Page 10 of Summer Breakdown (Training Seasons #2)

“Baby, let’s go,” Jasmine calls out. Somehow, Marcel is the slowest person in this household to get ready, even though he only has himself to look after.

It’s Jasmine’s fault, really, because she bought him new clothes over the weekend.

He’s in his skater-boy era, and he won’t even let her put photos of him on Instagram with the Avril Lavigne song. He’s ruining her life.

Jasmine, however, is ready, and she got Lani ready (who wanted her hair in four braids with flower bobbles and has no ability to sit still) all while mulling over the decision to not throw out the large package that arrived this morning.

Jasmine had managed to get Frankie out of her mind for a whole day.

It’s not Frankie that’s in her mind but the event. The way she left.

Jasmine doesn’t give a damn about Frankie whatever-her-last-name-is.

And she’d succeeded in not thinking about her, until the memory of her returned with the knock on the door.

The postman on the other side with a discreetly packaged item.

He doesn’t care that she managed to fill her day with so much that Frankie’s smile didn’t invade her frontal lobe.

Twat. (Frankie, not the postman. He’s only doing his job.)

God, the way Jasmine’s heart had dropped when she realised Frankie wasn’t joking around.

She wasn’t hiding in the bathroom to jump out at her.

It was thought about, planned, and executed, all while Jasmine thought about her the entire way back from the kitchen.

Trying to tamper down her smile so Frankie didn’t think she was a loser, when Frankie was halfway home.

Jasmine hadn’t realised how badly she’d wanted her first time with a woman to be good.

It didn’t need to be life-changing. It didn’t need to be the best thing that ever happened to her.

But she needed it to feel like it made sense.

Like everything she’d ever thought she was missing was true.

And Jasmine can’t figure out if she’s hurt because all those things were true—every touch, every kiss, every look with Frankie made sense—or because after all the heartache, she turns thirty this year and still can’t get someone to spend the night with her.

“Mama,” Kehlani says, her little legs swinging on the bench at the dining table, “do we need my grass wheels?”

Lani has been in a wheelchair for basically her whole life.

She can walk if she has to, but it wipes her out for days, and her muscles aren’t as strong as they could be, so she might not make it wherever she’s going.

Sometimes, if she twists the wrong way, her knees dislocate.

They still do physical therapy so that if she ever was stuck, she’d be able to walk for help.

But Lani likes her chair, and Jasmine likes her.

“I don’t think so, baby,” she replies. “It hasn’t rained in a few weeks, so I think the ground will be hard, but we can take them if you’d like to be sure?”

Lani thinks about it, and Jasmine tries to remember if they’re in the garage or in the boot already. Lani would always rather be safe than sorry.

“Is it silly to take them?” she asks. Sometimes, Jasmine wonders if she forced Lani to grow up too fast. She’s only four, and she talks like an adult.

An adult with a tiny, childlike voice and cute curls on her forehead, but an adult all the same.

It was difficult, trying to keep her a child and grown up enough to deal with multiple hospital visits and surgeries.

“Nothing you think is silly.”

Lani giggles, holding her hands in front of her face. “’Kay. ”

“’Kay,” Jasmine replies, with a smile, then yells, “So help me, Marcel Bailo Kieta, if you don’t get in this kitchen right now…”

“I’m here!” he says, running through the corridor.

“Get in the car,” she says, but she kisses him on the forehead. Lani shuffles along the bench, and he picks her up with one hand, the skateboard in the other, before heading out to the car.

“The board isn’t going to move along the grass, Marcy,” Lani says.

“It’s for my aesthetic.”

“What’s that?” Lani asks, and Jasmine laughs as she locks the front door.

“Er, like a look?”

“It goes with your skater-boy look?” Lani asks.

“Yeah.”

“Are you a skater boy?” she starts with a giggle, and Jasmine already knows how it will end because she’s been requesting the same song repeatedly. Sure enough, she quickly breaks out into a very cute rendition of “Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne.

“Ma!” Marcel calls out with his head thrown back, but she knows he doesn’t mind.

Jasmine spends a lot of time making sure her kids are friends, but with the added knowledge that fourteen-year-olds don’t hang out with four-year-olds.

She wants Marcel to be his own person. She wants him to say no when he wants to, even if it’s difficult to say no to someone dressed head to toe in yellow who is always smiling.

“Lani,” Jasmine says with a laugh, as she puts the wheelchair in the boot. “Be nice.”

Jasmine gets in the front and spins round to double-check Lani is strapped in correctly.

Marcel did it perfectly. She looks at him.

The little hairs on the top of his lip that he loves so much.

The beanie hat he wears, even though it’s summertime and she spent hours designing cornrows on his head last night. The new baggy jeans. He’s so cute.

“Stop,” he whines, when he catches her looking at him. He pulls his hat off.

“It’s cute! Cool!”

Marcel laughs. “It’s itchy.”

“You need a satin-lined one, and for it to be cold outside.” She hands him her phone. “You’re on music. Pick something good. It’s not a long drive.”

Jasmine usually walks around town with the kids, but it’s due to rain later, and she has no idea how long this rugby open day will be on for.

They missed the big one as they were moving, but she hopes if they show up today, she can still sign Marcel up for lessons.

Lani would love to do it, but she can’t find a wheelchair sport for kids anywhere. She might have to start one herself.

