Play Dates

by Maggie Wells

A screeching toddler was being forcibly removed from the play area by a frazzled-looking dad wearing suit pants and a ketchup-spattered dress shirt. Colm’s heart seized a little as he recalled doing the exact same thing with Aiden not so very long ago. He turned to the scene playing out in play land. Laughter, tears, triumph, and disappointment. He sat on the hard plastic bench watching all of life’s dramas unfold in a temperature-controlled microcosm, and suddenly the events of the day didn’t seem so life-altering.

  Tomorrow, he and Aiden would wake up, go to the park. Maybe they’d join their friends for pancakes. Life would be normal again. Whatever normal was supposed to be.

  Chapter 11

  Monica was a complete train wreck by Saturday morning. The sound of a key in the locks managed to rouse her partway from the doze she’d finally fallen into after dawn. Her lips felt like cracked vinyl. A telltale crusty patch at the corner of her mouth seemed the likely explanation for her lack of moisture. She swung her feet to the floor as the alarm beeped to apprise her of the open door.

  “If you’re alive and ignoring my calls, I’m going to kill you,” Melody called up the staircase.

  A shower of foil wrappers fluttered to the floor. Monica stared down at them. Those little fruit snack things were addictive. She particularly liked the superhero ones. They were all bold colors and normal fruit flavors. The Princess Clarissa snacks were pastel colors and tasted like she was licking a My Little Pony.

  “In here,” she managed to croak.

  Glancing around at her seldom-used living room dispassionately, she gave the thought of clearing up a bit momentary consideration. She jettisoned any thought of cleanliness. One look at her and the flattened couch cushions, and Melody would know she hadn’t gone upstairs to bed. Her life was messed up. And if anyone had the right to bear witness to her downfall, Mel did. Living in the shadow of a super-achiever sister hadn’t been easy, as Melody never hesitated to point out.

  Mel stopped short at the entrance to the room. So short Emma walked right into her.

  “Mooooom,” Emma complained.

  “Sorry, faulty brake lights,” Melody responded distractedly, taking in every bit of the wreckage in a sweeping glance. With the data she needed collected, she patted her daughter’s head. “I heard Auntie Monica is stocking string cheese and Clarissa’s Carnival snacks these days. Go see if it’s true.”

  “But, I—”

  “And if there’s apple juice, pour me a glass, will you?”

  To Monica’s utter surprise, the request lit the little girl up like a glow stick. “Really?”

  “Be careful getting up to get a glass,” Mel warned sternly. Whirling as the little girl scampered off, she called after her, “And use a chair, not one of the stools.” Huffing, she dropped into a never-used armchair. “I swear I’m going to screw a helmet onto her head. She’s becoming such a daredevil.”

  “Like her mother,” Monica said as she made a grab for the empty wrappers strewn around her. “You were the original heart attack kid.”

  Melody settled into the chair, her gaze fixed on Monica but her expression soft and sympathetic. “So, the jig is up, huh?”

  Monica flung herself across the couch, fruit snack wrappers clutched in her hand. She shot her sister a look of pure annoyance. “Who says stuff like that?”

  “People who’ve been watching other people act like morons to get what they want when they could have had what they wanted very easily.”

  Mel shrugged, and Monica gaped at her, her brain whirring as she tried to work out the logic. “Care to boil things down to bullet points?”

  She held up one finger. “You’ve been lying.” A second popped up to join point number one. “You didn’t need to.” Melody raised a third finger, stared at the digit for a second, then made a show of folding it into her palm again. “I think I covered the pertinents.”

  “Thanks for lining things out for me,” Monica said dryly. “Got any suggestions on what to do?”

  Mel shrugged again. “Call him?”

  “Not picking up.”

  “Text?”

  “No reply.”

  Her sister nodded as if such roadblocks never occurred to her. “We have to get creative.”

  Emma skidded into the room, giggling as her sock-clad feet allowed her to sail across polished hardwood. “I’ve never been to your house with food, Aunt Monnie.” She beamed as she held out the bounty clasped in her hands. The little girl had scored the last of the string cheese and at least three packages of the funky Princess Clarissa fruit snacks. “Look, Mommy!”

