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And yeah, my mom was distant and my dad was intense, but my parents had still bought me things growing up—Christmas and birthday presents, books and food and technology.
But they hadn’t bought me things like this.
Not seeing something they thought I would like and getting it for me…just because.
That Joel had?
It sent my pulse thundering in my veins, my heart pounding against my ribs. I couldn’t catch my breath, my fingertips were numb.
The washi tape had cost eight dollars.
Eight.
But it might as well have cost eightmillion.
It meant that much.
And itcouldn’t.
Not today.
Notever.
That truth had settled in my lungs, seized me tightly, sent me right along the path toward panic. Because I wanted it to.
And…I couldn’tbreathe.
Shit.Shit.
I just needed to get away—from Joel, from my feelings, from this day, from the last hours watching my parents grieve.
Billy’s birthday.
The brutal reminder I was all they didn’t want.
I’d run from Joel, sprinted away like a lunatic, and now I made it to the recently rebuilt bathrooms, erected next to the recently rebuilt playground, which had been put up next to the recently rebuilt soccer and baseball fields. I’d needed to make this space functional for the kids. School was back in session, and it was being conducted in lame ass portables, the school campuses nowhere near as nice as they’d once been. The kids needed a place to run and play and kick and hit some fucking balls around.
So, Central Park had been my priority—or it had been scratched to the top of my list of priorities, anyway.
A list that was a heavy weight and something that didn’t exactly help me right then, no matter how hard I was trying to distract my mind. Not when my lungs felt like they were going to explode from the effort of trying to breathe.
But I couldn’t catch my breath.
I stepped behind the building, crouched with my back resting against the pale, stuccoed exterior, hands clenching at my hair.
I wanted to tear it out.
I wanted the pain.
I wanted to forget.
Everything.
But mostly the fucking washi tape.
My breaths were short and staccato. I was too raw and vulnerable, and my gasps weren’t bringing in enough air, but even as I was struggling to regain control, my mind was churning with tasks, with needs, with things that would draw on my time.
To do:
