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 tothat.”
Be mature. Be an adult. Be an example to Josh, Diana, I tried telling myself. I’d say I only halfway failed. “What isthat? 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 brothel. Had this bitch really just saidbrothel?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 justtalkto 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’saunt,but if you’re looking for a husband, this isn’t the place. Some of us arereal 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 onDukes of Hazardlook like a pilgrim. In that moment right then, Iwasthe only one withsomebare leg exposedand it wasn’t even that fucking much.