  Melody smirked. “Yes, a veritable feast.”

  “Can we go to the park now?” Emma asked, dumping her loot into the enormous tote Mel had set on the floor. “You said we could go once we made sure we couldn’t smell Aunt Monnie’s body.” Her freckled little nose as she shot a worried glance at Monica. “Though I can kind of smell her.”

  “Thanks, kiddo.” Surreptitiously, Monica slid the empty wine bottle around the arm of the couch. “I’m fine,” she said waving them off. “Didn’t sleep well, that’s all.”

  Melody turned to Emma. “Hey, sweets, will you go grab a couple bottles of water from the fridge, too? I forgot to bring some from home.”

  Emma scowled and pointed into the gaping bag. “No, you didn’t. There’s some right there.”

  Mel blew out a breath so emphatic the gust ruffled her hair. “Yeah, but those aren’t cold. Will you go grab us some cold water from the fridge?” she repeated with exaggerated patience. “Pretty please.”

  “Since you asked nicely,” Emma sing-songed as she skipped from the room.

  The second she was gone, she swiveled to glare at Monica. “Get up. Get dressed. We’re going to the park.”

  “The park?” The foil wrappers sprang from her hands when Monica unclenched her fists. “Me? Oh no. Nuh-uh.”

  In a flash, her sister was out of the chair and pulling on her arm. “Yuh-huh. Come on, get up.” She retreated quickly when Monica exhaled a snort. “Whoa. You do stink.”

  Monica collapsed in a heap, throwing her arm up to cover her eyes. “Go. Leave me here to die.”

  Standing over her, Melody gave a pitying shake of her head. “Wow. What happened to my killer shark of a big sister?”

  “She bit off more than she could chew.”

  “Bullshit.” Mel spit the word out with startling vehemence. “You played the wrong strategy.” She ran her hand through her hair. “I couldn’t figure out why you did. It’s never been your style to play games, Mon. You go out and ask for what you want, and, most of the time, you hit your goals. I’ve always admired your drive.”

  “I’m even more like Dad than we thought.”

  “Stop,” Melody snapped. “That’s only some ridiculous excuse you use.”

  Monica peeked at her sister from under her elbow. “Is it? We both know I haven’t had the best experiences with relationships.”

  “Because you haven’t met anyone you cared about, but now you have.”

  “Have I?” Her voice came out soft and tremulous. She met Melody’s gaze and held. “How will I know? What if I’m caring enough? I’m not. What if I can’t keep…caring?”

  Silence fell between them like a heavy, wet fisherman’s net. Pressing her lips together, Monica swallowed the surge of anxiety rising inside her.

  “What if I am like Dad? Can I risk hurting Colm? Aiden?”

  Mel grabbed her hand and peeled her arm away from her face. “You aren’t.”

  Wetting parched lips, Monica gave her head a weak shake. “You don’t know, Melly,” she whispered. “I’d rather be at work than most anywhere else in the world.”

  “You’ve never had anything compelling to pull you away.” She squeezed Monica’s hand, perhaps a tad too hard. “You haven’t let yourself have anything else. Look at yourself. How the mighty have
fallen.”

  “I never said I was mighty.”

  Melody brushed the tangled hair away from Monica’s eyes. “No, but you have fallen. The really strong ones figure out how to get up again.”

  “I screwed up so bad,” Monica whispered, looking up at her sister dolefully.

  “Go back, start over, and do things right,” Mel insisted. “He wouldn’t have pushed so hard if he didn’t want you. You have the advantage already. Introduce him to the real you, and give this thing a chance.” She dropped down on the end of the sofa and rubbed Monica’s shin consolingly. “If the relationship works, it works. If it doesn’t, at least you tried.”

  “I heard you cuss,” Emma announced as she came into the room, three bottles of water cradled in her toothpick arms. She dropped two bottles into the tote and brought the third over to Monica. “You said a B-word. A fifty-cent B-word, too.”

  Monica darted a look from daughter to mother. “There’s a sliding scale?”

