Page 32 of The Progressions

“All of it, except it was hers and not ‘theirs,’” I said. “She earned it. He’s nothing but a grifter and he tricked her into being with him, and now she’ll be alone and taking care of hisbaby by herself. I’ll find him and get him.” I glanced around, realizing that my voice had gone up again. “She’s a good person who made a bad decision,” I continued, a lot more quietly. “She made a mistake and chose a bad boyfriend. It can happen.”

“It can,” he agreed. “Want to sit?”

No, I wanted to tell the women at the desk that I was ready to go if Iva needed me. “I can give her ice chips or something,” I suggested. “I can hold her hand.”

They said that they would let me know, and that they were taking care of her.

“Ok,” I answered. “Thank you.” These were different employees than the ones who had been here five years before when I’d come with my dad, but those people had probably moved on to other things. The patients who arrived sick and hurt, they were the ones who got stuck in the moment. They, and their families, stayed trapped in the problems and the repercussions.

“Kasia?”

I looked over at Tyler. Everyone in this waiting room was here because of some kind of tragedy, big or small, but he was still a Woodsmen player. They were staring at him, gaping openly, and I felt a need to stand in front and block him. I camouflaged about half of his width and none of his shoulders or head. “You can go,” I told him. “You don’t need to wait with me. Shouldn’t you get your mom at the airport?”

“I still have time. Let’s sit down.”

Maybe he wasn’t noticing the open mouths and the scrutiny, or maybe he was used to it. “You came out of college early,” I noted.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I was thinking that you had more time to acclimate to this kind of attention,” I explained. I opened my phone and tried the number I had for stupid Dominic, which didn’t work. I had deactivated my social media accounts, of which there were two and they really had only displayed some terrible poetry I’d written. I started to turn them on again so I could contact him that way.

“There’s a lot of attention on the Woodsmen,” Tyler agreed.

“Anyway, you want it,” I said absently. “You drive a car the color of a highlighter. And there’s the fur hat. Nobody wears stuff like that to blend in.”

“That was the only color they had of that model of SUV at the dealership here, and I didn’t want to wait for another one. Maybe I should have,” he admitted. “And I hated that fucking hat. Shay and her stylist had this idea about us taking pictures in the cold.”

“They really didn’t understand about summer? We’re still in the northern hemisphere,” I told him. “Why didn’t you just say no?”

“She was moving here for me,” he answered. “She was giving up a life she had out there, for me. It seemed like the least I could do was wear a bad outfit for one day. But I hated that fucking hat.”

Well, that sounded nice, actually. I looked at what he was wearing now, which was just jeans and a t-shirt. His clothes were normal and not post-ready at all.

“She was so disappointed when I decided to sign with the Woodsmen,” he continued. “She cried for days.”

I pictured Shay Galton with her beautiful tears. I had also been crying today as we drove to Iva’s house, and I was sure that I didn’t look so sweetly tragic. “She didn’t really move here, though, did she? Where is she right now?”

“I think…Aruba,” he said. “I’m not sure.”

“Is she going to be mad about your mom coming to stay with you?”

“No.”

“You said that they didn’t get along, though,” I reminded him, and he nodded.

“Yeah, but they won’t see each other because Shay and I broke up. I sent all her stuff to California, including that giant fucking deionizer.”

“The…what happened?”

He explained part of what he’d just told me. “I shipped the deionizer back to her, that huge thing that looked like a sarcophagus. It was supposed to stop aging and shrink fat cells by removing all the ions in her body. She wouldn’t listen to me when I said that humans need those. Things like potassium and calcium are pretty important, but the machine didn’t work, anyway.” He pointed at my phone. “You can’t find the dad?”

No, I hadn’t been able to, but…what? I understood what he’d said about electrolytes, but not the rest. “You and Shay Galton aren’t together anymore? When did that happen?”

“Right around when she unblocked me. I was tired of all the crap going on. At first, it was—” He stopped, and his eyes slid to look at his shoes. “It was easy. Low-risk,” he explained. “I just went along with it all.”

Being with Shay Galton sounded exhausting to me, but whatever. “Why didn’t she make a video about you? Why isn’t she using it for publicity?”

“She wants to lock things down with a new guy first. She says she’ll be trading up and that’s what she wants to emphasize when she publicizes it.”

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