s like I couldn’t control my reaction. Like my fists needed to pound his face.”
Silence.
A car parks next to us, and a group of chattering teen boys get out and walk toward the gym, oblivious to the pissed off middle-aged women stewing next to them.
“If it makes you feel any better,” I finally say, “I know the feeling. And I live with Camp.”
She lets out another soft laugh, takes a long sip of her water, then looks at me.
“You gonna go all podcast on me and make me talk about it?” she asks, pulling the keys out of her bag.
“Me?” I bring a hand to my chest in feigned offense. “I would never.”
In the driver’s seats of our vehicles, we roll the windows down, angling our heads so we can see each other.
“What’d Ford say to you up there to turn you into a rabid dog?” I ask.
She drops the side of her head on her steering wheel. “He apologized.”
I consider saying something funny, but the look on her face tells me she won't laugh, so I stay quiet.
“I listened to a podcast with an idiot from California that says it’s okay to change our minds about things.”
She snorts, sitting upright again and shifting the Bronco into reverse. “Let me know how that works out for you, Joo.”
I tell myself I don’t know what that means, but when I open my mouth to argue, she’s already peeling out of the parking lot.