47. Appropriate
47
APPROPRIATE
Leighton
As my mom texts me that she’s heading to Eleanor’s suite for the game— what an unexpected treat —and asks if I want to join, I burst into laughter that feels wholly inappropriate for what just went down. Of course I don’t want to join her. That’s so her, barely caring that I’m here to work.
Fine, I’m not the main game action photographer, but I do have to capture the players tossing more crocheted dogs into the stands at the end of warm-ups, and it feels like the definition of irony. Me doing something sweet and innocent when I was anything but.
I try to stay focused as I snap, but my mind keeps replaying that moment in the office.
Dad stood near his desk, arms crossed, his face tight. Their voices were too low for me to hear, even with my hearing aids. But with my angle right outside the half open door, neither could see me, though their faces were right in my line of sight. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing closer.
“Falcon,” he’d said—like a question. “They want Falcon?”
I selfishly hoped they meant his brother, then hated myself for thinking that.
“They want points on the board,” Clementine had replied, and my heart sank, knowing that meant Miles, on offense, not Tyler, on defense.
“It’s a nice offer,” she’d added.
There was a shuffle of feet, and I’d spun around, ducking into the stairwell, breathing like I’d run a marathon.
This couldn’t be because of me. Could it? I had no idea, but even so I texted my dad that Mom was here. I didn’t want him blindsided. He replied with a thanks for the heads-up .
I try to shove it out of my mind as the warm-ups end, and fans fill the arena. I don’t have to stay for the game since I’ve finished my workload for the day, but what would I do at home? Pace and wait? The two people I need to talk to are here, so when Josie texts that she has an extra seat with Maeve, I join her.
I don’t tell them a thing though. The situation is far too messy to let others in on—and too personal too.
Instead, I keep myself busy between texts with Melissa about our meeting tomorrow with the bridal website and Sabrina’s message asking about photos for her new skating coach business. Good news, but it feels wrong to have it when I have no idea what’s happening with my…boyfriend. But he’s not really mine yet. Not till we do the hard thing .
I slump in the chair just as Wesley passes to Miles.
“Go, go, go!” Josie shouts, and when Miles scores, she throws her arms around me.
But I’m not even excited about the goal.
“What’s wrong, friend?” she asks.
I wince. “I don’t know. That’s the issue.”
Maeve gives me a sympathetic smile. “Do you want to talk about it?”
It’s a good question, but I don’t know where to start. “Maybe later,” I say, and they both hug me. It helps. For now.
When the game ends—with a win—I make my way out of the stands and toward the hallway leading to the locker room. Maybe I’ll grab some post-game photos since I still have my camera. Just to have them. Can’t hurt, after all.
As I snap Miles and Wesley high-fiving, Tyler and Rowan heading to the locker room, and Christian and Hugo knocking fists, my mother strides over to me once again, a VIP pass dangling around her neck.
“Good news,” she declares, just as I capture the last of the guys.
My stomach dips. “Mom, I’m working.”
“And you’re so good at it,” she says breezily. “But I wanted to let you know I talked to Eleanor, and she said she thinks she can reschedule the calendar shoot. So you can do the wedding.”
“Mom. I really wish you hadn’t intervened in my work. I could have asked her myself,” I say, though truthfully, I wasn’t going to. But fuck her for taking away my autonomy.
“This way you don’t have to worry about it.”
“I didn’t want you to,” I snap, furious. “It’s not appropriate. ”
She snorts a laugh as I lower the camera, letting it rest on the strap around my neck.
“What was that for?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says, rolling her eyes. Then, she adds casually, “Baby, appropriate or not, let’s just say it’s fine with me if you bring Miles to my wedding as your date.”
I freeze. Ice in my veins. Terror in my heart.
“What did you just say?” I whisper.
The players have all gone. It’s just us in the hallway now.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she says quickly, waving an airy hand my way. “I sometimes forget about your little issue.” Then she raises her voice, over-enunciating each word: “Miles. He can be your date. Won’t that be nice to go with your guy?”
And that’s when my dad emerges from the tunnel at last, stopping dead in his tracks. Tilting his head. Eyes lasered right at me. “Your guy?”
My mom spins around. “Hi, Noah. Good to see you. What a great game.”
But I don’t care about the game, and neither does my father.
“What did you just say, Grace?” he asks, his voice deadly calm.
“I was telling Leighton to bring Miles to my wedding to Michael,” she says, chipper as ever. “You can come too if you want.”
Dad’s gaze whips to me, eyes etched with shock, his jaw set hard.
“You’re in a relationship…with Miles?” he demands, then turns to Mom. “And how did you know before me?”
Mom cackles like it’s the funniest thing in the world. “ Oh, Noah, you were never good at anything besides hockey. You just can’t catch on. They went to a coffee shop together before they arrived together, and they had the same name on the cups. Boo. ” She pauses dramatically, then adds, “It’s a nickname for a significant other.”
I. Die.
“It’s his dog’s name,” I blurt out defensively, too defensively, but it’ll do nothing pointing out the name of Miles’s mom’s pup.
She laughs. “Leighton, baby. Really?”
“Yes,” I shout because this isn’t how my dad was supposed to find out. This is an epic shit fest.
“We’re rooming together,” I add, scrambling. “We got coffee on the way to work. That was it.”
Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. I’m lying now. I’m my mother.
And I can’t let that happen. I part my lips to speak, to tell my father the truth I’d planned to tell him before the game when my mother smirks and says, “Is that why you were in the stairwell together too?”
My heart plummets.
She saw us.
“Leighton,” my father says heavily.
The ground is opening up beneath me and swallowing me whole. This is so much worse than I’d imagined.
Mom shrugs. “Besides, I saw the way he looks at you. Like you’re the one. Really, it doesn’t take much to put two and two together. But that was never your forte, was it, Noah?”
She’s awful. But I’m worse.
I turn to my dad. “Yes, we’re together, Dad,” I say just as Miles emerges from the locker room, dressed to board the bus that’ll take them to the team jet .
My dad snaps his gaze to the guy he wants to trade, looking at him like he can’t believe he ever trusted him. Then he looks at me the same way.
I can’t believe how badly I’ve messed everything up.