Page 172 of The Overtime Kiss

She hangs up right as Miles reaches the door, swinging it open. “Good thing I drove us today.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You trapped me, dude.”

“Did I?” he asks with a smirk.

“You fucking did.”

He claps my shoulder as we stride across the lot to his car. “Maybe you need to be trapped.”

The long-haired Boppity leads the pack of Chihuahua rescue mutts. She’s tiny—maybe seven pounds, but she’s the biggest dog in the world in her mind, so she barks her presence to any mammal that enters her fifty-foot pack radius. My mom holds her leash and Boo’s as well. I’ve got Cindy while Miles has Bippity as we walk the fearsome foursome along MarinaGreen, the Golden Gate Bridge rising majestically in a clear blue January sky.

“So, why did you cancel with us the other day? Does it have something to do with the…” Mom pauses, adjusting her sunglasses so she can look at me over the tops of the big cheetah shades, “breakup?”

This superpower of hers is hard to keep up with. “How did you find out about that?” I shoot my gaze toward Miles. He must have told her.

My brother holds up his hands in surrender. “Not me.”

“Had to have been you,” I say.

My mom cackles. “I figured it out. You’ve been a grumpy turd, and when I picked the kids up from school yesterday they said you and Sabrina were acting, and I quote,weird. Then they told me about a certain presentation last weekend,” she says. “And I put it all together.”

There you go. Secrets and my family don’t co-exist. “Okay, and?”

“And, young man, why are you being so surly with your mother?”

“And your brother?” Miles pipes in.

“Are you here to echo her?” I snap to Miles.

He slows his pace and stares straight at me. “And are you going to be a big dick?”

Ouch. “I’m not being a dick.”

“Bullshit. You’ve been a surly, sullen bastard since Sunday night. You were like an ogre on our Los Angeles trip,” he says, mentioning our quick midweek road trip down the state.

“It’s my old hometown,” I say, like that justifies my mood.

“Boys!” My mother cuts in with a sharp and clear order. She doesn’t yell, since she doesn’t have to. But we all stop. Including the four dogs. They turn their snouts to Mom, waiting for an order from on high. Miles and I look at her, chastened.

Well, I do. I’m mostly the chastened one, because I’m the asshole.

“Stop this snipping. Now, let’s talk,” Mom says, with authority and love. “I understand you prefer to grunt like a caveman. But I’m not going to let you swing your arms and scratch your chest. Why did you break up with a woman you clearly care so deeply about?”

I consider the question for about two seconds, then jump in with the cold, unvarnished truth. “The kids asked us to get married. Married! She practically choked when they said that. Her eyes popped and she bolted from the room. So yeah, I did the right thing. Because she doesn’t need more stress in her life. She doesn’t need a guy with two kids. She doesn’t need a boss who’s also a boyfriend. She doesn’t need to have her job in question. Don’t you two get it?” I ask, exasperated all over again.

Miles nods, nice and long, then strokes his chin. “So you assumed you knew what was best for her. How’d that go for you?”

My chest tightens, like someone’s tied a belt around it. “She shut down. She didn’t even fight me on it. Hell, she was probably glad.”

My mother stares at me, like she can’t believe I’m selling this line. Boppity does the same. She’s so over me. “Tyler, do you really believe that?” my mom asks. “That she was probablyglad?”

“Yes!” I shout, doubling down.

“Why?” she asks. Boppity barks. Cindy barks louder.

“Because of how she was acting,” I say, annoyed I have to rehash this hurt all over again, but rehash it I do, letting them know what went down the night my heart splintered into pieces.

When I finish with how Sabrina was just petting the kitten at the end, Miles stares at me with ferocity in hisexpression. “Did it ever occur to you, even once, even at all, that maybe she wasn’t shutting you out because she didn’t care? Maybe she shut down because she was already dealing with enough from her father?”

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