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This was one of the times where she wished she had a husband and wished even more that Owen had brothers he could play with. Siblings at least.
“I want to get better. Sometimes they let the eighth graders play on the varsity team if they’re good enough. I was hoping I’d get good this fall and the coach would notice me and let me play.”
She nodded, grateful for sports that would keep him out of trouble, hopefully.
For a while, she’d been afraid that he wouldn’t be interested in anything, since he seemed to have interests but never stuck with something for very long.
“I’m sure you will. The league you signed up for should really help with that.”
“Everybody there has their dad or their brother or somebody they know coaching them. I’m the only one that doesn’t have anybody.”
“That can’t be true,” she said, not meaning to sound dismissive but feeling that way. There was no way that every kid on the team had somebody that they were related to helping with the team.
“It is. At least, there might be a handful of us who don’t. We’re the worst players. Everyone else has someone to practice with.”
What he was saying was everyone else had a dad.
She heard that.
And that was her fault.
Although, she was pretty sure she’d outgrown the idea of blaming herself because her husband walked out on her. Still, she could have decided to get married again. Or at least put a little more effort into it.
But she couldn’t marry someone who didn’t love her son as much as he loved his own children, and she’d never met anyone like that.
Not to mention, it would be hard for her to trust again. After all, she’d been living in a fantasy world—a perfect marriage, perfect family, perfect everything until her husband had come home with the cliche lipstick on his collar.
She couldn’t believe she’d been so gullible.
He didn’t even do anything new, just the same old, same old.
She felt like a fool. Still did at times.
“I can help. I’ll volunteer. I’ll call Ty Hanson as soon as we get in, before I start cooking supper.”
Maybe she was trying too hard. She kinda felt like she was when his face fell, and he shook his head.
“No. Really, Mom, I like you and everything, but please don’t.”
That hurt. He’d started doing that lately. Acting like there were girl things and boy things, and girls weren’t welcome to do the boy things.
That was life. It truly was, as much as she sometimes tried to deny it. Boys liked to do things that girls weren’t interested in, and there were things girls liked to do that boys didn’t have a lot of interest in. Maybe he just wanted to find his tribe, or whatever the common terminology was for it.
