Max was a lot calmer about it than a lot of guys would have been. A lot calmer than he himself would have been if something like this had happened a couple years ago. But Maria needs to be more honest with him if she wants their relationship to work. She's kept a lot of secrets and told a lot of little lies to him lately, and eventually, if that continues, he's not going to be so calm anymore.Well Amy let the cat out of the bag.......now Max knows the truth about Maria's trip.
To say he was disappointed she lied is an understatement.
I wonder how much longer they will be together??
She really doesn't. No respect for her whatsoever. So basically Maria's words went right in one ear and out the other.Maria's meeting with Tina didn't go well at all.......matter of fact she has no respect for Maria.
Sara:
Yeah, that was a pretty brutal scene to write (but oh so fun.Wow...Tina is ANGRY. Really angry. I think Maria going to see her was the right thing but man...ow.
) Tina is angry at a lot of things, I feel, not just Maria. I think she's angry about a lot of things that have happened in her young life. And Maria showed up there and basically became a verbal punching bag.They do need to talk more about things. It's been such an awkward, uncomfortable thing coming back into each other's lives that they haven't done so yet, but hopefully now that they're getting used to each other again, they can get some of their issues out on the table.I also think Maria and Michael will never truly be friends until they hash out everything they went through and their feelings. They are still skirting around it but I think this last talk was really honest and it amazes me that they are just now talking about it.
Thanks for reading and leaving feedback!
Part 27
Liz got into her car after a long day of work, happy to be off her feet. She put her seatbelt on and glanced in the rearview mirror at her daughter, who was curled up in her car seat, pacifier in her mouth, sleeping.
“You ready to go home, baby?” she asked, thinking that it must be nice to eat and sleep and play all day.
Mental note, she thought as she stuck the key in the ignition, wean her off this pacifier. As cute as it was, Scarlet was almost two years old now, and at this point, sucking on that was more of a habit for her than anything else.
Liz twisted the key, but the car sputtered and growled a bit, never quite springing to life. She pumped the brake a few times and tried again. Still nothing.
“Crap,” she swore. Car problems. The last thing anyone needed.
She tried one more time just for the hell of it, but once again, no luck. Instinctively, she took out her phone to call Alex, though she doubted he’d have any more of an idea what to do than she did. After just two rings, it kicked straight on to voicemail.
“You’ve reached Alex Whitman. I can’t take your call right now, but--”
She hung up and thought through her options. There was always Doug, but he wasn’t the grease monkey type. And neither was Sean, who was probably too busy canoodling with this new girlfriend of his to come help her. So that pretty much left one person.
She dialed Max’s number, and he picked up on the third ring. “Yeah?”
“Hey,” she said. “It’s me.” She hated to ask, because she knew he was at the end of a long, tiring work day of his own, but she couldn’t just sit there and wait for some stranger to come help her out. “I need a favor.”
Thankfully for her, Max was on his way home from work and was only a few blocks away, so he was able to be there quickly. He didn’t seem to mind having to stop and help her, and it was probably made better by the fact that he got to see Scarlet. She woke up a little bit when she saw him, then went right back to sleep again.
“So it just wouldn’t start?” Max asked as he looked under the hood.
“No.” Liz gently bounced Scarlet as she walked around outside the car, alternating between patting and rubbing her back.
“Hmm.” He poked around at a few things, and she wondered if he had any idea what he was doing. Sure, Max had a blue collar job now, but he’d grown up in white collar life style. He didn’t seem super mechanical. But he looked the part. Having been on the construction site all day, he had smudges of dirt on his arms and his shirt.
“Thanks again for coming,” she said. “I know you probably just wanna get home.”
“Well, so do you,” he said, jiggling something under the hood.
“I just feel bad for calling you.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “You know I’ll always be here.”
She smiled appreciatively, happy that that was the case. Because a few years ago, it hadn’t been.
****
“Oh . . .” Liz half-cried, half-groaned as another contraction gripped her body. She felt like her insides were being twisted around and chewed up. And like her back was being cut in half. She just wanted to push already, but the nurses and doctors kept telling her she wasn’t dilated enough.
Her mom had left the room to go get something to eat, which meant she had no hand to squeeze. And she was adamant about not having her dad in there with her. As much as she loved him, it would just be too weird for her to push out a baby with him standing next to her. She was about to call him in, though, because this whole suffering through a contraction alone thing just wasn’t going to work.
Alex was out there, too. She could always call him.
As the contraction subsided and sweet, beautiful relief set in again, she found herself crying. Not because of the pain, and not because she was scared of what it would feel like when it came time to push. No, she was crying because . . . because she was alone in this. Really, as much as Alex would be there for her and her parents would be there for her, she was going to have to do this alone. A single parent. A single mother. All by herself.
She reached over to the bedside tray and picked up her phone, mentally debating whether or not she should call Max. She found his name on her contact list, and she wanted to reach out to him, no doubt about that. She just wanted to let him know that it was all happening, that he was about to be a father again. But they hadn’t spoken since he’d left Roswell, and he’d been such a mess back then. What if he was still a mess now? Maybe she was better off on her own.
Squeezing the phone, she shut her eyes and continued to cry, figuring she had the right to cry all she wanted to today. But suddenly, there was a knock on the door that alerted her. When her eyes snapped open, she almost couldn’t believe what she saw.
“Max,” she gasped, wondering if she was seeing things. He was like a mirage. There was no way he was really there.
He was, though. He came into the room with balloons and flowers and set them down on the table. “Hey,” he said, coming towards her hospital bed. “How you holdin’ up?”
“Not so good,” she admitted. “It’s really painful.”
“Just think of the end result,” he told her. “I hear we’re gonna have a daughter.”
She smiled tearfully. “Who told you?”
“Your mom. She called my mom, and my mom called me, told me it was happening today.”
“Well, the doctor said it might not happen until tonight,” she cautioned. “Or maybe even tomorrow. I’m gonna have a long labor.”
He pulled a chair up beside her bed and reached out to hold her hand. “I’ll be here,” he promised.
She studied him curiously, wondering where he had been, what he had done while he was gone. He clearly wasn’t the same lost boy he’d been when she’d last seen and spoken to him. “Are you done doing drugs?” she asked. She couldn’t be around someone who was an addict; she couldn’t let her child be around that.
“I’m clean,” he promised. “I went and got help, like I said I would. I’m doin’ better now.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, gently squeezing his hand. “Thank God.” She wasn’t under any false pretense that they would get back together or anything, but if he could be a good guy and be a good father, then that was what she wanted. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she confessed.
“Well, I missed out on this with Dylan,” he said. “I’m not gonna miss out on this with . . .” He trailed off and scratched the side of his head. “Do you know what you’re gonna name her?”
“I haven’t decided,” she said. “I really like Hannah and Emma and Scarlet.”
“Scarlet,” he pinpointed immediately. “I like that one.”
“Scarlet,” she echoed, testing out the full sound of it. “Scarlet Parker.”
He smiled, seeming to take no offense that she didn’t intend to use his last name. Of course she couldn’t, not after he’d just reappeared after months of absence.
But it was still comforting that he was here.
****
Max jiggled something else around, pulled on something, then shut the hood. “I’m gonna try it,” he announced, getting behind the wheel. With one leg hanging out the door, he stuck the key in, turned it, and . . . the car roared to life!
“Oh my god!” Liz exclaimed. “You fixed it!”
“Look at that,” he said. “I’m a mechanic.”
She laughed, and much like the car, so too did Scarlet start to come to life on her shoulder. She reached her pudgy little arms out for her dad, and Liz handed her over to him.
“You hear that? Daddy’s mechanical,” Max said, bouncing her up and down on his knee. “Yes, he is.”
Liz quickly whipped out her cell phone and took a picture. Just in case something happened and Max wasn’t around someday, whether he slipped back into old habits or he and Maria just moved somewhere else, she wanted to make sure Scarlet had lots of photos so she always knew how much her daddy loved her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Michael had to drag himself through work that afternoon. Luckily there wasn’t football practice, because he couldn’t muster up any energy or enthusiasm. Not today. Not after . . .
“Hey,” Sarah greeted cheerily when he walked in the door. “How’d your test go?”
Test? He’d had a test today? Oh, yeah. He wasn’t even thinking about it now. “It was fine.”
“Think you aced it?”
“Oh, yeah.” He wasn’t trying to sound cocky, but . . . hell, he was confident.
“Of course, of course,” she said. “Okay, what do you want for dinner? Cajun chicken pasta or chicken alfredo?” She held up a jar of alfredo sauce in one hand and a packet of Cajun seasoning mix in the other. “We have to get rid of this chicken one way or another.”
“Either one’s fine,” he said, setting his jacket on the back of one of the chairs.
