Page 14

Chapter Fourteen

Ivy

Mon, 23 Oct at 6:23 A.M.

Scott: Morning. Can I call you today? I have the day off practice so can talk whenever. Let me know. Have a good day x

Wed, 25 Oct at 3:33 P.M.

Scott: I’m heading out of town for a Thursday night game today. Just wanted to let you know. Will be in Florida. Call me or let me know when I can call you? We can just talk.

Tues, 31 Oct at 1:46 A.M.

Scott: Thinking about you, call me. Please?

Sat, 4 Nov at 9:23 A.M.

Scott: Heading to LA for a game. I’ll be back late Sunday night.

Sun, 12 Nov at 9:23 A.M.

Scott: Will be away for a Monday night game this week then have stretch at home. We’ll be in Denver.

Scott: Are you ready to talk yet?

Scott: Please Ivy, just call me.

“You can’t ignore him forever,” Katie says from her place on the couch.

I grit my teeth and turn my phone over so that the screen is face down on the table. I glance up at her from the stack of letter writing books I’m going through. “Why are you even here, again? This is like the third time in the last week.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are. You’re ignoring a man that is obviously very much into you and the reason you’re ignoring said man is ridiculous, might I add.” She waves her wine glass around her head. “Are you delulu or something? Scott Harvey is fine .”

“You date him then,” I mutter, closing one of the kids’ books harder than necessary and tossing it onto my completed pile.

“I would, but I’m in love with Grant—” I make a gagging noise and I can practically feel her glare burning a hole in the side of my head. “Besides, Harvey is obviously in love with you. You should call him.”

“No. He lied.” The words feel like gravel pouring out my mouth. I pull the next book toward me, flipping to the pages where the child has been practicing their J ’s.

“Barely a lie. He told you worked for the team, just didn’t say what he did for said team.”

“Still a lie.”

She sighs sitting forward and putting her glass into the coffee table next to my own.

“Ivy, if this is because he plays in the NFL … you know this isn’t the same situation as your dad. That had nothing to do with foot—”

“If you aren’t going to be helpful then you should probably just go, I’m busy with this.” I bite out. She slides off the couch to sit next to me.

“I just think you’re being a little dramatic,” she tells me softly, a gentle hand coming to pat my arm. “It’s not the same.”

I slouch against the couch setting my pen down. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” She snakes an arm around my shoulders. “And you would too if you actually faced the reality of what happened and saw it for what it was.”

I shake her off, getting to my feet. “Do you want ice cream? I think I want ice cream.”

“Ivy, come on,” she pleads with me from her place on the floor.

“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s done.”

“But he’s still—”

“Ice cream or not?” I cut her off.

I can’t think about Scott. I just … can’t.

Scott

The amber liquid burns my throat on its way down.

I stare at my phone.

I have been staring at my phone for four weeks. I know she’s gotten my messages. They all sit on delivered. Whether she actually read them? Who knows.

I don’t understand this.

I knew she would be upset about the lie, but this seems more than that. I would be upset too, but I thought I had shown her who I was, Scott Harvey the man, not Scott Harvey the QB.

She looked like a ghost.

Her face went pale, her eyes glazed over. They sprung with tears like the more the information processed in her mind, the more upset and distressed she became .

I want to understand. I want to talk it through with her.

I just want her .

My hotel room is quiet. I always like playing in Denver. It is freezing by November but their fans are passionate and they show up to sell-out stadiums. We are a good match for them. The usual buzz that flows through my veins the night before a game is drowned out by the sense of dread that took residence in my chest the moment I left Ivy’s house a month ago.

Two fingers of whiskey at a time. I have turned to alcohol to dull the pain.

Am I an idiot? Yes.

Will I regret drinking the night before a game? For sure.

Do I care when I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks? Fuck, no.

I’m getting desperate.

For weeks, I’ve been walking past the windows of Pats trying to spot her behind the bar. Of course, it is the middle of a school semester. Logically I know that she won’t be working at the bar over a Tuesday lunch shift but I check anyway. I’ve seen Katie a few times.

Only once have I walked in and begged to see Ivy. Katie just smiled sadly at me and shook her head. I’m not sure my pride can take another hit.

I miss her.

I miss taking her on dates, holding her during the movies she talks all the way through, kissing her.

I miss talking to her, hearing about her day and the kids in her class. Her updates on her Pops. Her stories growing up with him.

Fuck.

