I blinked down at him. “Did you grab an extra pair of socks?”
Josh tipped his head back and groaned. “No.” Dropping his bag, he ran toward his room. In no time, he was back out, stuffing the extra socks he was always forgetting into his bag. The kid had sweaty feet and needed an extra pair, especially on a day like today.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said, motioning him forward.
I locked the front door as he threw his things into the back. Glancing in the direction of Dallas’s house, I noticed his truck was gone. The fields where the tournament was happening that weekend were almost an hour away, and Josh and I listened to music on my playlist the entire ride, singing along softly half the time. Josh and I were both still half asleep. Our resident ray of sunshine was spending the weekend with my parents at a family member’s house in Houston instead of frying under the sun with us.
At the park, we climbed out of the car, yawning. Josh grabbed his bag and then helped me lower the cooler out of the back, tiredly smiling at me when our eyes met. I held my hand out, palm up, right in front of him, and he smacked it.
“I love you, J,” I said.
He blinked sleepily. “Love you too.”
And in that way that Josh and I had—my oldest nephew, my first real love—we hugged each other, side to side, by the car. While Louie might be the sun, Josh was the moon and the stars. He was my gravity, my tide, my ride or die. He was more like my little brother than my nephew, and in some ways, we had grown up together. I had loved him from the moment I laid eyes on him. Loved him from the moment I knew he was a spark of life, and I was going to love him every day of my life.
He pulled back after a tight squeeze of my middle. “Okay, let’s go.”
We went.
By the time we found the group of Tornado members clustered around one of the picnic tables at the center of the three baseball fields, I was already sweating. “Morning,” I greeted all the parents and kids who turned to look at us as we walked over to them. I didn’t miss the long look two moms shot at me as their gaze went from my mostly bare legs to my face and back. Haters. I also didn’t miss the inappropriately long look one of the dads, who I knew was separated from his wife, shot me either. I just chose to ignore them. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Taking a seat on one of the nearest picnic tables, I waited for the coaching staff to arrive. Dallas was the first one to get there. He had two duffel bags hanging over each shoulder, an orange water cooler balanced in his hands, and his sunglasses and baseball cap on. He was wearing a red Polo shirt that had the team’s emblem and what I figured was his name embroidered on it. And just like usual, he had his holey cargo shorts and tennis shoes on. I noticed him glance in my direction and tip his chin up, but he didn’t greet me as he headed straight to the main congregation of parents and kids, and eventually broke off to walk the boys over to an empty patch of grass to start warming up. There was still well over an hour left until the tournament started, and I knew there was no rush to move toward whatever field would be used first until later.
I sat there for the next hour flipping through a magazine and browsing random stuff on my phone. When I noticed a few of the other moms getting up and start making their way over to one of the fields, I grabbed my things and followed after them. Parking the cooler on the floor beside the second row, I hopped up and took a seat to wait. Josh was on home, catching the balls the pitcher was throwing at him to warm up, but it wasn’t going so well. The pitcher was throwing the ball too high every single time. After about the tenth time, Josh had to get up and run after it. Trip, who had showed up minutes ago, waved the pitcher over to talk with him, giving Josh a break.
Standing up, I snagged a bottle of water from my cooler and walked over to the fence separating and protecting the audience from the game and players. “Josh!” I hissed over at him, the fingers of my free hand clinging to one of the links. Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught the big, male figure that belonged to Dallas standing by third base talking to one of the moms that had been giving me a bitch face earlier. It was the Christy woman I was pretty sure, if I had my hair color correct.
Josh turned around immediately, ripping his facemask off, and walked toward me, his palms facing upward as I tossed the bottle up high to go over the fence. “Thanks,” he answered, right after catching it.
“Did you put sunblock on?” I asked.
He nodded, the bottle glued to his mouth as he guzzled a third of it down.
I couldn’t help myself. “On your face too?”
“Yes,” he replied, one eye narrowed.
“Just checking, attitude,” I muttered, noticing the mom who had been talking to Dallas turn around and head over in our direction. It only took a moment for my brain to process who the parent was.
It was definitely Christy, the person who had gotten me suspended weeks ago.
From the way her face was tilted down, even with a pair of aviator glasses on, her attention was focused on the lower half of my body. Something in my brain recognized that this wasn’t going to go well, but something else in my brain said that I needed to behave. I could be an adult. I was not about to get suspended again, damn it.
So I smiled at her and said, “Hi,” even though I was grinding down on my back teeth, expecting the worst. Where I’d last seen him, Dallas was standing by third base, his head facing our direction. I could tell his forehead was wrinkled, but he didn’t make a gesture to move. What was this about?
I’d only seen him at practice once in the week since he, Jackson, and Miss Pearl had come over for spaghetti. We had waved at each other since then and that was it. I could have stayed after practice to talk to him, but by that time rolled around, I still had two boys to feed and put in bed. I didn’t have time to wait around for the other parents to give me a chance to talk. I didn’t take it personally that he wasn’t shouting from the rooftops that we were friends and spent time outside of practice together. There was also that big thing that always seemed to hang around my thoughts while we were at practice: the last thing I wanted was any kind of drama from the other parents thinking something dumb about us.