“Hmm . . . chicken alfredo,” she decided. “Easier to make. You wanna cook it with me?”
He sauntered towards her, trying his best to looked sexy as he promised, “Oh, we’re gonna get cookin’.”
“God, you can turn, like, everything into something sexual.”
He shrugged unabashedly. “It’s a gift.”
“I guess.” She turned on the right front burner to high, reached under the oven to take out a big two-handled pot, and brought it over to the sink to fill it up with water. “So are you gonna help?” she asked.
“Yeah, if you want.” He wasn’t sure how much help he’d be, but he could do simple stuff, like stirring.
She cast a curious glance at him over her shoulder, and when she had the pot all filled and brought it back to the stove to set it down on the burner, she knowingly asked, “What’s wrong?”
By now, he knew he could tell her what had happened today without her getting mad, but he still didn’t want to. “Nothin’,” he muttered. No need to burden her with his problems.
“Well, when you say it like that, it really sounds like something.”
He sighed, resigned to telling her about what had happened. He wasn’t doing a good job of hiding it, and she wouldn’t give up until she knew. “I think I was a jackass today,” he admitted, wishing he could go back in time and say a few things differently. Or maybe just not say them at all.
“To who?” she questioned.
“Maria.” He waited a moment, gauging her reaction. There really wasn’t one. “If you don’t wanna hear about it . . .”
“No, I do,” she said. “What happened?”
He shrugged, downplaying it. “I just said some stuff.”
“Such as?”
“Well . . .” If he just got right down to it, she’d wonder why the hell they’d been talking about their relationship in the first place. So he figured he’d give her the full, but abridged, story. “She went to see Tina yesterday,” he explained. “I asked her to talk to her about what it’s like to be such a young mom, ‘cause I just thought it’d be good for her to hear from someone who’s been through it, you know?”
“Right.”
“I mean, she’s not listenin’ to me or my mom.”
“Right, she’s being stubborn,” Sarah agreed.
“Yeah. But apparently Tina wasn’t too receptive to that, and she ended up chewing Maria out.”
Sarah cringed. “Oh, no.”
“Yeah, I guess she was sayin’ all this stuff about Maria and how she never really . . . loved me.”
Sarah reached out to touch his arm, as if to comfort him. “Well, that’s not true.”
“I know it’s not, and I told Maria that. But then I kinda . . . said something I shouldn’t have.”
“What?”
For some reason, when he thought it over now, it sounded a lot harsher than he’d intended it to. “I said it was obvious that, back when we were together, I loved her more than she loved me.”
Sarah gave him a look of disbelief and removed her hand from his arm. “You said that?”
“Well, it’s true. She broke up with me.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she argued.
“Yes, it does. Why am I the only one who sees it that way?”
“Michael . . .” She paused for a moment, only long enough to tear open the fettucine box and dump the noodles into the now boiling water. “Don’t you get it? You hurt her feelings. I’m sure she must’ve been upset.”
“Yeah, she left cryin’,” he told her.
“Well, I can see why. That was such a mean thing to say.”
He wrinkled his forehead in confusion, still not seeing how he’d been wrong to say it, though. Sometimes the truth hurt.
“You totally discredited her feelings and offended her,” Sarah said.
“I didn’t mean for it to come off like that. I thought I was just stating a fact.”
“Oh, Michael . . .” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you’re so wrong.”
“Why? It’s just my opinion.”
“Okay, tell me this: Why did Maria break up with you and leave Roswell?” Sarah blatantly asked. “Was it because of everything that happened with you and Max and Dylan?”
He shifted uncomfortably, thinking back. “Partially.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there was other stuff along the way,” he mumbled, “but that was like the catalyst.”
She looked at him expectantly, silently urging him to continue. But he didn’t want to. Talking about the guy he used to be wasn’t always fun for him. That was why he stuck to the simple things like Snowball king.
“She always worried about me,” he told his girlfriend, knowing that she was probably very happy that he was finally opening up about something. “Because she thought I wasn’t ready, and everyone was tellin’ her I wasn’t ready. And maybe I really wasn’t ready, but . . . I don’t know. She didn’t wanna hold me back in life.”
And of course Sarah, insightful girl that she was, then posed the obvious but difficult question. “Do you think she would’ve?”
He’d thought about that a lot over the years, and honestly . . . his opinion had changed. “No,” he said. “Not on purpose.” Truth was, back in high school, he’d never really given a whole lot of thought to the future. He’d been the type to live for the day, for the moment, and just do whatever he was feeling without thinking about the consequences. Those traits didn’t really fly in the real world.
