Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 99723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
And also, his house used to be our house. He kept it in the divorce because I couldn’t pay the mortgage on my salary. I have no desire to go back to the place where I was the unhappiest version of myself.
I don’t give him that truth, though. He’ll only hold it against me, delighting in any remaining echoes of the pain he caused. “The park is fine.”
He shrugs as if completely unbothered, but I see the muscle twitch beneath his eye, a telltale tick he can’t control when he’s angry. “Suit yourself. We’ll meet you there at five o’clock.”
“Four,” I correct before I can stop myself. Habits are hard to break, even after all this time, even when I know better. He intentionally said the wrong time to make me say the right one. It’s an example of “his cause, his desired effect.” Tyler’s every word is a bullet looking for a target, and I let him hit one. It’s not a center mass hit, but his grin says he still recognizes the win. The smallest, stupidest one, but a win nonetheless.
“Right, four.”
Why do I feel like he’s going to be an hour late for drop-off? Because he will be, especially now that I reminded him. Just to be ornery, to irritate me, to make me sit on a park bench and wait for him the way I sat on a school bench today.
“Dad, did you mean it about getting ice cream?” Harley asks.
I want to tell him to at least eat dinner first, but I swallow those words down. Still, Tyler knows I’m thinking them. Any responsible parent would be. Which is why he tells Harley, “Of course I did. Who would joke about ice cream? Get in. Amber can tell you all about the Fall Festival we’re going to tomorrow.”
“Festival?” Harley’s grin is nearly ear-to-ear as he runs toward the truck and climbs inside without giving me a second glance. “What festival are we going to?” I hear him ask Amber before closing the door.
I pray it’s actually fall themed, with pumpkins and leaves, and not Halloween, with zombies and monsters. Harley likes to fancy himself a brave, big kid, but scary stuff can still give him nightmares. I want to ask. I want to tell Tyler to be thoughtful about what he’s exposing our son to, but I don’t have any control over what they do on their visitation and have to trust that a haunted house isn’t going to let elementary-aged kids in if it’s too scary.
It’s ridiculous that I trust a haunted house to be more responsible for my son’s well-being than his father, but that’s where we are.
“Let me know if you change your mind about dinner Sunday,” Tyler tells me, his voice gone husky and his smile filling with heat. “Or anytime.” He lets his eyes drop over me from head to toe, making sure I feel every unwelcome caress of his weighted look and that Amber doesn’t see any of it.
“Four o’clock at the park.”
“Sure, babe. Whatever you say,” Tyler tells me with a chuckle. He walks away, and I swear he’s trying to strut around the truck with a little more pep in his step, as though he actually did something with our exchange.
As he climbs in, the back window of the truck rolls down. “Bye, Mom! I love you!” Harley calls out. He didn’t forget. He got distracted by the dangling carrot his dad threw out, but he remembered me in the end.
“Love you too,” I yell, but I’m not sure he hears me over the too-loud engine of Tyler’s truck as he pulls away. So I wave the ILU fingers, hoping it’s enough.
Alone in the school parking lot, I wrap my arms around myself. Almost forty-eight hours until Harley comes back. These weekends are the worst. I don’t know what to do with myself and too often end up stress cleaning, doomscrolling, or forcing myself to do something fun and feeling ungrateful the whole time as I wonder what Harley is doing while I’m goofing off.
That night, I’m eating a bowl of popcorn for dinner, the remaining vestige of my movie plan, when my phone dings. It’s a text from Hockey Coach.
I’m free all weekend if Harley wants to practice?
It seems pretty straightforward, and I’d like to believe that’s true and Dominic is exactly what he says he is—a new-to-town guy who wants to share the sport he loves.
But he’s also Dominic Lee, a professional athlete with a whole life that doesn’t involve elementary-level hockey drills with a nine-year-old kid. I might’ve done a bit of googling to see what his story is, and while nothing damning showed up, surely he has better things to do.
That alone makes me question his motives.
Truthfully, Dominic has been nothing but nice, but I used to know another nice guy, and he turned out to be a monster. Masks are easy to keep in place at first, and while I’m not sure Dominic’s wearing a mask, I also don’t trust that he isn’t. Nor do I have the time or inclination to figure it out.