Page 83 of It's Complicated

“How are you feeling?” I asked as we rubbed the towels over us, drying off.

“Better than I did before.” He shot me a little smile. “Still not great, though.”

“Yeah.” I hung my towel over the shower curtain rod. “I imagine it’ll take a while before everything fully hits.”

“Probably.” He tossed his towel up next to mine.

“Did you eat anything while you were gone?”

He shook his head.

He’d left just before lunch, and it was well past dinner. He had to be starving.

“How about we get some clothes on, and I’ll order us something to eat? We can do another movie night. What do you think of that? Cuddles and pizza?”

“Sounds amazing.” He glanced at the door to the bathroom. “On three?”

I nodded. “One, two, three.”

I threw open the door, the cold air immediately permeating the overly hot and humid bathroom.

As one, we darted into the hall and ran into our rooms to get some clothes on.

I couldn’t change what happened today, and I couldn’t fix it, but I was going to do everything I could to help him through it.

15

JAIME

“Remindme again why we have to work?” Isaac asked, running his hand over my thigh in a slow arc.

We were sitting on the couch together, with me against the arm and Isaac sitting between my legs, his back against my chest.

“Bills, responsibilities, being productive members of society.” I rubbed his chest. “Other adult-sounding reasons.”

“Adulting blows,” he grumbled petulantly.

“It does. And not in a good way.”

Isaac chuckled and dropped his head against my shoulder. “Never in the good way.”

I wrapped my arm around his chest and hugged him closer.

We’d spent last night and all of today doing as little as possible after Isaac’s disastrous meeting with his father yesterday.

He was doing way better than I thought, considering everything, but I wasn’t sure if that was because he was processing it or because he’d shoved it to the back of his mind and was ignoring it.

We hadn’t talked much about what happened, but the more he told me, the more I hated his dad.

I’d only met Isaac’s dad once in the three years we’d been friends, and I hadn’t been impressed. He’d been dismissive and arrogant and treated me like I was Isaac’s housekeeper and not his best friend.

His mother wasn’t much better. I’d never met her, but I’d been in the room plenty of times when Isaac tried to talk to her on the phone. The woman was impossible to track down, and when he did finally get ahold of her, she always had some excuse or another why she couldn’t talk for more than a few minutes.

My parents weren’t perfect, and they’d made plenty of mistakes over the years, but I had no doubt they loved me and my sisters. They wanted the best for us, and they’d sacrificed a lot to help us achieve our goals.

Hockey wasn’t a cheap sport. Camps, coaching, traveling for tournaments, team fees, and the cost of equipment were a huge obstacle for a lot of kids. My parents had invested not just their money but also thousands, if not tens of thousands, of hours sitting in freezing arenas and driving me to tournaments to make sure I could keep playing at the competitive level.

And it wasn’t like my parents only funded my dreams and left my sisters to flounder on their own. All three of us were heavily involved in whatever extracurriculars we enjoyed, and our parents had been at every game, debate, performance, or tournament we’d been part of, cheering us on like the proud parents they were.

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