“Why do you think she felt like she was holding you back?” Sarah quietly asked.
“Well, I mean, I was gonna hold off on college when I was with her,” he acknowledged, “ ‘cause money was gonna be pretty tight. And I had it in my head that I’d just go out and find some manual labor type of job and work for a year or two.” When he thought about it now, it sounded awful. It sounded like something he didn’t want to do, because he loved college, and he loved what he was doing there. “I mean, I don’t know if I’d be doin’ quite this well if I was still with her, I guess.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Sarah said as she stirred the noodles beside her. “She left you . . . for you.”
Yeah. She had. He couldn’t dispute that.
“Sounds like she loved you a lot to me.”
“You think?” The fact that Sarah, who was the smartest and most mature person he knew, was taking Maria’s side on this made him second-guess himself, made him consider the possibility that maybe he really was wrong.
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I can’t imagine how much strength it takes to do something like that, to make that kind of sacrifice. If someone told me I had to leave you, even if I knew it was in your best interest . . .” She trailed off and shook her head, looking sad at the mere thought of it. “Michael, it would be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
He took in and let out a heavy breath, starting to grasp the full range of what an ass he’d been today. His opinion on the whole thing probably was wrong. He hadn’t been able to understand that before, but as usual, Sarah found a way to explain it so that he could understand. “So what do I do now?” he asked her.
“Apologize,” she answered simply. “That’s really all you can do.”
He nodded and said, “Yeah, you’re right,” but he wasn’t sure an apology would be enough for Maria. He’d really hurt her feelings today, and there was no guarantee that she’d get over it.
Quit thinkin’ about Maria, he told himself. He had to focus on other things, too, like the beautiful, insightful girl who was making him dinner tonight. “Hey, speaking of love . . .” he drawled, putting his arm around her waist, pulling her closer.
“I know,” she said. “You love me.”
He really did. Bending his head down, he kissed her, hoping she never forgot that.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Maria got home, Max wasn’t exactly . . . affectionate. Clearly he was still a little perturbed at her for lying to him about her whereabouts yesterday, which she understood and couldn’t really blame him for. It created an awkwardness that Maria wasn’t quite used to, though, as he and Dylan spent the majority of the evening in Dylan’s room, doing homework and then playing a little, while she tried to make spaghetti for dinner. Spaghetti. Such a simple thing, yet somehow, all the noodles ended up getting stuck to the bottom of the pan.
Just when she was beginning to think that her day couldn’t get any worse, the doorbell rang, and when she opened it, Isabel was standing on the other side.
“Oh, great,” she muttered, fighting the urge not to just slam the door in her face.
“Nice to see you, too, Maria,” Isabel greeted sarcastically. “You look awful.”
“Thanks.” That was just what everyone longed to hear after an especially crappy twenty-four hours. She noticed a foil-covered casserole dish in Isabel’s hands, and immediately she feared the worst. “Please don’t tell me that’s food.”
Isabel beamed. “Lasagna. I made it myself. I figured it was time to have a family dinner.”
“We’re not a family, Isabel,” Maria adamantly reminded her.
“Max and I are.” Isabel frowned and tried to peek inside. “Where is he anyway?”
“He’s in the shower,” Maria lied.
“So what aren’t you in there with him? I thought you two were supposed to be a couple again.”
What the hell was she even getting at? Her train of thought had become so twisted at this point. “Couples don’t have to shower together all the time.”
“Jesse and I do.”
“Well, you and Jesse are a very special couple. Goodbye, Isabel.” Maria shut the door right in the other girl’s face, not even feeling the slightest bit bad about it. Not after the day she’d had.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Even though they still had a lot of drills left to run, Michael decided to call it quits on practice when he saw cars pulling up out by the field. These parents were impatient, and the kids could only focus on one thing for a short amount of time. Practice didn’t need to be any longer.
“Alright, guys, well, it looks like your parents are here,” he said, ushering them into the huddle. “Good practice, guys. You’re gettin’ a lot better.” They had a game on Saturday that would probably be disastrous, but it would be a little less disastrous than the last one apparently had been.
“Can we go?” Charlie asked. He was the one kid in the bunch who had the worst attitude.
“Before you go, Coach Kyle has something for you,” Michael told them. “Kyle?”
