Page 16 of Changing the Playbook
“Sophie.” She deploys the look—part exasperation, part pity—that only an eight-year-old can perfect. “Maddiealwayssaves me a spot. She’s mybest friend.”
The words carry the gravity of elementary school allegiances, and I bite back my automatic reminder about sunscreen reapplication and the importance of eating lunch before swimming. My chest constricts as I watch her bounce on her toes, all gangly limbs and wild energy, so much like Mom it steals my breath.
“Fine. But your inhaler?—”
“It’s in the front pocket where it always is.” She executes a theatrical eye-roll.
“And—”
“Can I go now?” She cuts me off. “Everyone’s already inside!”
I hesitate. Looking through the chain-link fence, I can see children shrieking and splashing in the chlorinated chaos. “Three o’clock,” I say.
But she’s already gone, blonde curls bouncing as she sprints through the gate without looking back. The counselor checks her name off a list, and just like that, my eight-year-old sister disappears into a crowd of kids who don’t know she watched our mother collapse at her soccer game two years ago.
I stand there another moment, fingers wrapped around the fence links until my knuckles ache. I tell myself she’s fine—better than fine—and I almost believe it. But, even if she’s not, she’s better than me, given I’m one moment away from demanding CPR certification verification and a full background check of all staff.
As I turn to leave, the parking lot shimmers with heat mirages that match my cortisol levels. I fumble for my phone, already dreading what I’ll find, and there it is, my advisor’s email with the fall semester’s schedule attached. The subject line might as well read “Your Worst Nightmare, Now with Credit Hours!”
Advanced Physiology: Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 a.m.
Seven. A.M.
Clinical Methods: Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
Not to mention other classes and twenty hours of practicum scattered throughout the schedule like landmines designed to detonate my carefully orchestrated family management system, and which will leave me too drained to do all the million-and-one other things I need to do in a given week.
I slump against my car, the metal searing through my thin shirt. The phone screen blurs as I squint at it, willing the pixels to rearrange into something that doesn’t require me to exist in three places simultaneously. My stomach churns with the familiar spiral of trying to solve an unsolvable equation:
Sophie’s presence is needed at point A (class), point B (Mom’s treatment), and point C (Hazel’s life), when Sophie can only occupy one point.
We moved across the country for Mom’s experimental treatment. I transferred schools, rearranged my entire life, and now I’m cramming a graduate degree in nursing into the spaces between being a caregiver and substitute parent, while most of my peers are just cramming study in between parties.
Not that I necessarilywantparties. Hell, some days I fantasize about running away to live in a simple log cabin in the woods. But it’d have to have excellent WiFi, proximity to a teaching hospital, and be within driving distance of Hazel’s school.
So basically, my current apartment with more trees.
The car starts with a wheeze that mirrors my emotional state. As I navigate toward campus, my brain does what it’s been doing for two weeks—circling back to my one spectacular lapse in judgment, the one night I let myself be twenty-three instead of forty-three.
Circling back to Mike.
Even thinking his name sends molten heat pooling between my legs, muscle memory from how he’d mapped every inch of me. My thighs press together involuntarily, remembering how he’d asked what I wanted, then delivered like he was getting graded on thoroughness.
AndGod, the morning after.
The way sunlight had streamed through my kitchen windows, catching the sheen of sweat on his shoulders as he’d pressed me against the counter, all suggestion and naked want. How he’d swept aside coffee mugs and my scattered thesis notes with one arm, his other hand tangled in my hair while he murmured filthy promises against my neck.
And he’d delivered on those promises.
I remember the cool granite beneath my palms, the heat of him behind me, the delicious contrast making me gasp. The low growl he’d made when I’d pushed back against him, demanding more. His pace—thorough and devastating—had made my legs shake and left his name as the only coherent thought in my head, the pancakes going cold as he fuc?—
A horn blares. I’ve been sitting at a green light, lost in a fever dream of athletic hands and that crooked smile he’d worn while making me breakfast in nothing but boxer briefs. Not my finest moment—or maybe my best, depending on the judge.
After, we’d exchanged phone numbers, telling each other we’d text, but reaffirming the ‘one-night-only’ pledge. I saved him as “Mike (amazing)” in a moment of post-orgasmic honesty I immediately regretted but couldn’t bring myself to change.
But now, two weeks, and no texts.
Which is actually totally fine, because I don’t have time for distractions.
