After the Game

I stood there as she built this future without me in it. One where she and Bryony were moving on and leaving me behind. I couldn’t find words. It was like being blindsided. I’d thought she wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her. She’d said she loved me. Did love not mean the same thing to her?

“It’s what’s best for all of us,” she said.

“No! It’s what’s best for you, maybe. But not me. I love you too much to plan a life without you in it. Obviously you don’t feel the same way.”

She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears, but I was angry, hurt, and my chest felt like it was about to explode. “If you didn’t want me, why did you let me love you? I don’t fucking trust love. Does it not mean the same to anyone else? Is that it? I’m the idiot?”

“Brady, no!” she said, taking a step toward me. I backed up. It was my time to put distance between us. I couldn’t imagine planning my future and leaving her and Bryony out of it. But she had done that easily enough.

“Don’t, Riley. Don’t. You want me out of your future, fine. I never wanted you out of mine. All damn week I missed you and thought about how I couldn’t do life there without you. You are where I get my happy. You. And while I was there trying to figure out how to take you with me, you were here planning me out of your life.”

“I was here trying to prepare for what was to come. I can’t take Bryony off to a college campus, Brady. Surely you see that. She’s secure here. That’s not a place for a baby.”

Other guys did it all the time. “They have family housing for a reason, Riley! It’s obviously done all the damn time.” She was using it as an excuse.

The fact was that Riley didn’t love me the way I loved her. She’d have destroyed me in the end. If she loved me enough, she’d make it happen. But this was her excuse. Her way out.

What the hell would I do without her?

He Thinks He Wasn’t Enough for You

CHAPTER 55

RILEY

I wiped the tears from my face and took a deep breath before going back inside Brady’s house to get Bryony. He had turned his back on me and told me to leave. Our conversation was over. We were over.

Coralee frowned when she saw my face, then turned to look outside where we had been for her son.

“Thank you for dinner, but we need to be going,” I said, my voice cracking.

“What happened?” she asked me.

I picked up Bryony and put her diaper bag over my arm. “We don’t agree on next year. He sees it differently than I do,” I explained. My eyes filled with tears again. “I need to go,” I said, then hurried for the front door with Bryony on my hip.

I got her buckled into her car seat and headed for home. The tears streamed freely down my face now, and Bryony was unusually quiet. She knew something was wrong, and she wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t like to scare her, so I tried to stop, but another sob broke free.

When we pulled into the drive, I dried my face before getting out and knew that my parents would know I had been crying. They’d want answers, and I wasn’t ready to give them that yet.

I never imagined it ending like this. But then I’d never imagined the ending. It had hurt too much to think about.

Bryony patted my face with her little hands as if to console me. I squeezed her tightly against my chest and told her I was fine.

When I walked inside, my mom looked up from the crossword puzzle she was doing on the sofa and an immediate frown crossed her face.

“What happened?”

“Mommy sad,” Bryony said by way of answering for me.

I refused to cry again in front of her. She didn’t need to be upset and confused. “Mommy is okay. Let’s get you a bath. Go pick out your pajamas and bath toys, and I’ll be right there,” I told her.

She nodded and ran down the hallway.

“We talked about next year. We don’t see it the same way. It ended badly,” I told her. “But let me get her in bed. If I talk about it, I’ll cry some more, and she doesn’t need to see that.”

Mom nodded. “Okay. Go take care of her. I’ll be here.”

She would always be there. She was my safety net. I wanted to cry thinking about how important she was to me and how making tough decisions for Bryony wasn’t just my job but what I wanted to do. Because one day I wanted her to know I was her safety net. I was always there.

Brady would look back on tonight and thank me. Maybe not to my face, but he would think it. That I saved him from throwing away his youth on a girl and a kid that wasn’t his. He deserved to live his life at college like he had always planned. Taking us with him was impossible not just for us but for him, too. He had practices and games and classes. We didn’t fit into that.

Knowing my decision was right didn’t make it any easier. Telling myself that one day it wouldn’t hurt like this didn’t help me. Not in this moment. In this moment I loved Brady Higgens, and life without him broke my heart into a million pieces.

The fear that I’d always love him was there. That this pain wouldn’t go away and that moving on would never really happen. Because my heart would go with Brady. He’d have it even when he no longer wanted it.

* * *

Once Bryony was bathed and asleep in bed, I went back to the living room, where Mom was still sitting, her crossword puzzle forgotten in her lap as she stared out the window in thought. She was worrying about me. Again.

“He wanted us to move to Tuscaloosa and live in family housing with him,” I told her.

She sighed and patted the spot beside her. “That would never work.”

“I know,” I replied.

“Did you tell him your plans?”

“Yes. He didn’t take it well. It ended in him yelling and telling me to leave.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, wrapping her arm around me and pulling me against her side. “He just loves you and doesn’t want to be away from you. He’ll calm down and regret it.”

I had seen the look in his eyes, and I knew he wasn’t going to understand and come apologize. He was hurt. I had hurt him, and after what he had gone through with his dad he wasn’t going to forgive this kind of hurt easily.

And I couldn’t agree to go with him just to make him happy. That wasn’t the answer for either of us.

I had to keep reminding myself that one day he would see I was right.

It didn’t make right now hurt any less.

* * *

The next week Bryony said Brady’s name for the first time. After three days of no call or visit from him, Bryony had looked up at me with a confused expression and asked, “Bwady?”

I had no way of explaining this to her. She was too small to understand, and I’d let him into our lives. I wondered if she would ask about Coralee next. I didn’t want to take her away from Coralee. She enjoyed Bryony just as much as Bryony enjoyed her. But that was an impossible situation. Especially right now.

Maybe one day it wouldn’t be hard.

The doorbell rang on Thursday, and I had just checked on Grandmamma in her room. She was sorting through old books. I wasn’t sure why, but that was what she was doing to occupy herself. I was afraid to ask, thinking it may confuse her when she had to answer.

Bryony ran to the door and tilted her head back to look up at the knob she couldn’t reach yet. I went behind her and opened it, knowing it wouldn’t be Brady. He was at school. The small hope still stirred inside me pointlessly.

Coralee stood on the other side of the door with a plate of cookies in one hand and a lemon cake in the other.

“I brought treats,” she said with a smile.

“Cowee,” Bryony called out in excitement at the sight of her friend and jumped up and down to make sure we both understood how happy she was about this.

“First he says Brady and now Coralee all in one day,” I told her, stepping back to let her in. “She’s missed you.”

Coralee smiled down at Bryony. “And I’ve missed her. Very much.”

I took the two plates from Coralee and walked them to the kitchen while Coralee bent down to scoop up Bryony. I knew this visit wasn’t just about Bryony. She was here to talk about Brady. I just didn’t know what her view would be.