“Why is this traffic so fucking bad?” my dad grouses as we creep along the highway.
There are flashing lights ahead, an ambulance and highway patrol car blocking the two left lanes as they deal with an accident that’s changed the normally hellish rush hour traffic into…
Something more hellish than normal.
Mostly because of the hellish duo who’ve taken up residence inside Sawyer’s van.
Smitty, sitting between them in the back seat—and I still don’t know how he managed to wrangle that particular seating arrangement—puts his arm around my dad and jiggles him around, his eyes coming to mine in the rearview.
“Well, Billy Boy, Bay Area traffic is intense on normal days. But when you book a flight that requires you to be at an airport way up on the Peninsula instead of at the one right there in town and do it during rush hour…well, there’s rush hour traffic.”
“This is ridiculous,” my dad mutters. “And I told you to stop calling me Billy Boy. I’m a grown man.”
“You sure about that?” Sawyer says quietly and even though I’m thinking the same thing, I’m glad Smitty is still talking so my dad doesn’t hear that and explode.
Again.
“I love the idea of a second honeymoon,” Smitty is saying, filling the silence so my parents can’t.
Not that it stops them from trying to interject.
My mom to talk about her having to strongarm my dad into the trip.
My dad bitching about the cost, about spending time together, about any little thing that annoys his lead-addled Boomer brain.
I don’t know how Aiden got so lucky to have parents who seem to have bypassed that shit, but I would take his meddling family any day over this torture.
“We’re almost there,” Sawyer says carefully.
As though he’s soothing a wild animal…or maybe it’s just that he can sense I’m ready to yank at the door handle and yeet myself out of this fucking car, freeway or not.
We’re going so slow, it wouldn’t hurt that much, right?
Thankfully, though, Sawyer is correct. The accident is not far ahead, and the exit is only a mile beyond the flashing lights.
Then good ol’ Mom and Dad will be out of my hair for the next five—or longer (please be longer)—years.
“Thank God for that,” I mutter.
His eyes—far too sympathetic for my taste—flick to mine.
Cool, cool, Mom and Dad. Thanks for making me look pathetic in front of my friends and teammates. I love that for me.
“Please tell me that your parents are as much of a train wreck as mine are,” I say quietly.
Though I don’t need to. Smitty is still chittering away in the back seat, drowning out all manner of conversation.
“My dad’s still alive,” Sawyer says and something in his eyes makes me wonder if that’s the full story—though, I feel like if his dad was like mine, he would have commiserated. “My mom died when I was in high school.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“It’s been a long time.” He shrugs. “But you know how it is. You spend so much time away from home doing this job—between travel hockey and billet families, college and juniors and finally getting into the league, it’s hard to maintain those ties.”
“Yeah, I know how that is.”
“It’s why I like it so much here,” he says as we inch past the accident. “I know my contract isn’t as long-term as some of the other guys, but it’s nice to know I can have a semblance of a family, even if it’s just for a few years. Even if,” he says, his voice rising deliberately over the din in the back of the van Smitty’s termed the Mom Mobile, “Smitty makes me want to tear my hair out as often as he warms my heart.”
“Smitty is hard to resist,” I say dryly as Sawyer navigates the exit and takes the loop that will bring us to the terminal.
