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He stares at me with a blank face. “Huh?”
Of course I have to explain. So I tell him the brief version. The one where we were switching positions, and I lost my balance and smacked her in the face.
Naturally, he laughs. “Jesus Christ.” And then he motions for my phone, as if he’s beckoning me forward. “Let me see.”
I give him a look of “have you lost your mind?” which is one I’ve given him nearly every day since I met him. “Are you fucking serious? I’m not showing you the video.”
Kelly hears me, or at least I think she does because the glare I get isn’t friendly. Or it’s because I told some chick to mind her business. I don’t think I care at this point which one, just that I’m tired of being hit in the side.
Bonner frowns. “You saw me and my wife.”
“Because you made me!” And then I realize how loud my voice is. Shit. Leaning in, I whisper-shout, “You fucking made me watch that, and I’m not complaining about that,” I add, because it wasn’t all bad. I learned some things. “But no way am I letting you watch my wife.”
“That’s crap.” He screws the cap on his water bottle, grinning.
“Besides.” I wave my hand around. “I deleted it.”
“Bullshit.”
He’s right, I didn’t, but I refuse to let him see it.
Oliver’s game takes about an hour and believe it or not, my short little guy actually scores some points. He looks up at the stands each time to see my reaction. Or maybe Bonner’s, I don’t know. His team loses though, which naturally puts him in a bad mood.
“Good job,” I tell him for the points he scored and the effort he put in.
“Did Bonner watch?”
How’d I get replaced by the man-child?
And I piss Oliver off even more when I tell him he can’t ride home with Bonner.
By this point, I’m the worst person in the world to him, and probably the majority of my family. It’s bad enough that just by Hazel singing in the car, Oliver freaks out on her. I’m with him. I don’t want to hear Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” anymore today either, but I don’t yell at her like he does.
“Stop singing it!” he screams, tossing his basketball at her face. It hits her right in the side of the head, and she cries bloody murder.
My eyes meet my son’s in the rearview mirror, and he knows he’s in trouble. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, dropping his head forward.
I fight the urge to turn around and beat his ass, but I don’t because I’m a firm believer in when you’re mad, you never lay a hand on your kids.
We’re in the driveway now. I slam the car in gear and look over at Kelly. “Why don’t you take the kids inside? Oliver and I are going for a drive.” I look up to the mirror again. Tears are rolling down his cheeks. I want to cave and let him off the hook, but he can’t act like this.
Kelly gets the kids inside the house and I pull back out of the driveway.
“I said I was sorry,” he tells me, still silently crying.
“I know you did, but sometimes sorry isn’t enough.” I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to say to him because I repeat it to myself and wonder how he takes the words.
I drive to the beach and decide maybe us walking out on the pier might calm him down enough to talk to me. Either that or he can push me off the jetty and run away.
For a half hour, I don’t say anything. I let him talk randomly about basketball and how he wants to move back to Texas. “Why do you want to move back?”
He shrugs and tosses a rock into the water, his dark hair blowing in the warm wind. “I don’t know. I like it better there.”
I’m not sure how to dive into the whole sister situation, so I just blurt, “Is that why you’re being so mean to Hazel? Because you’re mad about the move?”
“Dad.” His shoulders sink and he blows out a sigh that sounds like Chewbacca dying. “Why do you have to keep talking about that?”
Shielding the sun from my eyes, I stare at him as if he threw a rock at my head. “Seriously, dude? You threw a basketball at her damn head.”