“Back in the Stone Age.”
I almost smile. For all that teenagers can be brilliant, they’re also unoriginal at times. “Not quite the same—I’ll give you that. Had to carve my letters to my old friends in stone and roll them up the hill to the chiseled-message horse-and-buggy delivery service back then. None of this newfangled email and text technology twenty years ago.”
She rolls her eyes.
Fair. We had technology when I was her age, and I think she knows it.
“Moved in with my aunt, actually,” I add quietly. “And my parents never called to check on me either.”
“I just told you, my dad’s on his way.”
“Took me ten years to realize that just because I couldn’t count on my parents, it didn’t mean I couldn’t count on my friends.”
“So you’re slow. That doesn’t prove anything.”
She’s quiet at school. Does her work, turns it in, gets good grades.
At practices and games, she’s gotten bolder with speaking up when she thinks I’m calling the wrong play or putting in the wrong player.
She runs with the team. Helps when I ask her to. Doesn’t complain about refilling water bottles or cleaning the same balls over and over again. And all season, she’s been a quiet presence behind the bench, telling everyone else they’ve done a good job, or that everyone makes mistakes, or that she knows they can shake it off and get back in there, or what an opponent’s weakness is.
She’s not quiet in the cafeteria. I see her laughing with a small group of friends. Hear her telling stories or watch her flirting with a boy here or there when she passes in the halls sometimes.
But here?
Here, I’m on her territory.
Here, I get to follow her rules.
Teenager or not, this is her home, and she deserves to feel safe here.
I lift a shoulder. “I’d check on any parent who got hurt at one of our games.”
“I can vouch for that,” Charlotte says from the living room.
I want to go in and see what’s changed. If Maisey’s removed the dark leather furniture and the moose head mounted over the fireplace that weren’t included in the estate sale, or if she’s left a lot of Tony in there.
If the wool blanket he got on a trip to Scotland seventeen years ago is still there, or if she put it in a giveaway pile.
If she figured out there’s a secret compartment in the end table closest to the kitchen and that if you hit it just right, you’ll find a stash of butterscotch candies.
Or if she knew that all along, or if she knew it once upon a time when she’d visit and has forgotten now.
“And I’d check on any of my kids whose parents got hurt, or any of my students or players who got hurt,” I tell June. “So if you need anything while your mom’s recovering, I’m right down the driveway.”
“Mom’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine. Thank you. You can go.”
The dismissive phrase is so familiar that my gut aches in a way it hasn’t in years.
This is why I don’t get involved with parents.
It’s messy in ways that dating women without kids isn’t. But that dating pool is shallow in these parts.
Which isn’t the point.
Point is, I’m ridiculously attracted to Maisey, and I can’t be.
Not until June’s not my student or player anymore.
