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Julia and I dissect a few more of the pictures before I hear Greg getting curious from her end of the line. Less than a minute later, I’ve got a text from Rux, because those two are like twelve-year-old girls.
Rux: Those were private pictures. I can’t believe you shared them.
And of course it’s punctuated with a little lip emoji that looks like an exclamation mark.
Cammy: My phone was hacked.
Rux: The internet is forever.
“Hey, pay attention to me,” Julia teases through the line. “You can text with Rux anytime.”
“Sorry, sorry!” I say, snapping a quick picture of my own lips, wide and smiling, and even though I’m not wearing any lipstick, shoot it off to Rux. “So when are you guys leaving for LA anyway?”
With Greg out for the foreseeable future, he’s going with Julia while she shoots her show.
“Tomorrow night. I’ll be out there for two weeks but Greg might come back early. Hey, how’d it go with Matty at Jeremy’s last night?”
And like that, my good humor dies. Stepping out of my office, I glance down the hall to my son’s door. “Good. He brought the cooler back empty, so his dad could keep the snacks for next time he came over. And when he got home, he talked about a mile a minute about playing cards and board games.”
Julia’s more reserved now as well. “That’s nice he had fun.”
“It is,” I agree, knowing that neither one of us really loves it all that much. Even if we both want Matty to be able to have the kind of relationship with his father that neither of us had with ours, it’s still a little hard to get that excited about my son bonding with a man that, deep down, I’m worried will leave him again.
“When’s Matty going next?”
“He’s going to sleep over the weekend after next, but I think Jeremy will see him for a few hours next Saturday with his parents.”
“How’s it going with the GPs now that he’s back?”
“It’s a little weird actually. Like maybe they aren’t sure how close they should be with me. I don’t know. Maybe that isn’t fair, but it feels like every time I’ve seen them since he said he was coming home his mom has been looking at me differently.”
“You think she’s worried you won’t let Jeremy back into Matty’s life the way she wants you to?”
Possibly. Jeremy’s parents have never been my biggest fans. When we dated in high school they were kind and welcoming, but there was a coolness, a detachment there. And when I got pregnant, it changed to something more like blame.
At the time, it was disappointing because I’d always dreamed of being a part of a big, warm, loving family and it was clear that wasn’t the case with the Levensons. And when Jeremy left me—well, I didn’t see them again for a year. Not until they reached out, wanting to have a relationship with their grandson.
“I think she’s just trying to figure out how this is going to affect her relationship with Matty. They’ve been taking him every other Friday night for the last four years. Now Jeremy is and”—I sigh, shaking my head—“there’s only so much time I’m willing to give my son up. So yes, it’s going to be different.”
“You can’t feel bad about that, Cam.”
My heart pangs and I nod. “I know. It’s just a little hard sometimes when life feels like it’s slipping out of my control. I want something better for Matty than we had. And before Jeremy decided to move back I kind of thought I might be giving it to him. He didn’t have a dad, but he had everything else. He had stability. He felt safe. And now that Jeremy’s back, he’s getting the dad part but that security feels like it’s slipping through my fingers.”
“Hey, I know what that feels like and I know how scary it is. But this isn’t going to be another repeat of what happened throughout our childhood. This is going to be fine. You and Matty have a support structure here that Mom never could have dreamed of and wouldn’t have even wanted. It’s going to be fine.”
“I love you, Julia.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”
Chapter 5
Rux
We’re almost out of time. Down by two with less than five minutes on the clock, and I’m off. Out of sync with the guys, missing shots I shouldn’t be missing. I’m a half-second behind, when I need to be ahead, and it’s costing us the game, damn it.
Twisting back, I untangle my stick from Halson’s, pushing off hard to get free, to get open. There’s a blink when I’m looking to where Greg should be, only I’m lined up with Vassar and O’Brian and instead of just knowing where they are on an instinctual level, I’ve got to find them. Get to where they can find me.
It happens, but I can’t miss that half-second delay that feels wrong in every fucking way. Even when I knock the puck out of the air and carry it up the ice, even when I find that sliver of space between the guys dogging my heels and the teammate powering into position. Even when the puck lands on his stick and a single flick of his wrist later, the net lights up and the crowd goes wild—I can’t shake that half-second delay because it feels like the reason we’re still down a point instead of rocking a lead.