Kyle wheeled himself further into the huddle, balancing a large box on his lap, and the boys made room for him. “Anybody who’s part of this Bulldogs team has to look the part,” he said, “so with that in mind . . .” He reached into the box and pulled out a small green t-shirt with the bulldogs logo on the front.
“Cool!” the kids exclaimed. There was a lot of “Whoa!” too.
“Grab a shirt on the way out,” Kyle instructed them. “Good job, guys.”
They practically mauled Kyle, each one of them more eager than the next to get their hands on their official Bulldogs shirt.
“Hey, what do you say?” Michael reminded them.
They all praised, “Thank you!” at once.
Once they all had their shirts, most of them scattered off to their parents’ cars, but Dylan and Luke stayed behind, begging Kyle to help them more with their pass plays.
Michael headed off the field and met up with Tess on the track. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there, but she had to have been there long enough to see Kyle hand out the shirts. “So what do you think of that?” he asked, motioning towards her fiancé, who was now politely trying to tell Dylan and Luke that it was time to go home.
“I caught the tail-end of practice,” she said. “He looks like he’s having a good time.”
“He is.” It was encouraging to see some spark in friend’s eyes again, even if it was only temporary. “So are you gonna tell him?”
Tess nodded nervously. “Mmm-hmm.”
“When, like tonight?”
“No.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Sometime this week,” she decided. “How about that?”
“Well, you’d better tell him soon,” he advised. He could only keep a lid on this secret for so long.
“Why? Am I showing?” she fretted dramatically, touching her stomach.
“Oh, yeah.”
She gasped, looking down at her body.
“I’m kidding,” he assured her.
“Shut up,” she snapped, giving him a playful whack on the shoulder. “God, you’re an ass.”
He snickered, looking forward to how much hell he could give her when she started to gain weight and waddle around. He really couldn’t do that with Tina, and when it happened for Sarah someday, he wouldn’t be able to do that with her, either, because he’d have to live with her. But he could tease the hell out of Tess and get away with it.
“Well, we have to meet Sarah for physical therapy,” she said as Kyle started to wheel himself away from the field, “so I have to take him.”
“Okay. See you later.”
“Bye, Coach Kyle!” Dylan and Luke called.
“Bye, guys,” Kyle said, stopping to give Michael a fist-bump as he left. “See ya, man.”
“See ya.” Michael hung back with the boys as other cars started to drive away. But one of them had just pulled up, and that one car was driven by Maria.
Thank God, he thought. He’d really been banking on her being the one to pick Dylan up and not Max. Now maybe he could get some stuff off his chest.
She got out of the car, tipped her sunglasses back on her head, and called, “Alright, Dylan, let’s go,” all the while paying no attention to Michael. “Luke, are we givin’ you a ride home, too?”
“Yeah,” Luke replied. “Bye, Coach.”
“Bye, Micho,” Dylan said as they walked past.
“Bye, guys.” He watched them going, wondering if that was what he and Kyle used to look like. The quarterback and the receiver, even at a young age.
How am I gonna do this? he thought. He didn’t want Maria to leave, but she was just standing at the car, ready to go. If he didn’t say something, she’d take off, and he’d have to wait until tomorrow to clear his conscience. Waiting one day had been hard enough; he didn’t want to wait for another one.
“Hey, Maria,” he called just as the boys were climbing in the back seat. “Can I talk to you?”
She looked reluctant, but at least she didn’t just ignore him. She stood there holding the door open for Dylan and his friend, even when they had already both gotten in, and then she motioned for them to hop back out. “Why don’t you guys go play around a little more before we leave?” she suggested.
“Really?” The boys didn’t need to be told twice. The scampered back out of the car and ran back to the field. Luke immediately picked up the football again and said, “Dylan, catch it!” He launched it into the air, and Dylan ran as fast as his little legs would carry him. It was a little over-thrown, so he didn’t really have a shot at it. But he lunged anyway and laughed as he picked himself up off the grass.
Exactly like me and Kyle, Michael thought. They used to stay late after football all the time when they’d been young like this.
Maria slowly came to meet up with him on the track, her arms wrapped around herself, her expression a deflated one. “You don’t have to apologize,” she mumbled right away.
“What?” Sure he did. Even if Sarah hadn’t opened up his eyes to how wrong he’d been, he still would have felt bad for making Maria cry.
“You’re entitled to your own opinion,” she said dryly, almost as if she’d rehearsed this. “It’s fine. We don’t have to agree.”
