Page 21 of The One I Love
How could I ever think about ruining this dynamic? For what? For the chance of maybe Shane being the one? For a few orgasms?
No. I can’t. I won’t. Because for the hundredth time in their lives, Shane was there for my kids. Not their father. Shane.
And yes, I love him for it. I love him. But I love my kids more.
“Okay, I’m going to go back over there.” Mariah gestures toward her team. “Mom, I saw you taking pictures or video or something. You aren’t allowed to post anything until I approve and add a filter. See you guys later!”
I laugh as I watch Mariah head back over to rejoin her team. She gives a high-five to a few, even Emily Babcock’s daughter, when I see the reason I think my daughter joined the track team.
She just hugged a boy and blushed. And if I’m seeing things clearly, my daughter is giggling.
My daughter doesn’t giggle.
“What the fuck is that?”
Apparently, Shane is seeing what I’m seeing. “I’m guessing that’s why Mariah is suddenly a track star.”
“Like hell it is.”
Shane pushes off the fence and begins marching toward the benches where the team members are gathered. I lungeforward and grab his arm. “Shane Cunningham, you will not under any circumstances go over there right now and embarrass her.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “But you saw that, right? He had his hands all over her!”
“The hug?”
“It was more than a hug.”
“Calm down, Shane.
“Amelia! She hugged a boy!”
“I know,” I say. “She’s thirteen, Shane.”
“Exactly. She’sthirteen.”
I laugh and pull him back to where we were standing, though his eyes keep looking back over to the scene of the crime. “If I remember correctly, you were doing more than hugging girls when we were thirteen.”
“I know I was. That’s why I need to go have a talk with him. Because I know what thirteen-year-old boys think. And it’s a lot more than hugging.”
I shake my head as we reposition ourselves at the fence. “Stand down, Officer Cunningham. There are worse things that could be happening.”
I can’t help but chuckle as I realize that my daughter joined track for a boy. I can’t even be mad. I tried to join the football team to get a boy to notice me. And it worked. Well, it worked in the sense that after years of pining over him, he asked me out, I lost my virginity to him, got pregnant with Luke, married him at eighteen, then divorced ten years later after one too many close calls with his anger and one too many times ignoring what he was doing on the nights he said he was working.
Maybe Idoneed to have a talk with Mariah…you know…just in case.
“I can’t believe Mariah is hugging boys,”he grumps.
I smile. “She’s not a little girl anymore.”
“I refuse to believe that,” Shane says. “She’ll always be the pipsqueak who used to climb on my shoulders because she wanted to see things.”
“And who would cry when you’d put her down.”
This makes him smile. “Which is why I never did. I can’t stand to see my Pipsqueak cry.”
I laugh, remembering all the times Mariah asked Shane for piggyback rides, or to carry her. Yes, her father could have done it. But my girl always wanted Uncle Shane. She’s been attached to him since the day he came home from the Army. He was in Afghanistan when she was born, so his welcome home party was the first time he met her. She was four. I swear that was the day my daughter fell in love with him. I think he carried her around that whole party. But he didn’t mind. She had him wrapped around her finger from that day and never let go.
Reason nine-hundred-and-forty-six that it’s smart for him and I to leave the kiss where it belongs.
