The expression on my face must have said just that because the woman shut her mouth and took a step backward, her hands immediately coming up to her face.
“Okay! Okay!” An arm was waved up and down. “That’s enough. Christy, go home. You’re out of here for the next two practices for that,” Dallas ordered. When the woman started opening her mouth, he blinked, that alone working better than any “zip it” gesture. “You started it and you know it.”
I almost stuck my tongue out at her when her gaze swung over to me.
“Diana, make sure somebody else brings Josh to the next practice.”
What? Was he fucking kidding me? I hadn’t even done anything but defend myself!
Just as I opened my mouth to argue that fact, Trip jumped in. “Everybody else, we’ll talk over the next couple of days and come to some agreement on changing the schedule. We’ll e-mail you,” he concluded with a whole hell of a lot of finality to his voice. Where was the guy who had hung out with me at the bar?
I was pissed. As the mob finally split up, I stood there, stunned and about five seconds away from pepper spraying half the parents.
I turned to try and find Trip, who had done little more than smile at me from twenty feet away lately, but he was surrounded by parents deep in conversation already. Dallas… I had no clue where the hell he had disappeared to. And Jackson was standing off to the side with his arms over his chest, looking so unimpressed with life, I wasn’t sure why he bothered still breathing.
I couldn’t believe it.
“Tia?”
The sound of Josh’s voice almost immediately ripped me away from the edge of diving back into Diana From Years Ago who would have told everyone to lick a dick. First, I had to mentally picture myself smacking everyone in the back of the head, and then I cut off the rage that had started taking over. It was maybe only ten seconds after my nephew called me that I managed to turn around with a nearly serene smile and find him looking up at me with a suspicious expression on his face.
“What happened?” he immediately asked.
My head hurt, but I knew that wasn’t what he was picking up on. If there was someone in the world who was my spirit animal, it was this kid. I wasn’t sure how I ever forgot it. And since Louie wasn’t here, I told the one who had already heard everything and more in his life the truth. “I’m about five seconds away from going to kick Jonathan’s mom’s ass, and then kicking her mom’s ass afterward to teach them both a lesson.”
The kid burst out laughing, reminding me of how young he was beneath it all. “Why?”
“She’s out of her mind. We were having a parent meeting and she started talking nonsense. I might go kick Jonathan’s ass too for being the reason she’s here.”
Josh laughed again, shaking his head. “You’re crazy.”
“A little,” I agreed, winking at him, suddenly feeling whatever was left over of my rage disappear. How could you stay mad when you had so many great things in your life? “You ready to go home?”
He nodded, his grin a mile wide. “Yeah.”
“All right, come on.” I waved him toward the walkway, pausing until he was by my side. “According to your coach, I can’t come to practice with you next time because of that psycho, so tell your grandpa tomorrow that he’ll have to bring you. I’ll call him, but you tell him too, okay?”
That had Josh stopping and frowning. “Why can’t you come?”
“Because, I told you, she was saying crazy stuff about how it’s my fault that we’re trying to get the schedule changed, and I might have said something about how she didn’t care about her kid and that’s why she thinks the schedule is fine,” I explained to him honestly, not wanting him to consider me a liar. I felt like, if I didn’t lie to him, I hoped he would learn not to lie to me either. No one was perfect, and I didn’t want him to believe he needed to be. He just had to be the best kind of person he could be and stand up for himself. Being “right” was so subjective.
“And because of that you can’t come?”
I nodded, giving him an “I know, right?” face.
The downturn of Josh’s mouth deepened and he shook his head. “That’s not fair.”
“I don’t think it is either, but I guess I did egg her on, too, J. I didn’t have to say anything back to her. I could have just let her think whatever she wanted to.” That simple truth had me resigned. I could have let it go. I really could have. “Too late now. It’s okay. It’s just one practice, and hopefully they will change the schedule so it’ll be worth it.”
“That’s stupid.”
I shot him a look.
“That’s dumb,” he amended.
I shrugged, reaching up to rub at my temple with my index and middle finger. “She’s just mad her kid is in the right field.”
Chapter Eight
My good mood lasted until the next morning. When your first thought after waking up includes the word “bullshit” in it, it shouldn’t be a surprise when you’re grumpy the rest of the day. But the fact was even though I was well aware that I had thrown verbal lighter fluid into my talk with the baseball mom at practice yesterday, what resulted from it was still a whole load of horseshit. The more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. What was I supposed to do? Stand there and get blamed for something that wasn’t my fault? I was dreading having to call Mr. Larsen and tell him that I wasn’t going to be able to take Josh to practice, and then have to explain why. It made me feel like a kid who had gotten caught cheating on her test.
Josh was too sleepy to notice that I was grumpy, and Louie, well, who the hell knew what was going through that kid’s head. The last time I asked him what he was thinking about, he’d said “buttholes.” Since then, I kept that question to myself. But Ginny, who happened to open the salon with me that morning, immediately picked up on my mood.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked, already smirking.
“How can you tell something’s wrong?” I asked, shoving the last piece of smores flavored Pop-Tart into my mouth.
“Because you eat Pop-Tarts when you’re mad or aggravated.” Her smirk grew. “And I know you. I can sense it.”
She was right. Pop-Tarts were my comfort food in time of need. The boys already knew that when they caught me eating a package, something was wrong. I slid her a look as I unpacked my lunch and put it into the refrigerator, chewing and swallowing the last bit of my makeshift breakfast. To balance it out, I’d scarfed down a banana first. “You get into one little argument with another parent at baseball and you get suspended from a practice.”
I didn’t have to look at my boss to know she’d hunched over when she started laughing. I could hear her, and I knew her. And it was the sound of her laugh that made me smile so hard my face hurt from trying not to do the same. It did sound ridiculous.
“Trip did that?” she asked, wiping at her eyes.
“No, your other cousin did. Trip just stood by and let it happen.” We weren’t friends, I’d accepted that while I sulked on the way to work that morning, but I still couldn’t help but feel betrayed.