Page 133 of Learn Your Lesson

I was frozen, unclear in my own feelings and unsure of my next move. I felt her pulling away more and more each day. We didn’t flirt anymore. We didn’t touch. We barely spoke — just enough to communicate about Ava.

I missed her so badly, even when we were in the same room.

And yet I didn’t have the fucking right to.

It didn’t matter that she’d agreed to just sex. I couldn’t call her on that, couldn’t hold her to it — not after all that had transpired in the months since we’d made that agreement.

We both knew it was more than that now.

The difference was that it seemed like she could face that fact — and all I knew how to do was run from it.

Florida was already warming, the promise of a brutal summer evident in the humidity making my hair stick to my neck as I sat on the park bench and watched Ava playing on the slide with Chloe. It was a rare Sunday off — one very much needed — and it was too beautiful of a day to be stuck inside.

It was Chloe’s suggestion to use the day to get back to our mission of introducing Ava to Jenny through things she loved to do. Immediately, this park had come to mind.

Jenny used to come here at least once a week. It was her favorite place to escape from the rush of the world, to take a moment to breathe. The park was shady and quiet, lined with giant oak trees garnished with Spanish moss and a creek that bubbled as background noise just past the picnic benches. It had been more run down when we used to come here together — a forgotten oasis that the local residents didn’t have time or money to improve.

It had changed in the last five years of my absence, though. The old playground had been updated, the picnic tables and gazebos restored, and a new walking and biking trail had been made to run along the creek that eventually led to a river three miles north. The improvements meant the park was busier now, but it was still as gorgeous as ever.

I hid under the brim of my hat and behind the dark frames of my glasses. So far, no one had bothered us. Then again, the dozen other people we shared the park with seemed to be in their own little world, too. There was a family of four eating lunch by the creek, a couple running the path with their dog, a mom watching her kids just a few years older than Ava as they threw a Frisbee.

“Daddy, look!” Ava called, and I snapped my attention from where my eyes were losing focus in the trees to her just in time to watch her fly down the slide on her stomach. She giggled the whole way down, somersaulting at the bottom and popping up with wood chips stuck in her hair and all over her clothes.

“Perfect ten!” I called, grinning, but my heart was racing a bit after watching that tumble. “Be careful, okay?”

“I am!” she promised, and then she was running over to Chloe, who smiled down at her and said something as she ruffled her hair. They were best buds now, two peas in a pod.

When Ava ran off again, Chloe walked toward me, her hands in the pockets of her powder blue sundress and her eyes on her white sneakers. She’d pulled her short hair half up today, and the breeze blew the strands this way and that as she crossed the park.

Wordlessly, she took a seat at the opposite end of the bench from me. She couldn’t have put any more distance between us if she tried. In fact, I was pretty sure half her ass was hanging off the edge of that bench, that if I lightly pushed against her shoulder, she’d topple off.

“Thank you for today,” I said, stretching my arm over the back of the bench as I reclined back. The tips of my fingers brushed her neck when I did.

She leaned forward to avoid the touch.

“It’s a beautiful park,” she said. “I can see why Jenny loved it so much.”

I nodded, heart squeezing under an iron fist at the mention of her name.

Everything in me wanted to shut down in that moment.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. My heart kicked in my chest. My lungs struggled for air.

But for the first time in five years, I didn’t grant my body’s wish to run, to avoid, to cease operating.

Instead, I forced a breath that seared my lungs on the way down.

And I talked.

“I came here once after she died.”

Chloe stiffened, tucking her hands under her thighs. She didn’t say anything, but her chin tilted toward me, and though I had my eyes on Ava playing with another little girl her age, I knew Chloe was looking at me.

“I sat right here on this bench and cried like a fucking baby,” I admitted, patting the wood. “It was maybe a week after she’d passed, when my uncle and some of my teammates’ wives were helping me with Ava while I tried to navigate my new life. Jenny’s mom was here, too. I think. Or was that a couple weeks later?” I paused, trying to recall. “To be honest, I don’t remember a lot about that time. Isn’t that so shitty?” I shook my head. “Ava was this beautiful baby, growing more and more every day, and I couldn’t even be fully present for it. I was a zombie.”

I swallowed, my throat constricting as I watched Ava laugh and try her hand at the monkey bars. She fell after the third one, but immediately sprang back up and started again.

“I wouldn’t have made it through without all the help I got, and yet I could barely thank the people who were helping me. I was practically mute. I don’t remember how or when it happened, but slowly, over the years, I started living again. I showed up for Ava as much as I could. I came back to my team and played harder than I ever had. My mentor helped me on that front, reminding me thatwhen I didn’t have anything else, I had hockey. I had the Ospreys.”