Page 71 of Play the Last Card

“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 hesworehadn’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.

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