I throw back the rest of the whiskey in my glass. The headache is already forming but I push it away, pouring another shot into the glass. When I go to take a sip, my phone rings. The camera turns on and I stare back at my own reflection as I contemplate answering my mother’s FaceTime request .

Eventually she wins. I swipe across the screen and answer the call.

“Hi, darling.” Her bright smile fills the screen and I can tell by the bright pattern behind her she is sitting in bed already. “How’s my boy?”

“Hi Mom.” I lean over to the bedside table to put down my glass and adjust the phone in my hand. Her eyes narrow and it makes me sit a little straighter against the headboard. My mother can see right through me. I decide that deflection is my best chance. “How are you? How’s dad?”

My dad’s voice rang out from somewhere off screen. “Good thank you, son.” I smile a little shaking my head.

Mom isn’t fooled. “We’re fine, pottering along as always. But how are you? How is Boston treating you? The team?” There is a pause and I watch her nervously glance to where my dad is sitting next to her. “How is Ivy?” She finishes quietly.

Immediately I hear my dad groan. “Annabel. You promised to leave it alone.”

“I’m his mother, I’m allowed.” She scowls at dad. “It’s my god given right to meddle.”

“Leave the boy alone.”

I chuckle, pressing a hand to my chest as the dull ache starts to pound against my ribs at the mention of Ivy. I give my best noncommittal shrug, murmuring, “It’s all fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Are you sure? I’m worried about you. I—”

“I’m twenty-nine, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“You’re my baby boy. I will always worry about you. It’s my right,” she claims. There is a scoff from dad.

“I thought it was your right to meddle?” I ask her.

“I have lots of rights.” She lifts a mug to her lips and takes a sip. We stare at each other in silence for a second, my mom’s eyes narrowing just a little before she sighs, giving up her line of questioning.

Sometimes I curse how close I am with my parents. I tell them pretty much everything and anything. What socks I wear for a game, what I have for dinner if I try a new restaurant. I send pictures if I buy anything new.

And I told them about Ivy.

Big mistake.

My mom took the news that I met a girl and took her out a few times as a wedding announcement. I am wholeheartedly surprised that she hasn’t booked a venue yet. Although I know her well enough that she probably thought about it but decided it's best to ask what Ivy would want first.

The images of Ivy in a white dress, walking down an aisle toward me, has my mouth feeling like sandpaper. I reach over to grab my glass and take a sip.

“Scott Bowman Harvey,” mom scolds, making me flinch. “Please tell me that’s not alcohol in that glass?”

I swallow the whiskey, letting the burn dull the pain in my chest. “Again mom, I’m twenty-nine.”

“The night before a game, though? You don’t drink normally but especially not during the season!” She looks at my dad. “Jason, say something to your son.”

The phone tilts and my dad, leaning against their headboard with his glasses slid down his nose and a book in hand, comes into view. Without looking up from the book, I see his eyes roll and he replies in a dead tone. “Scott, do as your mother says.”

I laugh, “It’s fine. I just—” I pause.

“You just, what?”

“Ivy and I … we’re having a break. Sort of. I think.” I blame the whiskey for my blabbering. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to say anything to them until I figured out what I’m going to do myself. I certainly don’t want to tell them it was because I lied to her.

“Oh, darling. I’m sorry.” Mom’s features soften before she quietly asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” I say a little harshly. I sigh, putting my glass back on the side table. “I’m sorry. I just really do not want to talk about it. ”

“Okay.” She takes another sip of her tea, dropping the subject.

“What’s going on with you guys?” I ask, trying to move past the Ivy topic.

“We thought we might rent an RV. Go on a bit of a road trip.” She glances at dad again.

“You aren’t allowed to drive at night. And, dad has the worst sense of direction in the world.” I rub a hand over my eyes. “You can’t rent an RV.”

“We can, and we will.” Mom nods her head like the decision is final.

“Let me pay for a trip for you, please,” I beg. “With a guide and a driver, and nice hotels where you won’t have to listen to Dad complain about his bad back.”

I’ve been begging them to let me pay for them to go away for years now. Ever since I received my first signing bonus. Their answer has always been the same—

“You save your money for your future. Your own family holidays.”

Mom and Dad haven’t met a girlfriend of mine since high school. Then again, it is hard to introduce them to someone when there isn’t anyone to meet. Ivy’s changed that.

Ivy’s changed a lot of things.