  “Based on syllables,” Melody said with a grim smile. “Jeremy and I had a fight one night after we thought she was asleep, but no, little miss accountant was sitting in the hallway running up the tab.”

  Opening her eyes wide, Monica gave her niece an approving high five. “Way to work the system, kid.”

  “Thanks.” Emma smiled brightly and turned her attention to her mother. “Can we go to the park now?”

  Melody gave Monica one final pat, then sprang to her feet with the grace and agility borne from years of yoga practice. “Yes, we will leave your aunt here to wallow in her muck and go off to the park for a little fresh air and sunshine.”

  “Yay!” Emma darted forward to peck a kiss to Monica’s cheek, but stopped short, her nose crinkling again. “See you later, Monnie!”

  Monica waved them off. “See you later. Thanks for making sure the smell hadn’t crept out from under the door.”

  “Not yet,” Mel said as she shouldered her bag. “But a shower should be real high on the to-do list.”

  Covering her eyes with her hand, Monica made a vague nodding movement. “Recommendation noted.”

  She heard the jangle of a key ring and peeked out from between her fingers. Melody stopped in the living room doorway, her bottom lip drawn up between her teeth. When Monica lowered her hand a couple inches, she asked, “If we see him…do you want to know?”

  Torn between yes and no, she hesitated. Colm was angry, as he had every right to be. If he spotted Emma, would he say something to Melody? Would he be rude? Ugly? The moment the thought popped into her head, she dismissed the notion. Colm wouldn’t be a jerk. Particularly not in front of the kids. Or his friends. At last, she gave in to the weak side and nodded. “Yeah. Let me know.”

  Emma called out another round of farewells, but Melody said nothing as they let themselves out of the house. Monica lowered her hand and raised her head. The floor and couch were littered with wrappers. She wished with all her might she could blame the empty wine bottle for the pounding in her head, but the grapes weren’t the culprit. The tears were. Bitter, salty tears ran down her face in a steady stream for hours. And she let them, because she didn’t know what else to do. She had to let them out. Try to get him out of her system.

  But they didn’t help.

  Her head hurt as much as her heart. Her eyes felt hot and scratchy. The muscles in her neck and back protested the evening spent on the sofa. But she couldn’t bring herself to go upstairs. Sleeping in her own bed would mean she’d run the risk of missing him. And she didn’t miss people. Because pining for someone meant you needed them, and she didn’t need Colm Cleary. So they got along well. She’d always worked well with others. And the sex, well, she could get sex anywhere, right? She had appliances capable of giving her satisfaction without the messy complications.

  But they wouldn’t be Colm. They wouldn’t smell like him. Their arms wouldn’t feel like his. And his laugh. Was there another man on earth with such a laugh? Probably not. She’d accidentally stumbled onto one of the good ones when she wasn’t even looking. Not a lot of guys would hop out of bed and hit the pavement because their kid had a nightmare. Sure, when it happened, she counted the ungraceful dismount as points against him.

  But now… Now, she knew better.

  She knew he had a hard time trusting others with his kid. Aiden was all Colm had in the world. And he’d been ready to share him with her. Not realizing she was the biggest, fattest of all big, fat liars. And talk about daddy issues. She was facing those coming and going.

  He’d never trust her again. How could he? But the urge to explain was as strong as it was when she made her first phone call. Something in her, the part that believed in fair play and keeping things above-board, wouldn’t let her rest until she had. Somehow, some way, she needed to make him understand why she let him believe what he wanted to believe for so long.

  And she needed to do so as soon as possible, because she couldn’t go on like this one day more.

  She swung her legs off the sofa and lunged to her feet. The mess she’d made in her usually pristine living room would have to wait. She had bigger, badder messes to straighten out. With a frown of grim determination, she marched toward the stairs. Halfway up, she ran her hand over her hair and her fingers stuck in a snarl. Keeping her eyes averted from the bed, she made a beeline for the bathroom. A quick peek at the mirror confirmed the integrity of her sister and niece’s assessments. She was a mess.

