Page 12 of Moms of Mayhem
He shook his head, then went toward the stairs. The old floorboards creaked with every step, and I leaned against the kitchen counters, listening to the movements above me.
As temperamental as my son was, he was a good kid. I braced myself for the door slam, but it didn’t come. It clicked closed, and his speakers turned on, the windows rattling with the bass blaring from an angry rock song.
My phone vibrated in my vest pocket, and I pulled it outto a text from my brother. I flicked the lights off, then reset the house alarm and headed upstairs to my room.
Ty
Make it home safe?
Emmy
Yes, Dad. We’re good.
Ty
Need me to talk to him?
Emmy
Not your job.
Ty
Not what I asked.
I sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed the ache forming between my eyebrows, hating the idea of leaning on Ty even more than I already did. He was fixing my Jeep, had cosigned the rent agreement on my Pilates studio, and was Jace’s backup ride anytime I got caught up with work. And yet, here he was texting me to check in on us. Aside from asking the final score of the game, Ryan hadn’t texted at all.
Emmy
We’re good tonight. But I offered to go sledding with him this weekend. Can we come to Copper Ridge?
Ty
The ranch is yours. You never have to ask.
Grabbing Jace’s headphones, I put them over my ears and turned on the sound canceling feature, blocking out the music blaring from my son’s room.
It helped, sort of.
What didn’t help was the knot of guilt and frustration tightening in my chest—the constant push and pull of trying to be everything at once: the calm parent, the cool parent, the one who enforced boundaries without becoming the villain in his teenage coming-of-age story.
I lay back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling, the weight of the day finally settling into my bones. Some days, being a single mom felt like juggling knives while walking a tightrope in a windstorm. Tonight, I was fresh out of balance.
But Jace hadn’t slammed the door, hadn’t fought back about the headphones or PlayStation. And I was holding onto those little wins like they were lifelines.
Maybe sledding would help. Maybe Ty’s ranch would be a reset. Or maybe it would just be loud and cold and full of awkward silences.
Either way, I’d show up. Because that’s what moms did, even when I was exhausted and just as lost as he was.
I’d always show up.
6
I jerked awake Monday morning to the sound of music blaring from outside. After the laziest weekend I’d had in years, it took me a minute for my brain to come online, blinking into consciousness against the early morning sun streaming through the windows to my right.
Even though it had been over 20 years since I’d last lived here, my childhood room was mostly the same—a hockey stick for a curtain rod, pennants from every tournament I’d played in with the Mayhem, trophies on every available inch of shelf space, and a three-foot-tall orange teddy bear Mason and I had won at a summer carnival when I was a teen still sat parked in the corner. It had seen better days, and from the state of my back pain, so had I.
The windows rattled with the bass line ofWelcome to the Jungle, and I dropped my legs over the side of the full-size bed, ready to investigate. My mom’s house was in the foothills with no neighbors, but I’d gifted her a speaker system out by the pond several Christmases ago. My crutchessat across the room, so I put my good leg down, pushed off the mattress, and hopped to the window.