Point is, I haven’t taken a girl home to meet my parents in years but mom hasn’t given up hope. Her sly comments every now and then confirms as much. When I told them about Ivy, back when I asked for Big Al’s details so I could set up dinner, Mom’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Mom …” I scrunch my face up, inhaling sharply.

“I’m not getting any younger here, Scott. I want grandchildren. You should talk to h—”

“Jesus, mom.”

“What?!” Her feigned innocence paints a clear picture of the same look she’s given me over the years whenever she’s asked about the women in my life … which is often .

Like she says, it is her god given right.

“Sue me for wanting to see you happy and in love.”

“I’m busy. I’m focused—”

“On Football. I know,” she cuts me off. I hear the deep mumble of his dad’s voice again. His way of trying to warn her away from the subject again. It doesn’t work.

“I just worry that you’re lonely. I’d hoped when you told us about Ivy, things might change. Have you spoken to her lately?”

“I—” I don’t have the strength to go into it right now with her. “I promise I’m okay, Mom. I have Flynn out here, and I’ve been getting to know the other guys on the team. Really, I’m fine.”

“Have you … have you thought about reaching out to … her ?”

Three months. That’s how long it’s taken my mom to finally work up the courage and ask the question I’m sure has been burning inside her.

I love my parents. Jason and Annabel Harvey are hardworking, uncommonly kind, caring people. My dad had been a criminal defense lawyer in his glory days but has since given it all up to work for a not-for-profit firm that helps kids in trouble all over California. Mom is a professor in environmental sciences. A scholar, with a hippie heart. I grew up never in want of anything.

I was given the best education, played any sport I wished to, and had tutors when I struggled. I always had a solid roof over my head, a hearty meal on the table, and a warm bed to sleep in every night.

My parents come from old money, add that to the family fortune through their own accomplishments, and they donate hundreds of thousands of it to charities every year.

They taught me the value of helping others, of money, of being grateful for all we had. My parents are always so full of life. I can’t imagine that there might have been a moment in time that they thought they might not be parental material.

But there was .

They’ve told me the story enough times now. Never planned for kids, focused on their careers enough and they were happy with each other. Until one day they just weren’t anymore. By then, Mom was pushing forty, Dad even older, and they struggled. It hadn’t mattered, both were open to adopting. They’d started talking to adoption agencies, looking at their options and filling in the paperwork.

Mom told me that the process had been grueling. The deep dive these agencies did had taken a toll so they’d decided to take a break.

One weekend while they had been attending a conference in Boston, Dad had been brought to the emergency room at Boston General after slicing his hand while chopping onions. Dad’s eyes were blurred on account of the tears he swore hadn’t existed.

My parents had been bickering lovingly of course–about said tears and onion chopping when the emergency responders had wheeled in a five-year-old boy, high and sporting first degree chemical burns, that wouldn’t stop screaming.

That boy was me.

My birth mother had been using our studio apartment to cook drugs and I’d been breathing in the fumes for months.

Mom and Dad like to believe it was fate.

The adoption process had gotten them down, tired. They had still been committed to adopting but every time they signed a new form, sat in another interview, Mom had told me it felt so transactional to her.

Then Dad slipped doing something he’d done a million times. Like someone calling the shots had nudged his hand and led them to the hospital at that moment. Mom’s heart had broken, staring at the boy until she couldn’t take it anymore. She moved to the side of the hospital bed, pushing her way through the crowd of nurses, picked me up and held me tightly to her chest.

Only then, in the comfort of her arms, did my five-year-old self stop crying .

My parents saved my life. I love them dearly, and I know there is nothing I will ever be able to do to make it up to them.

Except, maybe in Mom’s mind, giving them grandchildren.

I shake my head. “You know I have no interest in meeting that woman. Why would you ask that?”

“Because you’re in Boston now. She might still be there. You might get some sort of closure if you reach out. She is your birth—”

“I’m gonna head to bed. Think about the trip, okay? No RV.”

Mom frowns and opens her mouth, looking like she might try to argue. Instead she simply nods.

“Fine. We’ll talk about it. Maybe we can come see some of your home games in the next few weeks in Boston.”

I force a smile, my hand itching to take another sip of the whiskey. “That’d be great.”

“Scott?” I hum in response; the whiskey finally kicking in and sleep starts to take its hold. “I’m sure if you talk to Ivy it will work out. Do it in person, none of this texting crap you kids do these days. If you want her, you will fix it. I know you will. I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.”