  Reaching into the shower, she spun the knobs until the spray was set to her preferred temperature and velocity. She undressed automatically, letting the blouse and pants she’d worn to work the previous morning fall to the floor. Stepping into the glass enclosure, she reveled in the shiver that ran through her body the second the spray touched her skin. The water was cool but not cold. The perfect temperature for someone who needed a jolt of get-up-and-go.

  * * * *

  They’d skipped the park. And the guys. Colm didn’t have the energy for grilling and ribbing. He’d taken a good dose during poker, but now they had the whole story, and he figured Mike and James were most likely mixing up a vat of sass to baste him in for weeks.

  “Can we go to the park after?”

  Aiden’s hopeful question pulled him from his thoughts.

  Colm was saved from answering by the appearance of a waitress carrying a loaded tray. “Elbows off, short stack,” he ordered as the woman started to unload the bounty they’d ordered for breakfast.

  The little boy bounced on the bench seat of the booth, beside himself with anticipation. In his weakened state, Colm had agreed to let him have chocolate chip pancakes. The big kind, not the kid-sized mini cakes. Colm envied his son’s simple joy.

  Aiden smacked his lips as he rose up onto his knees to grab the syrup bottle. Colm made a mental note to pick up lip balm, then snatched the dispenser from the boy’s grabby hand. “No way. Last time, you made pancake soup.”

  Giggling, Aiden subsided onto the seat, his wide smile lighting his face. “So awesome.”

  “So gross.” Colm drizzled the pancakes with a reasonable amount of syrup, then placed the bottle well out of his son’s sneaky reach.

  Three bites in, Aiden circled around again. “How come we didn’t go to the park?” he asked without looking up.

  Colm applied himself to the omelet on his plate. “I was hungry.”

  The little boy demolished a third of the stack in short order. “Did you hurt your heart?”

  His head jerked up so fast he almost choked on the bite he’d taken. The food turned to gravel in his mouth. Slowly and with extreme effort, he managed to chew and swallow before speaking. “What?”

  Aiden shrugged but didn’t pause in his systematic destruction of the pancakes. “Uncle Mike said you hadda broken heart.”

  A wave of anger and embarrassment rose inside him. This was exactly the reason why he kept his dating life—such
as it was—separate from Aiden. Considering the source, he tamped down on his indignation. Mike might have been discussing his love life with someone, but certainly not with his kids. This was most likely a case of little pitchers having big ears. “He did?”

  Aiden nodded and shoved an enormous forkful into his mouth. Colm set his silverware down and waited patiently. He winced when Aiden swallowed what looked like a painful gulp.

  “Who’d he say that to?”

  The boy shrugged again.

  Colm made another mental note to work on making Aiden use his words. “Did you hear him say so, or did someone tell you he said it?”

  “He tole Uncle James, and Jamie tole me and Tyler.”

  Colm blew out a breath. He should have known. Little Chrissie might be the only girl in the mix, but the boys gossiped like women. He watched as Aiden prepared another syrup-sodden bite. His son looked up, pinning him with a startlingly direct gaze.

  “Is it?”

  Lost in his son’s bottomless brown eyes, he asked, “Is what?”

  “Is it broken?” He blinked a couple times in rapid succession. “Do we hafta go to the hospital? Maybe they can put tape on you like they did me.”

  Colm couldn’t answer for a moment. His throat was too tight, his tongue thick and as lifeless as a slab of porterhouse steak. Was his heart broken over Monica? No, probably not. They hadn’t gotten to know one another on a deep enough level. At least, not yet. But he was hurt. And disappointed.

  Disheartened.

  So, yeah, maybe there was a little bruising around his heart, but not broken. But after all the lies Carmen had fed him…To his way of thinking, shattered trust was one hell of a lot harder to fix.

  “No, buddy. My heart’s not broken. No need to rush to the ER for some superglue,” he added with a wan smile. “I just…I liked Monica. The lady we thought was Emma’s mommy. But turns out she’s not Emma’s mommy. She’s her aunt, and she didn’t tell me. Hurt my feelings.”

  Aiden’s eyebrows pulled together as he puzzled the problem out. “You can’t like her because she isn’t Emma’s mommy? Don’t you like aunts? Jamie and Jeff’s mommy is Tyler and Chrissie’s aunt. Didja know?”