When my mom had married her fourth husband, part of her plan was to become a regular on some reality series featuring pro sports wives and girlfriends. After three disappointing marriages where she had to pretend to give a shit about football, baseball, and then hockey, I didn’t blame her for leveraging her next husband’s status for a bit of her own.
Dell Hanshauer was a retired basketball Hall of Famer who was kind of a jackass and always called me Emma but he was a household name. Even people who knew nothing about basketball knew about Dell. He had a plum prime-time gig on the leading sports network and a podcast deal that was worth more than the cozy town on the New Hampshire seacoast he called home.
All of this was great—the ongoing Emma incidents aside—except for the part where my mother became a reality TV star when I was a teenager, and this drama-obsessed world of ours formedand announcedtheir opinions on every last thing about her.
I’d never wanted to be in the spotlight like that.
This flood of attention washing over me right now, it was different than her reality series. It wasn’t television, it wasn’t manufactured conflict. I told myself it wouldn’t be like that. My situation, my choices—they weren’t the same as my mother’s.
Although.
The one thing I’d always hoped my mother would do was build a life that wasn’t about a man. All those years we’d spent between the marriages, the times when we had to pick up and start over somewhere new—I’d wanted her to stop looking for the next one. I’d wanted her to exist as a fully formed person first and not as someone’s wife or ex-wife.
My life wasn’t about a man. But now I saw how it could be.
Ryan’s winningstreak didn’t stop with books and antibacterial wipes.
Ines was invited to visit an engineering firm that specialized in robots and thermal things—I didn’t catch most of the details—and they offered her an internship on the spot. Ines, being Ines, asked for a few days to consider the terms.
Once we’d agreed it was a fantastic opportunity with the side benefit of relieving a ton of stress, I blew up Ryan’s phone with long, gushing texts thanking him for his help. He claimed he knew nothing about it but offers like this one didn’t fall out of the sky.
Grace and Ben were visiting some family of his, so Jamie came with me over the weekend to finally chop off a few inches of hair. On an impulse, I added a few deep burgundy overtones to my dark brown base too. I panicked a little when the hairstylist turned me around for the big reveal. I smiled andmade noises about how much I loved it while silently promising myself I could always change the color back and the length would grow out.
Within a few days, my hair only crossed my mind when I realized I had less to twist up with a clip or the feathery fringe pieces fell into my eyes. Though I was too busy at school to pay much attention to how I looked. There was a miraculous string of days—consecutivedays!—when my class didn’t attempt any sort of mutiny. I didn’t want to jinx anything but it seemed like we were turning a corner.
Still, there were times when I wondered what it’d be like if I’d picked a job that didn’t require me to be “on” every day. Something where I could sneak in a little late and half listen during meetings that could’ve been emails. Maybe it would be boring and maybe I’d end up with a list of reasons why teaching was actually the better gig but at least no one would ball up their assignment, throw it at another kid’s head, and yell that they weren’t going to do any of this stupid math junk.
It was enough to make me want to settle into a rocking chair and mutter “Kids these days.”
Jamie had always known she wanted to teach but I didn’t come to that conclusion until college, and mostly because it made my dad furious. According to him, the only worthwhile majors involved business. Pre-law if I wanted to push my luck. He’d spent all four of my years at the University of Vermont trying to talk me out of my education degree. It was a waste of my time and his money, he’d said.
That pretty much summed up my relationship with my father.
The only thing better than the sudden shift for the positive in my classroom was the promise of spending the weekend with Ryan. We were going to the Kentucky Derby, and though that wouldn’t have been otherwise high on my interest list, I felt likeI was in a different universe when I was with him. In many ways, itwasan entirely different universe, but it wasn’t the posh parties that did it for me. It was that my old friend was the safest place in the whole world. I could be a wreck, I could be at my all-time lowest, and that didn’t change anything for him.
I could even kiss him at a busy brunch spot with his sister and all of Boston looking on, and that still wouldn’t change anything.
“What…is this?”Grace asked, tipping the headpiece from side to side. “It’s giving Medusa.”
“It’s a fascinator,” I said, running through my packing list for the weekend. “People wear them to the Derby.”
“Is it a choice that many make or a requirement?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. But Wren insisted I bring three so it sounds like a requirement.” I motioned to the hatbox sitting open on my bed. “That one’s the most over-the-top.”
She gave me a meaningful glance. “Set it aside for me when you’re done with it. I love a good Medusa moment.”
“You really do.” I pointed to a pink peony fascinator. It was smaller but still whimsical. “I’ll probably wear that one. I like the way it plays off my dress.”
I’d ended up with another yellow dress but this one had a full, flowy skirt with pale pink flowers embroidered throughout. This dress not only allowed me to breatheandnavigate stairs but also high kick to my heart’s content.
Unless I got up close and personal with a whole lot of Kentucky bourbon, I didn’t see any reason I’d be high kicking but I liked having the option. A girl’s gotta live.
“You’re right. That is cute.” She held the pink headpiece up to the dress hanging over the back of my door. “And you won’t accidentally turn anyone to stone.”
“You say that like it would’ve been a problem,” I said, checking off items on my list. “I’d enjoy wielding that kind of power.”
“I mean, yeah, same.” She opened a shoe box and frowned at the nude strappy heels that looked like a sprained ankle in the making. “I’m sorry you’ve had to do all of this by yourself.”
