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ONE
LIAM
“Ilove my child. I love my child. I love my child,” I told the clear sky above me. It was an unseasonably warm Saturday in September, and I was already overheated from losing my patience with Finn.
He yanked on my hand. “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Go. Go. Go.
“Yeah, go get run over by a car. You won’t like it,” I mumbled, holding tighter to his fingers as he tried to rush off through the parking lot at the same time a car pulled out in front of us.
He whined in frustration. “Ooooooh!”
I bit back the string of curses that had been threatening to release for the last few days and sighed. “You can wait.”
“No!”
Those speech lessonshadbeen working. If only for one word. “No.”
I fought to keep Finn at my side as we made our way to the sidewalk, and then I let him loose. He sprinted to the doors of Imagination Station and Play Center, where he was too tiny to grab the handles of the door, so like any feral three-year-old, he attempted to jump for them and ended up smacking his forehead.
“Oh Christ,” I muttered, rushing to help him up, checking that he didn’t display any signs of a concussion. I knew them so well with how often my child willingly leaped off or climbed on furniture.
“I it,” Finn told me with eyes watering behind his glasses.
“You hit your head, I know. You shouldn’t be jumping around.”
He leaned into me, silently asking for a kiss, and I rubbed the reddening spot before kissing it. Then he was off as soon as I had the door open.
“There he is!”
I turned toward Jude’s voice, and he had his to-go coffee mug held aloft in a salute.
“How’s it feel to be famous?”
I trudged over to the bench we always sat on and plopped down at the end.
Dylan acknowledged me with his usual nod, though his shit-eating-grin was new.
“Shut up,” I grumbled before he could say anything, and both of my so-called friends laughed. “Seriously. I’ve been getting so much shit the past forty-eight hours, I can’t…” I pushed my hands through my hair and bent over, exhausted, embarrassed, angry…everything. It was too much.
“Here. Figured you could use this.” Dylan handed me a coffee. I’d forgotten mine, so I accepted it gratefully.
Jude passed me a box of brownies. He never went anywhere without something sweet. Not only was I pretty sure he was addicted to sugar, but his family owned Gray’s Candy shop. I helped myself to a brownie, nearly shoving the whole thing in my mouth, as I watched my third of what was essentially one big floor filled with imaginary play centers. Among them were a doctor’s office, a grocery store, a salon, and an auto shop. The kids loved it.
Well, most of them.
Jude’s eldest, Sebastian, mostly hung by himself in the corner playing some video game or chatted with us if he was feeling particularly friendly. The other ones—Amelia, Seb’s sister; Dylan’s kids, Scarlett and Tucker; and, of course, Finn—were like puppies with the zoomies. They raced from one end to another, and we played zone defense to make sure no one needed a trip to the ER.
Jude, Dylan, and I had been meeting once a month for playdates, ever since I’d first brought Finn here when he’d started walking. Because, even then, he had been a handful who needed to run off his energy. The three of us kept bumping into one another and noticed our kids all got along well. Not to mention that we did too.
“Seriously, though,” Jude said, “how’re you doing?”
I swiped a hand over my prickly jaw. I hadn’t bothered to shave since the video clip of my interview on a national news program had gone viral. “I had to turn my phone off. Everyone and their mother’s calling me,” I said, frustration lacing my words with my hometown accent. “I’m getting all kinds of shit from my colleagues and an email from the provost telling me that it was an embarrassment. Meanwhile, the dean of admissions is calling me, telling me it was fantastic because so many people are interested in the school now.”
Jude sucked air through his teeth. “That’s rough, man. Sorry.”
Dylan leaned forward, eyeing me over Jude. “If it makes you feel any better, I totally got what you were saying with the…history and political parties…and stuff.”
