Chapter 13
Thirteen
CLOVER
The dash from the family holding pen, down the hall to the ladies’ room, is a blur of damp-haired hockey players, reporters, staff, and puck bunnies angling for a chance to sneak into the team’s inner sanctum, but I barely see them, and I don’t make eye contact.
I keep my eyes on the ground and my feet moving.
I’m a woman on a mission, my grip on my cane so tight that the golden shark head bites into my palm. My leg isn’t hurting that much tonight, but at this point, my cane is a security blanket. And right now, it’s the only thing keeping me from vibrating out of my skin.
I can’t think straight.
Hell, I can barely breathe, not until I’ve pushed through the heavy restroom door into the bleach-scented silence.
Alone. Finally, alone.
Thank God.
Relief hits me like a physical blow. It’s almost painful, the sudden slackening of tension that leaves my knees feeling like goo. I stagger to the far side of the line of sinks, propping my cane against the wall before bracing my hands on the counter and sucking air.
What the fuck is happening?
And why does it keep happening?
Yes, I’ve been a more emotional person overall since the accident.
But having your entire life turned upside down, your dreams threatened, and your future as a mostly whole human being put in jeopardy while you deal with chronic pain will do that to a girl.
And I’ve found ways to manage. Stalking the internet for clues with Plato, my hacker bestie.
Meditation. Long baths. Zoning out to reality television.
Screaming into Nutasha’s soft, stuffed squirrel tummy with rage when the reality that the asshole who did this to me is getting away with it scot-free gets to be too much.
Messy, yeah. Kind of. But I was coping. Healing. Working through my feelings while getting my shit together.
But ever since I moved into Dean’s garage, everything has changed.
It hasn’t even been two weeks, but I feel like a completely different person.
An unstable person. A person who can’t control the surges of emotion that rise inside me when I get a boots-on-the-ground window into how intense it is to be a parent who’s trying to help your kids heal from this kind of loss.
The biggest loss.
Every time I see one of the people, I’m coming to care for struggling, faltering, then rising to fight their way back to each other with such love, my lungs forget how to function.
I can’t stop comparing their journey to my own.
The girls’ dad to mine. The strained, sour quiet in my childhood home to the joy and tears and shouts and laughter and love in theirs.
I know comparison is the thief of joy, but it’s not that. After a lot of soul-searching, I realized that I’m not jealous or resentful. Not even a little bit.
I’ve actually come to feel more empathy for my dad than I did before.
My father isn’t a Dean Kate kind of man.
He’s not a guy who was ever comfortable with his emotions or physical affection or telling people how he feels.
I honestly don’t think he knows how he feels most of the time.
But he loves me. Deeply. In his own quiet, largely oblivious sort of way.
He isn’t a bad man; he just wasn’t built for fatherhood.
But Dean is, and the girls are so lucky to have him.
I’m so happy for them, it makes me want to cry.
A lot. At least once or twice a day, I have to fight the urge to break down.
To break down for them, and maybe for…me?
And for Dean and my father and all the lost mothers, who never got to live their lives or their dreams. And all the people in the world who have no idea what it’s like to be held tight and safe in the circle of a healthy family.
To be loved by even one person with a heart as big as Dean’s.
“No,” I mutter aloud, shaking my head at myself in the mirror. “You can’t.”
I can’t fall in love with him. I can’t.
It would never work. Never. I’m not mother material. I’m the nanny! I’m the cool auntie, the kind who will take Beatrice’s baby, Charlie, to her first all-ages rock show when she’s fourteen, and make sure she knows how to make a boy put on a condom the right way when she’s a little older.
And maybe I can do the same for Ava and Bella someday, too. Maybe years from now, I can be an auntie figure in their lives—long after my paid caregiver days are over, and time has made the memory of the crush I had on their dad seem silly and quaint.
Maybe…
But right now, it doesn’t feel silly. Or quaint.
And the thought of spending the night playing games and drinking beer and laughing with Dean and the girls while pretending I don’t want to kiss his fucking face off doesn’t sound fun.
It sounds dangerous! I can’t be trusted around Dean with alcohol in my system.
That’s why I haven’t bought a single six-pack or bottle of wine since moving into his place.
But fuck, I could use a beer. I really could.
“One beer,” I warn my reflection. “One beer, two slices of pizza, and then home in a cab before nine.”
Yes. I can do that, I decide as I duck into a stall to pee.
And if I feel too tempted by Dean, I can find someone else to hang out with.
I won’t be on the clock, after all. Beatrice and Blue won’t be there—they’re still on baby leave—but I’m pretty close with Charlotte, and I’m sure she’s coming.
And some of the new girls hanging around the waiting room looked nice enough, not to mention closer to my age.
Hell, maybe I can stop being a weirdo who only hangs out with people ten years her senior, make friends who are also in their twenties, and learn to live a little again!
Like I’ve summoned them with my thoughts—or perhaps, my urine stream—giddy laughter sounds from outside the door, followed by a whoosh as it opens and high heels clack across the tile. The laughter continues as three pairs of new-girlfriend-style stilettos line up at the mirror.
