I struggle to hear the disappointment in her voice, but I know it’s there. Our lives would be so different, so muchbetter, if I hadn’t fucked this up so badly. We’d have a 24-hour nurse just for Donovan. She’d have had an entire team of doctors making sure she healed properly. We wouldn’t be sharing her ancient Kia. And I don’t know how I’m going to handle her stairs.
“What . . . how . . . what did you think I did with this money?” she says, and she actually laughs, but I hear the raw emotion behind it.
“I had no idea. I mean, what sat best with me was that you had an insane amount of medical debt, both you and yourdad, and between all that and his home, that ate up most of it.”
“That’s why you asked. I told you—dammit,that’swhy you asked?”
“I’m so sorry. I don’t care what you were doing with that guy. I really don’t.” I’m not about to tell her that I’d understand if this was enough to drive her back to him, no way I’m going to give her that idea. But I would understand.
“Wait, but what were you thinking before you knew everything else about me?”
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“I thought . . . fuck. I thought you were just a scammer when I first got the messages, and then I thought you were pulling some kind of baby trap and you were going to milk me for everything with the child support when I found out you were pregnant. Andy had me almost convinced it wasn’t going to be my kid at all—”
“Fuck Andy!” she huffs, only to sink right back down as though embarrassed when she is entitled to every rage she feels right now.
“Yep. He’s cool now, but I said that a lot, too.” She’s about to say a lot worse about me. “And then I saw your apartment and . . . and the only thing I could figure is you had some place set up elsewhere, and you were going to run, and I’d just messed up your plans by being there. But I didn’t know if you were going to run off with Donovan or, with all the stuff just boxed up in the corner like that, like you weren’t taking it with you, either, like you . . .”
“Like I was going to abandon my son. Like my mother abandoned me. Like your parents abandoned you.”
I can’t say it. I can’t agree that my world is ending here. It’s a world I never thought I wanted or expected to have. Aworld I didn’t think I could handle if it wasn’t all structured around my life. I never thought I’d want a world that could hurt me so much.
And it does. Every day hurts me. Every day I check Donovan’s hands and feet obsessively. Every day I calculate what I need to do to get the money to cover the blackmail along with my household expenses. Every night, I listen for Tilly’s even breathing, just to make sure she’s still with me, that her heart didn’t just suddenly quit again, in a moment where there isn’t already of team of doctors ready to get it going before any damage happens.
And if this is how every day forward is, I’m good with that, I just don’t want to not be able to do those things.
I swallow glass as I nod.
“The whole reason you were staying with me was to make sure I didn’t run off.”
“Yeah,” I mouth, but no sound comes out.
Thisis it. This is when she blows up on me.
She gives herself a couple seconds before destroying me, and I respect that. And then, with a big breath, she says, “I get it.”
I freeze, expecting more. But when she leaves it at that and even has the audacity to sigh and sink further onto me, like she’s just going to take a nap right here, my brain starts to go staticky.
Sometimes in the middle of a play, there’s this opening that doesn’t make sense. Someone went a way I didn’t expect or someone got twitchy and stalled in the middle of what they were doing. I always get this feeling the doom is about to hit and I need to get the ball out of my hand as soon as possible, or I’m going to get my back snapped in half by a defensive end that managed to escape my peripheral vision. More often thannot, I’m right, and the only thing that saves me from getting wrecked is either getting rid of that ball or getting sacked in a professionally courteous way.
I’ve got my bonuses for winning games and scoring points, but some teams have bonuses for injuring players. Totally illegal, the NFL banned it decades ago, but we all know some coaches aren’t above doing it secretly, so I truly do play at the mercy of the opposing team.
Tilly doesn’t owe me that mercy. I’d much rather have her hit me now, right to my face, than sneak behind and end me sometime further down the road. “I was awful to you,” I say, just to egg her on. “I was anightmare. You didn’t deserve that.”
Another slow response, but it’s still, “That’s just who you are.”
“I am not!”
“Blaise,” she chides, “I know the stories. And this shit with you and Lin? This is who you are.”
“He tried to ruin—!” Nope, not what I need to say here. “How I treated you is unacceptable. That’s it.”
“But if you thought I was going to steal Donovan, or worse, if I was going to-to-to drop him off on your doorstep or—”
“But you weren’t! Fuck. What the fuck, Tilly? Why the fuck are you like this?” I blurt out. I know I shouldn’t be yelling at her, she should be yelling at me, but what the fuck is this? Why does she always do this?
She does recoil at that, but instead of unleashing like I deserve, she just pushes back in my lap, cowering like I’ve just wounded her, and the only relief I get from it is that her ass pushes into my knee just right that my ankle lights up.
