I wasn’t going to cry in front of him. I wasn’t going to cry in front of him.
The last time we’d talked about Mandy had been right after she died, weeks, maybe a couple of months maximum. Louie had cried. He’d been a toddler back then but his hurt over how his mom had rejected him in the long weeks after Rodrigo passed away had been unavoidable. It had taken long enough for him to understand my brother wasn’t coming back. Death wasn’t something a three-year-old could really process. For the longest time he’d thought he was at work, and it wasn’t until one random day that he accepted never meant never. His daddy—my brother—was never coming back. Not that day or the next, or a year from then.
What he hadn’t been able to accept or comprehend was why his mom hadn’t been there afterward.
I could remember the tears and the questions. “Where’s Mommy?” and “Why doesn’t Mommy play?” There’s no way I could forget how confused Louie, more than Josh, had been back then. I didn’t doubt Josh had loved Mandy, but she wasn’t all he’d ever known. Josh had always been aware of the situation with Anita. The only thing that had worked out in that time period was that Louie had always been close to me and hadn’t rejected my love and attention back then. He hadn’t understood what was going on with his mom but he’d jumped into what I had been more than willing to give him.
I think he’d been too busy grieving my brother to really let him feel anything other than anger at his mom after she was gone, and after a while, he’d just stopped talking about her. Like he didn’t want to remember she existed. No matter how much I tried bringing her up, he refused.
Until today.
“She cried a lot,” I told him softly, forcing myself to smile. “Happy tears. Like when Santa brought Josh his baseball bat and he cried, remember that? She kept saying you were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and how she couldn’t believe she could love anything as much as she loved you. She didn’t let me hug you for two days after you were born, can you believe that? She didn’t want to share you with anybody, only your dad.”
Louie watched me the entire time. A smile never crossed his face. It was only the fingers he had at the top of his covers that tapped along the material as he listened.
Dallas’s fingers tightened around my own. “That sounds like she loved you a lot,” he said to my Lou.
All the little boy said was “Hmm.” That was it.
I was going to take it. For now. Not wanting to force him to talk about her any more for now, I told him, “Your brother has tons of stories about her. You should ask him to tell you some of them one day. He loved her a lot. I loved her, too.”
Louie’s eyes were glassier than normal when he glanced at me and nodded his head quickly. Way too quickly. His mouth twitched sadly and he swallowed. Then he swallowed again, and I felt like he’d come to a decision about something. “Like you love me?” the sneaky booger asked in his normal voice.
I had to accept we had gotten somewhere tonight by at least bringing her up. I winked at him. “Don’t get crazy. Not that much.”
That made him smile.
“Why don’t you tell me a story about your dad tonight, Lou, hmm?” Dallas asked.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I’ll be outside waiting for you, Josh!” I yelled that following morning when I noticed we had exactly five minutes before we needed to leave for school so the boys could make it in time.
“Okay!” he hollered back from the kitchen where he was finishing his cereal.
Louie stood right next to me with his backpack on and a toasted piece of bread with honey on it in his hand. I could already imagine the crusts stuffed into his seat or thrown on the floor of my car. “I’m ready,” he said, those blue eyes completely innocent, as if he wasn’t capable of doing anything remotely bad in his life.
I gave him a tired smile, and tilted my head toward the door. I was exhausted. After putting the boys to bed, I’d stayed awake, replaying every single conversation I’d had with Dallas since we’d met. And there had been a lot of them.
How many times had he told me that he was going to stay faithful to his wife until they got divorced? Every single time she was brought up?
How many times did he mention something about his imaginary future girlfriend having to wait for him?
He knew me. I know he knew me. And mostly, he wasn’t some asshole who might say a bunch of things and not mean a single one of them.
And then, I thought about Vanessa’s words and how she’d told me not to be a chicken. How she’d reminded me of who I was now. It had taken me a lot of years, but I knew who I was and I knew what I was willing to do for the people I loved and the things I wanted.
And that was everything. I would do everything and anything.
So where the hell did that leave me?
Busy thinking about all things Dallas-related, I turned around with my bag to head down the pathway when I spotted a motorcycle across the street in Dallas’s driveway.
It was Jackson’s.
It had been weeks since our confrontation at the barbecue. Weeks since I’d seen his bike on the street. Just the day before, while I’d been making dinner after practice, I asked Dallas if he’d seen or heard from his brother, and he’d said no. But it was his face when he answered that had really dug deep into my gut.
It was only with family that you could be so fucking angry, and yet still worry and love them. I understood. His brother was a piece of shit, but he was still his brother.
I sighed and glanced at Louie who was already heading toward the back passenger door of my car. “Goo, I’ll be right back. I think I see Dallas’s brother, and I want to ask him something. I’ll be back in a second.”
“Okay.”
Did I want to go across the street and talk with this motherfucker again? No, I didn’t. But this adulting thing was a lot harder and more complicated than anyone had ever warned me, and I had never known how to mind my own business. This whole loving-the-wrong-person thing also wasn’t easy either.
I jogged across the street, ready to say my two cents and hopefully not get smacked in the face in the process because I’d seen the urge in Jackson’s eyes at the barbecue.
Sure enough, standing beside the beefy motorcycle was the blond with the thick beard who was obviously not going to the tournament this weekend if the bags he had on the back of his bike said anything. As I came up to him, he looked up and blinked in a way I’d seen his brother do countless times by that point.
I came to a stop, leaving close to ten feet between us, and raised my hands in a peaceful gesture, watching that face that really did look older than Dallas’s. “Look, I just came to tell you that you shouldn’t punish Dallas for what I said and did to you, all right?”