“I’m just saying, if I have to eat Packy’s Pizza for dinner instead of the steak I was promised, I expect to be compensated,” a breathy voice lisps.
“You guys have to help me hook up with someone while we’re there.
Anyone. As long as he’s hot. If I can’t have steak, I’m going to need dick. Like…ASAP.”
My eyes widen.
Well, then.
She’s not being shy about laying it out there, is she?
But when you think about it, steak and dick do have a lot in common. Both very meaty and…satisfying in various ways.
“Oh, shut up, Dawn,” one of the other girls says. “You’ve only been single for what? Three weeks?”
“And that’s two weeks too long to go without dick, Leelee,” Dawn maintains, making the others giggle.
“I’m a very sexual person. Besides, Jason is already dating someone else.
I have to get a photo of me and a hottie up on my socials before he thinks I’m like actually sad about the breakup or something. ”
“You totally do,” a third, slightly clogged-sounding voice says.
“He is so stuck on himself. If anyone needs to be taken down a notch, it’s Jason.
I can’t stand that jerk.” She snorts. “Shit, I probably shouldn’t have said that, should I?
I’ve had too many margaritas. Just don’t get back together with him, okay?
He sucks, and you can do sooo much better. ”
“So much,” Leelee agrees. “And I know just the guy. A sexy silver fox who will know exactly what to do with a horny little mess like you.”
“Oh, yeah? Who? Tell me!” Dawn bounces in excitement, her heels clicking on the tile.
“The Zaddy on the Jumbotron, obvi, the one celebrating eleven hundred games,” Leelee says, making my stomach sink.
“A guy like that, with that body, but a little gray at the temples? He’s not only going to know how to get the job done, but he’s going to be grateful for the chance to do it, you know? ”
My entire body flushes hot as they giggle again. I really wish I weren’t trapped on this toilet, too embarrassed to flush and make a run for it for fear these three will know I’ve been eavesdropping in the stall.
I also really don’t like hearing their plans for Dean.
My Dean.
No, not my Dean. My boss. My boss, who hasn’t been laid in a long time and might actually appreciate the chance to go home with Dawn.
He can’t, obviously, since he’s watching the girls tonight and has to take them home after pizza, but that doesn’t mean he can’t arrange a rain check situation with a hot younger woman.
He likes hot younger women, after all.
Does he? Really? Or did he just like you, before you both thought better of it?
Before I can answer that question, Dawn says, “I mean, yeah, he’s fucking gorgeous, but isn’t he married? Those two cuties with the sign were his, right? And wasn’t that his wife? The tall brunette with the curls?”
One of the others hums low in her throat. “No, that’s like…the babysitter, I think. Or the nanny. Whatever. She’s not with him. From what I could glean from the gossip, he’s newly divorced, and his wife died on the way to her honeymoon with another man, leaving him with the kids.”
They all coo in sympathy and what sounds like a hint of delight.
But then, everyone loves a tragic drama with their hot older guy, right?
Everyone except me.
“Poor baby,” Dawn says, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr. “He definitely needs someone to kiss it and make it all better.”
“And we all know how much you love to kiss it, you slut,” the clogged girl says, earning a shriek of laughter from the others as their heels click in reverse. “That poor man won’t know what hit him.”
The door swings shut behind them, and silence descends once more.
I’m left sitting on the toilet with my sensible nanny jeans around my ankles, bunched right beneath my equally sensible peach cotton briefs, wondering why the hell I thought jeans and a pink Voodoo team sweatshirt were acceptable attire for Dean’s 1,100th game.
I should have known there would be a party after.
A party, where I would have the chance to mingle and flirt and do the same things those girls are planning to do.
And no, I can’t flirt with Dean or any of the other guys on the team, but there will be other people out tonight.
Packy’s leans family-friendly, but plenty of adults go there to drink and play video games.
And bowl, maybe? I think they have a bowling alley in the basement.
I haven’t been to Packy’s since my second week in New Orleans, when a bunch of us from the diner went there on a Sunday afternoon to blow off steam. It wasn’t my scene, but it was a scene, and there were definitely other single people around.
I could have been out on the field with those girls, shooting my shot in a miniskirt, choosing dick over despair. It’s honestly probably the smartest thing I could do for my mental health! Isn’t there a song about how the best way to get over one guy is to get under another?
If only the thought of getting under anyone but Dean didn’t make me want to throw up in my mouth.
I wipe, flush, and wash my hands, cursing my stupid heart and stupider vagina the entire time. Then, I head back to the family area, still not sure what to do.
Should I fake a headache and make a run for it?
Sneak out the side door and text my apologies to Dean and the girls from the bus?
Buy one of those crop top Voodoo jerseys they were selling at the merch stand on the way in, resuscitate my curls with spray from my purse, slap on some lipstick, and pretend I’m a normal twenty-something for the night?
I don’t know.
But I don’t head for the exit.
I keep walking, back down the hall to the room where that Zaddy Dawn has her eye on is waiting to drive me across town.