“Josh, go finish warming up,” I told him when Christy didn’t return my greeting as she came to a stop at an angle to me on the other side of the fencing. Josh frowned as his gaze bounced back and forth between the other mom and myself. “Everything is fine.”
Josh hesitated for one more second before nodding and putting his facemask back on, taking the bottle of water with him.
Before I could even open my mouth to ask what was going on, her words came at me, sharp and straight like an arrow. “You need to go change.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Your shorts, Diana. They’re inappropriate,” the mom, who hadn’t spoken to me once since our incident, said.
I went from one to ten instantly, courtesy of her words and choice of tone that was 100 percent bitchy and nothing else. I didn’t like her to begin with, so my patience was already in the negatives by the time she’d opened her mouth. But I tried my best to be mature. “I’m a grown woman, and they’re not that short or inappropriate,” I told her coolly, my hands instantly going to my sides. My fingertips were on the hem of my shorts with my hands straight down; it wasn’t like I was palming a bunch of bare thigh.
“I wasn’t asking what you thought about them,” she said, her reflective sunglasses flicking down to my thighs once more. “I don’t want Jonathan being exposed to that.”
Be mature. Be an adult. Be an example to Josh, Diana, I tried telling myself. I’d say I only halfway failed. “What is that? Thighs? Half of a woman’s thighs that he’s seen every time you’ve taken him somewhere?” That sounded a lot more smart-ass than I’d intended it to.
She could obviously tell because I could sense the tension coming off her body. “I don’t know what kind of places you take Josh, but I don’t take my Jonny any places like that. There’s children here. This isn’t a brothel.”
A br
othel. Had this bitch really just said brothel? As in I worked at one or hung around one? Really?
I glanced over my shoulder because she was talking so fucking loud. Couldn’t she use her inside voice and just talk to me? I wasn’t surprised to see about eight sets of parents staring at us. Listening. So I asked her one more time to make sure I wasn’t imagining anything, “Excuse me?”
“Go buy some pants,” she said so fucking loud, I’m sure the opposing team heard her. In a whisper, with her eyes straight on me, she said, “Look, honey, I know you’re Josh’s aunt, but if you’re looking for a husband, this isn’t the place. Some of us are real moms. Look around. We’re not dressed like hookers, are we? Maybe you could learn something about real parenting from us.”
Someone cackled loudly enough for me to hear.
My entire body went hot, red hot.
I didn’t give very many people the power to hurt my feelings, but Christy’s comment went directly to my heart. Real mom. It was the real mom that pierced straight through me, robbing the breath from my lungs and the anger from my head.
Realistically, I knew my ass wasn’t anywhere close to hanging out. I knew that. It didn’t matter that there had been a handful of moms on Josh’s old team that made the girl on Dukes of Hazard look like a pilgrim. In that moment right then, I was the only one with some bare leg exposed and it wasn’t even that fucking much.
I cleared my throat, fighting back the pressure squeezing at my lungs and the heat covering every inch of my skin. What example did I want to set for Josh? That he always needed to come out on top? Some things were worth winning and other things were not. With every inch of self-control in my body, I tried holding on to the very edges of my maturity, because if someone was an asshole to you, you didn’t always have to be an asshole back.
“Christy,” I said her name calmly, “if you want to talk to me about my clothes”—fuck off and go to hell, I said to her in my brain but in reality I went with—“don’t raise your voice at me. I’m not a child. While we’re at it, you don’t know anything about me or Josh, so don’t make it seem like you do.”
Of all the replies she could have gone with, she chose, “I know enough about you.”
While I’d been friendly with the parents on Josh’s old team, none of them had ever been close enough to me to know what happened to turn us three into a family. All they knew was that I was raising Josh and Louie, and that had come up because there were Spanish-speaking parents on the team who overheard him calling me tia all the time. When they’d ask, I told them the truth. I was their aunt. I didn’t care what they thought; they could all assume whatever they wanted.
“You don’t know anything,” I practically whispered to her, balanced somewhere between being upset and really pissed. “I don’t want to embarrass you or make you feel like an idiot, so please stop while you’re ahead with the comments. Talk to me like an adult, because I bet your son is looking over here right now, and we want to teach the boys how to be good people, not big mouths with opinions and a lack of information.”
It was her turn for her face to go red and she pretty much squawked at me, “You’re going to embarrass me? You embarrassed yourself and Josh coming to a tournament dressed like that. Have a little respect for yourself, or respect for whoever was reckless enough to let you watch their kids.”
To a certain extent, I knew what she was saying wasn’t the truth, but her words were a brutal reality that managed to pick at those frayed little ends inside of me. Sticks and stones might break your bones but words could also hurt you. A lot. A lot more than they should have because I knew she didn’t know anything.
But even being aware of all of that, this knot formed in my throat, and before I could stop it, my eyes got misty.
I looked at the fencing to the side away from her as two tears jumped out of the corners of my eyes and streamed down one cheek before I wiped them away with the back of my hand almost angrily. I think I lasted there in front of her all of five seconds before two more tears crashed down my cheeks, falling from my jaw to my chest. It wasn’t until I felt my lip start to quiver that I swallowed and turned away from her, embarrassed—humiliated—and feeling so small I could have crawled into a hole and stayed there forever. Worst, I couldn’t even argue with her points.
