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“My sisters. They’re coming to visit in a couple of months. It’s a … thing.”
“Must be nice.”
“Nope. Just annoying.”
People always took their families for granted, like you could have too many texts from someone you loved. Dex couldn’t even begin to imagine what that was like, the sheer privilege behind it.
Their food arrived, so all talk was suspended during chow time (not that Banks had said more than a couple of words). Dex had only ever had breakfast food here, so it was good to know the place also knocked it out of the park at dinnertime.
With the last bite of Banks’s second turkey burger put away, he turned to Dex.
“O’Malley, you need to figure out what you want.”
“Hockey. This spot, this team.” There was other stuff. Soppy, soapy, ridiculous trash thinking, that existed in some deep, inaccessible-for-now recess. But right this minute, his career had to be the focus.
“You’ve fucked up. But you can fix it.” Banks wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You don’t want to go through life regretting your decisions. What might have been.” He seemed to think about that for a second before shaking it off. “You’re here and you need to work your ass off to stay here. No one gets a free pass, no matter how talented they are.”
Dex knew all this but it was good to hear it from someone so seasoned. Maybe Banks might have his back at his court date because Dex was starting to realize just how isolated he felt despite being part of a team. This is what he needed to do. Fix things with the boys, play his cup off, and make nice with his PR team. So he’d screwed up with the animal shelter and that Ashley chick thought he was no better than the doggy doo-doo she probably spent her days cleaning up, but he’d find another way. He always did.
“I appreciate it. Listen, I need to hit the head. I’ll get the check when I come back.”
Banks grunted at that.
In the corridor heading towards the john, Dex spotted a woman in a server uniform, coming out of the women’s restroom as she tied her apron. His skin prickled with awareness, some preternatural inkling of imminent change. Their gazes clashed and Dex’s tread and heart stuttered to a stop.
She said his name, and any doubt he had as to her identity vanished in the wake of hearing that smoke-scarred voice.
He tried to take in the details—the uniform, the severe hair pulled back from a worn face scrubbed clean, the fact she was standing before him after all this time. They say bad luck comes in threes but lately, this crap seemed to be raining in multiples of it.
“What are you doing here?”
“I-I’m working here. Have been for the last month.”
But I’ve eaten here in the last month.
The last Dex had heard, she had finished up a prison stint at Decatur Prison, about two and a half hours south of Chicago. That would have been a year ago, maybe more.
Ruby O’Malley hadn’t tried to get in touch with her only son, at least not recently. The last time she’d reached out was when Dex signed his first contract with Philly six years ago. He’d received a letter from her, return address the slammer, and he’d thrown it unopened in the trash. She’d already been inside for eight years at that point, and apparently she’d thought it was the right time to reach out.
It wasn’t. It never would be.
Now she was here in Dex’s neighborhood.
“I wanted to call but?—”
“No, you didn’t,” Dex gritted out.
She looked confused. Years of abusing a body and brain will do that.
“No, I did.” She sounded uncertain.
“And I’m saying you didn’t. Because I’m not going to talk to you. So calling would be a waste of yours and my time. I’m not doing this. We’re not doing this.”
“Dex—”
Dex raised a hand, wishing the gesture could stop time, praying it was enough to stop any speech coming from this woman’s lips. And in case it wasn’t he barreled past her, past the restroom to the end of the corridor where his blurred vision could just about make out an exit sign. He hit the crash bar and accepted that the alarm he set off was the perfect soundtrack to that clusterfuck mother-son reunion.
He didn’t stop there. He kept going, as fast as a third period breakaway. Because he couldn’t risk another meeting with the woman who had left him as a sniveling ten-year-old kid. The woman who had preferred alcohol and drugs to motherhood. The woman whose shitty decisions had condemned Dex to a childhood of uncertainty and misery.
