Reflecting back on the last few years of my life, the last one in particular, it’s like watching a horror movie with the guy running to the barn where the murderer is hiding with the machete.
To know he’s making all the wrong choices.
And sprinting straight to his end.
That’s what it felt like standing at the graveyard, the double tombstone bearing the names of my parents, Lorraine and Kenneth Long.
The epitaph ofForever in our heartsinscribed underneath their first and last days.
I rub at the pressure in my chest, grief hitting me all over again, and it’s too hard to remain upright, so I lean against the railing, allowing my head to drop, the tears falling down toward the sidewalk, twenty-two stories below.
I know I was already disappointing them, but I don’t want to continue to. I promised them I’d change. That I’d be different. Take care of Paisley. But there are moments when I think it’s too late.
That I’ve fucked up too much, and they’ll never forgive me.
Not my team, the city of Philadelphia, or my parents.
I’ll never be able to speak to them again to know.
“Hey, there you are.”
I quickly wipe my face with the collar of my T-shirt, readjusting my glasses before turning around to Nadine. Under the glow of the outdoor lights, she looks angelic, all soft lines and even softer eyes when she tilts her chin up to study my face. “You okay?”
I nod, sniffing away the emotion, though I doubt she believes me. Still, she doesn’t push, only meets me at the railing, close enough that her elbow brushes my forearm. A dozen heartbeats pass before she speaks again. “I didn’t know you wear glasses.”
“Since I was a kid,” I tell her, thankful she doesn’t ask about the reason I have yet to look her in the eyes. “Started wearing contacts in middle school.”
“You should wear the glasses more. Makes you look smart,” she says, back to her regular waspish attitude, like a shot of adrenaline in my veins.
“I am smart. Have a college degree in math, graduated magna cum laude and everything.”
That has her whipping her head toward me. “You’re shitting me.”
“Nope.” I finally meet her surprised gaze, eyebrows up to her hairline. “Can’t use any more dumb jock jokes.”
“I’ll still use them. Because you do dumb shit.”
I pointedly lower my focus to her shirt. “You are alwayssucha delight.”
The way she smiles is more feral animal than human, and I love it.
We fall into a companionable silence for a little while, until I think about the link I sent her yesterday. “Did you look at the school?”
“Yeah.” She sets her hands on the railing behind her, forcing her back to arch ever so slightly, her breasts to push out. I don’t think she’s wearing a bra underneath the T-shirt that’s way too big on her.
Nadine is petite, curvy with wide hips and thick thighs, and even though I’ve always gravitated toward women with big tits, I can’t seem to stop staring at her bare legs, her shorts barely more than underwear.
“It seems like a good fit, but you need to talk to Paisley about it.”
With the academic year around the corner, I need to register Paisley in a school, and I had heard about a school for the Deaf, one of the oldest in the entire country.
“But in your professional opinion…” I start, inclining my head to the special education teacher, hoping she has more to say.
“In my professional opinion, she’ll be more comfortable there than in a mainstream school. Even though Philadelphia is so much more diverse than the cornfields of Iowa, she would get so much more support in a Deaf school.”
“What is your deal with cornfields?”
She shoots me a withering glare. “Don’t you know anything about your own state? It’s the number one producer of corn. Ordid they confer that degree on you simply because you can carry a ball good?”