“Lani, you can pick if it’s not skater-boy related.”

“I don’t know any other songs,” she grumbles.

“Sucks to be you,” Marcel replies, and Jasmine flicks his thigh.

Jasmine got lucky with them, even if it meant she had to be with Mike for that long.

It’s possible she should have left when Marcel was young, but Mike was still decent then.

Marcel loved him more than she thinks he’s loved anything or anyone ever, and Jasmine wanted another child.

At the start, she thought it was one and done because everything was so hard.

Then she got older—to the age she’d hoped to have been when she started thinking about babies.

She’s not sure she ever thought another child would save them, or that she wanted them to be saved, but she can’t bring herself to regret the decision when she hears Lani singing along with Marcel.

“I hope Adebayo is there,” Marcel says. “And Azan. Maybe Johnson will be there too.”

“Why am I hearing all these names now and not yesterday?” Jasmine asks. She loves to google things so she can have a conversation with her son.

“Because you would have spent the entire evening looking them up and asking me questions this morning, and I already knew I wanted to lie in.”

Jasmine gasps. “You little trickster.”

“Even I know about Adebayo, Mama,” Lani replies.

“Betrayed by my own womb mates.” They laugh, and Jasmine smiles at the sound, even if they are, in fact, traitors.

They head-bang in unison as Jasmine pulls into the Titans car park.

It looks a little rusty on the outside, but she can’t be too mad.

This is the only thing Marcel said he wanted to try before school started.

There’s gotta be kids here he can see over summer.

They didn’t move too far from their own home, and Marcel was having some trouble at school anyway, but she still feels guilty for moving him in year ten.

“Right,” she starts, as they all unbuckle. “Marc, can you grab my bag? Lan, I’m going to put the big wheels on.”

Jasmine isn’t expecting much from today.

Really, she wants Marcel to make friends.

He said this team has a lot of Black players and is owned by a Black woman, and Jasmine’s not mad about it.

The entire drive was Adebayo this, Adebayo that.

Jasmine hopes they’re here today. Sure, they won’t want to hang around with her child, but it would make him happy, and she needs him to be happy.

When they walk in, there’s a few stalls and a lot of people—children, teenagers, and possibly a few players, based on the width of their shoulders.

No one comes over, but it appears to be more of a do-it-yourself kind of day.

There’s no lip at the doorway to drag Lani over, so they’re already winning in her book.

At one point, Jasmine thought she saw Mali, but it was purple hair, not pink. Phew.

Mali did text her to say she beat Ezra, but Jasmine didn’t want to start a conversation with her.

She’s Frankie’s friend, and she never wants to see Frankie again.

For a few days, Jasmine thought Frankie left because she had a low episode, or she needed to leave, and it would have been fine.

Frankie is bipolar. Jasmine knows she can’t control that.

Probably anxious too, if Jasmine’s research taught her anything, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have texted her, even days later.

It’s been a full week. Jasmine is still thinking about it, and Frankie could have put her out of that misery if she wanted to.

How she treats Jasmine is something she can control.

Face painting—the dreaded activity all children’s events seem to have—is the first table they come to, and she’s not sure she can spin Lani around before she spots it.

Jasmine does whatever the kids want, if what they want is reasonable and she wants to do it, but she really hopes Kehlani doesn’t want her to match face paint, because she truly cannot be bothered.

“Mama,” Lani says, looking up at her from her chair. Hell, the puppy-dog eyes are out. Jasmine will have a butterfly on her face so fast. Lani probably won’t get sick from it. Jasmine gets nervous because when she gets sick, she’s so ill. It’s terrifying. “Can I get my face painted?”

But she can’t do so many things other children can. “Sure, baby.”

There’s no one at the table, so they line up and wait. It’s warm here, even with the doors open. Jasmine loves the summer. She wishes everything was outside. Still, the atmosphere is chill. It seems nice. She doesn’t immediately want to run out and never look back.

Jasmine finds a pocket of sunshine to stand in as she flicks through some leaflets.

The Titans. Cute name. There are a few signs on the noticeboard.

A PR job that appeared to have closed months ago.

So many community posts. Coffee mornings, rugby for the elderly, food drives.

Everything with the words speak to Frank written on them.

Jasmine smiles despite the immediate heart palpitations at being reminded of her night with Frankie.

She hopes she can get Marcel on the team.

There’s also an accounting job that Jasmine looks at because there are about six exclamation marks on it.

She’s not interested—she already has a full roster, and she just got over the end-of-quarter-four hell.

Besides, it’s almost school holidays, when she’s out of office for six weeks.

Working for herself is the best thing she was ever lucky enough to do.

It’s so close to being actual summer. Jasmine is hoping for scorching weather, even to prove to her parents that buying a house with a pool, in the middle of England, was a good idea.

Also, because she loves it when the kids are off school.

This might be the last year she gets Marcel to stay in the house for longer than half an hour.

She can imagine the late evenings as Lani chases Marcel around their new garden.

The barbecue dinners. The shine of Marcel’s cheeks because he has no idea how much suncream is appropriate and is terrified of looking like an old leather handbag.

Soon, her days will be full of her kids, and she won’t have to worry about trying to put herself out there to make new friends just to be ran out on. God, she’s a loser.

“Oh, hey. Cute top.” Jasmine frowns. Why does she recognise that voice? She spins, and oh… Oh no…

Frankie.