“Your shorts, Diana. They’re inappropriate,” the mom, who hadn’t spoken to me once since our incident, said.
I went from one to ten instantly, courtesy of her words and choice of tone that was 100 percent bitchy and nothing else. I didn’t like her to begin with, so my patience was already in the negatives by the time she’d opened her mouth. But I tried my best to be mature. “I’m a grown woman, and they’re not that short or inappropriate,” I told her coolly, my hands instantly going to my sides. My fingertips were on the hem of my shorts with my hands straight down; it wasn’t like I was palming a bunch of bare thigh.
“I wasn’t asking what you thought about them,” she said, her reflective sunglasses flicking down to my thighs once more. “I don’t want Jonathan being exposed to that.”
Be mature. Be an adult. Be an example to Josh, Diana, I tried telling myself. I’d say I only halfway failed. “What is that? Thighs? Half of a woman’s thighs that he’s seen every time you’ve taken him somewhere?” That sounded a lot more smart-ass than I’d intended it to.
She could obviously tell because I could sense the tension coming off her body. “I don’t know what kind of places you take Josh, but I don’t take my Jonny any places like that. There’s children here. This isn’t a brothel.”
A brothel. Had this bitch really just said brothel? As in I worked at one or hung around one? Really?
I glanced over my shoulder because she was talking so fucking loud. Couldn’t she use her inside voice and just talk to me? I wasn’t surprised to see about eight sets of parents staring at us. Listening. So I asked her one more time to make sure I wasn’t imagining anything, “Excuse me?”
“Go buy some pants,” she said so fucking loud, I’m sure the opposing team heard her. In a whisper, with her eyes straight on me, she said, “Look, honey, I know you’re Josh’s aunt, but if you’re looking for a husband, this isn’t the place. Some of us are real moms. Look around. We’re not dressed like hookers, are we? Maybe you could learn something about real parenting from us.”
Someone cackled loudly enough for me to hear.
My entire body went hot, red hot.
I didn’t give very many people the power to hurt my feelings, but Christy’s comment went directly to my heart. Real mom. It was the real mom that pierced straight through me, robbing the breath from my lungs and the anger from my head.
Realistically, I knew my ass wasn’t anywhere close to hanging out. I knew that. It didn’t matter that there had been a handful of moms on Josh’s old team that made the girl on Dukes of Hazard look like a pilgrim. In that moment right then, I was the only one with some bare leg exposed and it wasn’t even that fucking much.
I cleared my throat, fighting back the pressure squeezing at my lungs and the heat covering every inch of my skin. What example did I want to set for Josh? That he always needed to come out on top? Some things were worth winning and other things were not. With every inch of self-control in my body, I tried holding on to the very edges of my maturity, because if someone was an asshole to you, you didn’t always have to be an asshole back.
“Christy,” I said her name calmly, “if you want to talk to me about my clothes”—fuck off and go to hell, I said to her in my brain but in reality I went with—“don’t raise your voice at me. I’m not a child. While we’re at it, you don’t know anything about me or Josh, so don’t make it seem like you do.”
Of all the replies she could have gone with, she chose, “I know enough about you.”
While I’d been friendly with the parents on Josh’s old team, none of them had ever been close enough to me to know what happened to turn us three into a family. All they knew was that I was raising Josh and Louie, and that had come up because there were Spanish-speaking parents on the team who overheard him calling me tia all the time. When they’d ask, I told them the truth. I was their aunt. I didn’t care what they thought; they could all assume whatever they wanted.
“You don’t know anything,” I practically whispered to her, balanced somewhere between being upset and really pissed. “I don’t want to embarrass you or make you feel like an idiot, so please stop while you’re ahead with the comments. Talk to me like an adult, because I bet your son is looking over here right now, and we want to teach the boys how to be good people, not big mouths with opinions and a lack of information.”
It was her turn for her face to go red and she pretty much squawked at me, “You’re going to embarrass me? You embarrassed yourself and Josh coming to a tournament dressed like that. Have a little respect for yourself, or respect for whoever was reckless enough to let you watch their kids.”
To a certain extent, I knew what she was saying wasn’t the truth, but her words were a brutal reality that managed to pick at those frayed little ends inside of me. Sticks and stones might break your bones but words could also hurt you. A lot. A lot more than they should have because I knew she didn’t know anything.
But even being aware of all of that, this knot formed in my throat, and before I could stop it, my eyes got misty.
I looked at the fencing to the side away from her as two tears jumped out of the corners of my eyes and streamed down one cheek before I wiped them away with the back of my hand almost angrily. I think I lasted there in front of her all of five seconds before two more tears crashed down my cheeks, falling from my jaw to my chest. It wasn’t until I felt my lip start to quiver that I swallowed and turned away from her, embarrassed—humiliated—and feeling so small I could have crawled into a hole and stayed there forever. Worst, I couldn’t even argue with her points.
Instead of doing all the things I should have done in retaliation, I turned around and started walking away.
“Diana!” I heard Dallas yell.
One second later, I heard, “Aunt Di!” But I couldn’t stop.
I speed walked away from the bleachers, my face angled toward the ground. One tear after another slid down my cheeks, falling into my mouth and then down my chin to my chest. My vision went blurry as I stared at the sidewalk before catching a glimpse of the small building where the restrooms were located, and I pretty much darted into it just as three times as many more tears came out of me.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even find it in me to make a noise as my back hit the cement wall in the bathroom. My hands went to my knees as I hunched over, my heart cringing and flexing. Aching.
Who was I kidding? I was a fuckup. I was going to ruin the boys. What the hell was I doing raising them? Why hadn’t I just let the Larsens take them? I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t even manage not to embarrass them. I thought that I’d stopped making so many stupid decisions, but I was wrong.
God.
I cried more and more and more, silent tears that didn’t clog my throat because it was already full of shame and guilt and anger at myself.