“No, we don’t.” And there were plenty of things they’d never agree on—namely, Max. “But I was wrong when I said that. And I am sorry.”
She looked like she was trying to force a smile, but it didn’t materialize. “Thanks.”
“It’s just . . .” He sensed she wasn’t really believing him, or understanding just how bad he felt about yesterday, so he kept going. “We all know I’m not the most emotionally mature guy. So sometimes it’s really hard for me to see things from someone else’s perspective.”
“That’s fine,” she reiterated. “I don’t expect you to understand where I was coming from. Apparently no one does, so . . .”
She sounded so defeated. God, he hated knowing he’d been the one to make her feel that way. “Maria . . .”
“Look, whatever. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even care anymore,” she said, dismissing the whole issue as she stuffed her hands in her pockets and tried to turn and walk away.
“Hey, would you listen to me?” he said, grabbing her arm gently to pull her back. She looked down at his hand curiously, and he quickly moved it away, taking a step back. “I’m trying to say something here.”
She looked at him expectantly, impatiently, and in that moment, he started to panic. Because he had no idea how to say what he wanted to. What he needed to.
Come on, don’t freeze up, he coached himself. He wasn’t going to stand there like an idiot. No way. He had her attention, so he had to do something with it.
“When you left town,” he started in, “I was pissed. And . . . devastated.” He hated how dramatic that sounded, but hell, it was true. “ ‘cause I felt like you were giving up on us.”
He noticed her tense, and subtly, she shook her head.
“That was just . . . how I saw things back then,” he said. “I couldn’t see it any other way. But as time wore on, I started to understand why you did what you did. You had reasons, and as much as I hate to admit it . . .” He gulped, acknowledging a hard truth, one he had never wanted to own up to. “They were probably valid. It’s sort of a bitter pill to swallow, but . . . even though I’d made a lot of improvements by that point, I still had a long way to go. So I still could’ve ended up like my dad.” Just picturing that man, let alone thinking that he could have ended up like him, made Michael’s blood boil. “And I know you didn’t want that for me, and I sure as hell didn’t want it for myself.”
Her face had started to soften. She still looked . . . skeptical, in a way, but he could tell that she was listening to every single word he said, taking it in, absorbing it.
“But I wanted you,” he said, allowing himself to remember just for a second how strong that desire had been, how all-consuming. “So I just didn’t care about the risk.”
She breathed in sharply, and her face softened even more.
“But you left,” he said. “You left so that I could go to college and figure out what I wanna do with my life and make something of myself. And I did.” He wasn’t done by any means; clearly it was still an ongoing process. But it was one that he felt optimistic about, excited. “I’ve done all that, and I have all that, and more,” he said, thinking of Sarah and her unwavering, unconditional support. “I probably have way more than I deserve. And that’s because of you.”
She blinked as tears entered into her eyes.
“You loved me enough to let me go,” he realized. “I didn’t get that before, but I do now. So I guess what I’m trying to say is . . .” He searched his brain for the right sentiment, and it came easily this time. “Thank you.” It felt surprisingly good to get that out. “And I’m sorry for not sayin’ it sooner.”
Her lips parted slightly, and she just stared at him, managing to keep those tears of hers inside. But he could see so much relief on her face, like this was all she’d been wanting to hear for the past two years.
“That’s it,” he said, “so . . .” He flapped his arms against his sides, hoping it was enough. He didn’t want her to be feeling sad about this anymore.
She breathed a loud sigh, but it wasn’t a defeated one this time. “Dylan, Luke, we’re gonna leave now,” she told the boys.
“Do we have to?” Dylan complained, but he obediently put down the football and started sulking towards the track.
Turning back to Michael, Maria whispered a quiet “Thank you,” of her own. He almost felt like he shouldn’t even accept it, because after being a total jackass, he didn’t deserve any gratitude. But maybe—just maybe—he’d made up for it now, by reconsidering his own viewpoint, by admitting that he was wrong.
“Bye, Coach,” Luke once again said on his way to the car. But this time, instead of saying goodbye, Dylan grabbed onto his legs and hugged him. It surprised him. And delighted him. He messed up the little guy’s hair, the way he always used to do, and sent him on his way.
The whole interaction didn’t go unnoticed. Maria saw it. And slowly, hesitantly, it made her smile.
TBC . . .
-April
They do have a lot of issues, don't they? And many of these issues aren't very easy to resolve.
if you'd like to.