And I’ve about had it with today. “She’ll sell to you over my dead body.”
She turns cool green eyes to me. “I’m perfectly capable of declining business offers on my own.” Her curly hair whips over her shoulders as she turns to stare down Cowboy Hat. “And you. You give cowboys everywhere a horrible reputation. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
She tosses her messenger bag over her shoulder.
“Lila. Two minutes?” Yes, that’s desperation. No, I’m not ashamed.
“I believe you’ve already had more than that, Mr. Wilson.”
“Please.”
Emma wiggles, and I let her down to run to the diaper bag. James squeals and lunges, and he, too, gets deposited on the ground, chipmunk forgotten, because Emma might touch his trucks, which still need to be cleaned from landing in the parking garage.
“Tripp’s been working on a plan to turn the team around for months, Lila,” Pakorski says. “The smart thing for a man in my position is to move them across country, rename them, and let them start fresh. But—”
“He can’t even control his kids,” Cowboy Hat interjects.
Levi opens the door, jerks his head, and then steps back while two of his security team stroll in. “He insulted the lady,” he tells them.
She rolls her eyes.
James grabs a truck that Emma was reaching for, and when she yells mine!, he takes off running around the room.
“Please,” I say again as Lila brushes past me. “I’m sorry. I—it was a bad day.”
She stops and faces me head-on, and boom.
God, she’s pretty. But it’s not a surface thing. It’s her poise. The way she’s clearly restraining herself. The intelligence lurking in her bright green eyes. The front that says she’s not hurt, when I know she just buried her uncle—alone—and now she’s dealing with a mess of his baseball team and a guy who lied to her about who he was so he could make out with her in a club bathroom and another guy who’s just a dick.
“I ain’t leaving this room until I own my baseball team, so you can just back the fuck off,” Cowboy Hat snarls at Levi’s security team.
“Fuck!” James yells.
“Fuck!” Emma yells back.
“Don’t say fuck, Emma. That’s for big people.” James turns to chide her, trips over his own feet, and flies nose-first into the edge of a wooden chair.
He erupts in a wail.
Naturally. Running nose-first into a table will hurt like hell.
When James starts crying, Emma starts crying. She’s very empathetic. And if she cries too much, she’ll puke, and we’re already pushing it this morning. Which means I’m shifting into dad-mode, leaping around the table and catching my toe on the corner of the table.
I stifle the urge to let out a good fuck of my own, because James is bleeding, and the only thing Emma hates more than someone else crying is blood.
“Hey, hey, c’mere, bud. It’s okay.” I sweep up first one kid, then the other, and head around the table to the diaper bag, where I grab an old burp rag to hold to his face.
“I bent my nose!” he hollers.
“Bud gone die!” Emma shrieks. “Bud! Bud bad!”
“Blood doesn’t mean he’s going to die,” I tell her, but she’s two.
She’s freaking out.
She’s not listening.
Unless— “Emma, you want a mushroom?”
My daughter stops mid-scream with her mouth still open, and she eyeballs me like I’m lying.
But she loves mushrooms. It’s disturbing how much she loves mushrooms. Yet she does, so I use it to my advantage when I have to.
Now is when I have to.
I nod to the table at the back of the room, which features trays of appetizers. I can see a veggie tray and dip.
And mushrooms.
“There are—” I start.
“Daddy, it huuuuuurts,” James wails.
And all thoughts of mushrooms fly out the window as Emma starts wailing all over again too.
Because this?
This is my life. Screaming children. A dream perpetually just out of reach. And a lonely bed to fall into all by myself, every night.
I’m exhausted. I’m defeated. My suit is covered in chipmunk pee and nose-blood and cry-snot. And I can’t even remember why I cared enough about the Fireballs to be here this morning when we could’ve spent the morning at the park. Singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” until my eyes crossed. Retrieving Emma’s mittens from all over the playground. Putting her in and out of a swing seven million times. Getting hit on by the nannies taking their charges to the park too.
Fuck.
Yeah, I remember why I’m here.
Balance.
Gotta have something to live for other than taking care of everyone around you, old man.
Levi said it most recently, but it’s an echo of what all of my closest friends have been saying since Jessie died.
I dropped James and Emma at my mom’s, and I left.
I just left.
Headed up to Shipwreck, a hilarious little town in the Blue Ridge Mountains where Beck has a weekend house and where all of us from the old neighborhood like to disappear to from time to time, and I drank myself into oblivion.
Wasn’t alone—Beck was there, and I think Davis and Wyatt too—and we definitely video chatted with Levi.
I can’t do this, I’d said. I’ve never loved two people more than I love them, but I can’t be the dad they need.
Not by yourself, idiot, had been the recurring answer over the twelve hours of my complete meltdown, which they’ve all reinforced for me at every opportunity.
Subtly. Hey, Tripp, can I take James and Emma to the video arcade so I don’t look like the dumbass adult going in to play games all by myself?
Like Beck doesn’t have an arcade of his own in every home he owns. So maybe not that subtly.
But the point stuck.
We called our band Bro Code even before we went viral on YouTube because we were all brothers—all of us from the neighborhood where we grew up, and not just the five of us who were playing around with being a band. Cash’s brothers and sisters were my brothers. Davis’s and Beck’s sisters were my brothers. Wyatt, the last kid on the block, was my brother.
We grew up in a village, just as likely to be grounded by someone else’s parent as our own, and equally as likely to be fed by someone else’s parent as our own. When Cash’s parents wanted to go out for date night, Beck’s parents would host a sleepover. When my mom had to work late, Levi and I would head to Davis’s house. Christmas cookies were made at Beck’s house. Neighborhood cookouts were held in Cash’s backyard. Davis’s dad taught us all to shoot hoops and got Levi and me to the piano lessons Mom insisted we take, and Wyatt’s grandma took both Wyatt and me to baseball practices when my mom couldn’t do it.
Doing this parenting thing all on my own?
It’s fucking hard.
And my friends are right. My kids can’t be all that I live for.
But the universe seems to be telling me that I need to let go of my dreams of running the Fireballs when I’m not dad-ing.
Levi lifts Emma for me, and I realize we’re alone.
Just my brother, my kids, and me.
Shit.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” I say grimly.