Instead of doing all the things I should have done in retaliation, I turned around and started walking away.
“Diana!” I heard Dallas yell.
One second later, I heard, “Aunt Di!” But I couldn’t stop.
I speed walked away from the bleachers, my face angled toward the ground. One tear after another slid down my cheeks, falling into my mouth and then down my chin to my chest. My vision went blurry as I stared at the sidewalk before catching a glimpse of the small building where the restrooms were located, and I pretty much darted into it just as three times as many more tears came out of me.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even find it in me to make a noise as my back hit the cement wall in the bathroom. My hands went to my knees as I hunched over, my heart cringing and flexing. Aching.
Who was I kidding? I was a fuckup. I was going to ruin the boys. What the hell was I doing raising them? Why hadn’t I just let the Larsens take them? I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t even manage not to embarrass them. I thought that I’d stopped making so many stupid decisions, but I was wrong.
God.
I cried more and more and more, silent tears that didn’t clog my throat because it was already full of shame and guilt and anger at myself.
Even as a little kid, I either got mad or I cried if I was embarrassed before I got angry.
“Aunt Di?” Josh’s voice was hesitant and whispered, but so familiar it cut right through my thoughts.
I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, keeping my gaze on the cement floor. “I’m okay, Josh,” I called out in a weak, hoarse voice that said I wasn’t.
He didn’t reply, but the sound of cleats clacking on the floor warned me he was coming before I saw him peek around the edge of the wall. His small face was soft and worried, his mouth and eyes downturned. “Tia.” The word came out of him in a hiss, a claim.
“I’m okay. You should go back to the field. I’ll—” I stopped talking when this sob crept up on me out of nowhere. The hand I slapped over my mouth didn’t help any.
“You’re crying.” Josh took another step further into the building. Then another.
Dragging my palm up toward my eyes, I wiped at them. Get it together. I had to get it together. “I’m okay, J. I promise. I’ll be okay.”
“But you’re crying,” he repeated the words, his eyes flicking across the stalls like he was worried he’d get caught doing something bad but obviously not worried enough because he kept creeping toward me. His hands met at his chest. “Don’t cry.”
Oh my God. Him telling me not to cry only made me cry even more. Before I could stop myself, as he got closer and closer, I blurted out, “Do I embarrass you?”
“What?” He stopped in place two feet away. He genuinely looked like I’d hit him.
“You can tell me the truth,” I said in broken syllables, sounding like a complete liar. “I don’t want you to wish I wasn’t around if it’s because of something I wear or something I do—”
“No! That’s stupid.” Those eyes just like mine went over my face and he shook his head, looking so much like a young Rodrigo it only made me feel that much worse.
“I don’t—” I was hiccupping. “I know I’m not your real mom or even Mandy,” the words kept getting broken up the more I cried. “But I’m trying. I’m trying so hard, J. I’m sorry if I mess up sometimes, but—”
His body smacked into mine so hard, my spine hit the wall again. Josh hugged me like his life depended on it. He hugged me like he hadn’t since his dad died. The side of his cheek went right along my chest as he held me tight. “You’re better than my real mom, better than Mandy—”
“Jesus, Josh. Don’t say stuff lik
e that.”
“Why? You always tell me not to lie,” he said into my chest as he hugged me. “I don’t like you crying. Don’t do it anymore.”
Oh my God. I did the complete opposite and bawled a little more, right into my eleven-year-old.
“Ms. Christy is a witch,” he said into my shirt.
A mature adult would have told Josh not to call a person a witch and deny that Christy was being one. Except I’d call her behavior that of a bitch, not a witch.
But I didn’t feel very much like a mature adult then. I’d used up all my adulting points of the day. So all I did was hug Josh closer. “She is,” I agreed with a sniffle.
“I’ll quit,” he stated. “I can join another team,” my nephew offered, cracking my heart in half.
“Joshy—” I started to say before I got cut off.
“Can I talk to your aunt, Josh?” a rough, voice filled the bathroom, making me look up to see Dallas standing three feet away. When the hell had he walked in without us noticing?
The boy in my arms tensed before he turned around, his stance wide and protective. “No.”
God help me, the tears started up all over again. I loved this kid. I loved him with every single cell in my body. There was a lot of things about love that you could only learn after you’d faced the real kind. The best kind wasn’t this soft, sweet thing of hearts and picnics. It wasn’t flowery and divine.
Real love was gritty. The real kind of love never quit. Someone who loved you would do what’s best for you; they’d stand up for you and sacrifice. Someone who loved you would face any inconvenience willingly.
You didn’t know what love was until someone was willing to give up what they loved the most for you.
But it was also never letting them make that choice, either.
Dallas sighed, his hands going into his pockets. His thick-framed sunglasses had been shoved up onto the brim of his hat, but I didn’t look at his face. I didn’t want to. “Please, Josh.”
“Why? So you can make her cry too?” my defender asked.
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