Getting Played

The next afternoon, I’m in the living room, pulling old dusty photo albums out of Gram’s antique bureau. Looking at pictures I haven’t even thought about, let alone seen, in decades.

There’s a Polaroid of my mother on the day I was born, propped up on pillows, holding me wrapped in a light blue blanket—looking like the baby-faced, dark-haired, sixteen year old girl she was when she had me.

Afterward she dropped out of high school, got her GED, then left me with Grams and took off when I was three. She bounced around the country for a while—I only saw her a handful of times—before she finally settled in Vegas about ten years ago.

I turn the page and it’s the standard toddler fare of messy highchair eating and bare-assed bathtub shots. A few pages after that is a picture of me on my first day of kindergarten. I remember Grams taking this one—next to the tree outside Lakeside Elementary. I grin with a gap-toothed smile, and square glasses and a white button down shirt with a Superman backpack slung across my shoulder.

I was a handsome, nerdy little bastard.

Grams shuffles into the living room, holding Lucy in her arms, rubbing a towel on the beast’s damp black fur. On a good day, the cat hates the world, but on bath days she’s especially vengeful. Grams sits on the couch beside me, and Lucy does a little shimmy in her lap. Then she turns around, lifts her tail and shows me her asshole before flouncing away.

Subtle.

“Look at you—such a sweet boy.” Grams leans over, tracing the kindergarten picture with her shaky hand.

I flip through the rest of the pages and there, at the end, not actually in the album, but stuck in the back is a picture of my father.

It’s weird to think of him as my father, because the only image I have of him is this one—when he was younger than most of my students—at the skate park at sunset, smirking into the camera with a sticker-covered skateboard tucked under his arm. Just a boy.

I flick the picture with my finger. “He looks like a punk. A total smartass.”

The kind of kid who’d be parked outside McCarthy’s office every other day. Guaranteed.

Grams confirms my suspicions. “From what I remember, he was quite the little shithead.” But then her voice softens as she looks up at me. “Though he had a part in making you, so he couldn’t have been all bad.”

He was tall for sixteen, and broad, with familiar thick blond hair—but that’s where the likeness ends. Our features are different, the jawline, the nose. I don’t think I look like either of my parents . . . or maybe they just weren’t around long enough for me to pick up on the similarities.

“Did he ever see me?”

“No.” Grams shakes her head. “He was already a dropout when your mother told him she was pregnant. And he hightailed it out of town months before you were born. Left in a van with those friends of his, said they were going surfing in Hawaii or some nonsense.”

I never resented my mother for leaving, not really. On some level, I knew it was the nicest thing she ever did for me. That she just didn’t have it in her to be a real mother. And she knew Grams would take care of me, love me, raise me right.

This dickhead is another story.

“How do you do that? I guess I can understand taking off when he was younger, but when he was an adult—didn’t he ever wonder if I was okay? He would’ve been thirty when I was fourteen.” More than old enough to have grown the hell up. Take responsibility. Fucking care, even a little. “What if I needed a kidney or a blood transfusion? How does someone have a kid out there in the world and just not give a shit?”

Grams pats my hand and shrugs.

“It’s the way people are built, Deany. When the unexpected happens, some are the type to stick around and some head for the nearest exit. If you’re asking that question, you already know which one you are.”

Growing up I used to suspect Grams was psychic. She just knew things. If I snuck in after curfew or smoked weed with the band in the woods, even if she didn’t actually catch me, she knew. I get that same vibe from her now.

“Where’s this coming from, Dean?”

I don’t lie—the woman’s a gray-haired polygraph. But I don’t give her the whole truth, either. Not yet.

“Some stuff has come up that has me thinking, that’s all.”

~ ~ ~

Later, I go for a drive around town. Hitting the drums didn’t help clear my head, but maybe some aimless driving will be just the ticket.

As I head down Main Street, I spot Old Mrs. Jenkins looking like a hunched ball of brown coat as she walks the bouncy caramel-colored Shih Tzu her great-grandkids got her for her ninety-fourth birthday. Mr. Martinez is cleaning the big picture window in the front of his furniture store with a long black squeegee. A group of boys ride their bikes down the sidewalk—and I instantly flash back to the day I learned to ride when I was six. The day I taught myself, bruised elbows and skinned knees galore, because there wasn’t anyone around able and interested enough to do the job.

Then I see Tara Benedict, a girl I went to high school with, pushing her new baby girl in a stroller with one hand and holding her son Joshua’s hand with the other. Josh is Tara’s son with her ex-husband, but he’s not in the picture. He calls her new husband Dad.

All the women I’ve screwed, all the girlfriends I’ve had and broken up with—I was never possessive. Not once. I don’t think I ever cared enough to put in the effort to be jealous.

And yet, when I picture Lainey in Tara’s place, when I think about her raising my soon-to-be kid with some other guy, any other guy—probably a douchebag—one word echoes through me like the screech of an overtightened guitar string that’s ready to snap.

Mine, mine, mine.

Lainey was mine that night—every beautiful inch of her. And the baby we made that night is mine. Ours.

And I feel that, right down to the center of my bones.

The sun is just setting on the west side of the lake, reflecting on the water like an orange ball of fire when I drive down Miller Street and pull into Lainey’s driveway. The wind gusts when I get out of the car—a flock of crispy brown leaves swirl around my feet as I take long, deliberate steps across the lawn.

The song “Shallow” from that Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper movie plays loudly from inside. I hear it as I walk up the steps and across the porch, toward the door in the back.

But I stop when I catch the sight of her through the window. And that aching throb in my chest comes back with a vengeance—a steel-fisted punch right to the heart.

Lainey’s hair falls around her shoulders in long, loose waves. She’s wearing soft gray shorts and a tank top that reveals about an inch of skin just above that rounded little bump. An oversized beige sweater flares out as she spins in a circle—dancing slow and barefoot on the shiny hardwood floor.

And it’s instantaneous—immediate—everything locks into place inside me. The free-falling, freaked-out feeling is gone . . . because . . . okay, I may not know what I’m doing—but I know w

hat I want.

I want to be more than my father and better than my mother. I want to be here for her and for them. I don’t want to be a faded fucking picture in the back of an old photo album.

I want to do this, and more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life—I want to be good at it.

I rap my knuckles on the oak wood, so she’ll hear the knock above the music. When Lainey opens the door, she looks up at me, her pink lips parted, her long, pretty lashes blinking around those big gorgeous eyes in a way that makes me want to kiss the hell out of her.

“Dean, hey…”

The music swells from inside the room—two voices singing about diving into the deep end, leaving the safe shallow far, far behind.

And my tone is clear with the simple, unshakeable truth.

“I’m in. I’m all in.”

Chapter Nine

Lainey

I’m in trouble.

“This is so weird.”

“It is. You’re right. Totally weird.”

Dean and Jason are on the back porch steps. Sitting beside each other. Looking out over the lake. Talking. Mano a mano, guy to guy, teacher to student, baby-daddy to son.

“It’s so . . . disappointing.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.”

“How so?”

And I’m in the kitchen peeking out the window and eavesdropping through the crack in the door, like the pregnant creeper I am.

“You’re my favorite teacher ever—”

“That means a lot to me.”

“And now, I find out you’re the guy who . . .” Jay can’t bring himself to say it. Picturing it probably is no picnic either. “That you and my mom—”

“It’s better if you don’t think about it. Just block it out.”

“She’s getting bigger by the day—kind of hard not to think about how that happened.”

“Fair point.”

I think I’ve handled the whole situation well. I’ve been calm, mature, strong and dignified. I meant it when I said I’d be fine doing this on my own—I would’ve been.