My jaw dropped. “Dad?”
Mom looked almost proud as she nodded. “Oh, yeah. Laid him out flat and then we were thrown out of the bowling alley. We weren’t allowed to go back, either. The guy tried to press charges, too, but luckily for us the judge could see they were just a couple of stupid kids.”
“Not that the judge’s verdict helped me with your mom at all,” Dad piped in. “Because she’d completely written me off.”
“I was so done,” she agreed. “I told him I refused to spend my life with a pig-headed macho man who wouldn’t respect me when I asked him to back off and let me handle myself.”
My stomach turned with how familiar that sounded, and how being on the listening end of someone else’s story made me feel a different way about that decision.
“But you took him back,” I said, because clearly.
Mom sighed, smiling at Dad. “After taking a few weeks to cool down, yes, I did.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked.
“I didn’t really change my mind,” she said. “I still thought he was a big dummy for acting that way and I told him that. But I realized that as much as I was annoyed by what he did, I also found it kind of sweet. I liked that he wanted to protect me. I liked that he cared about me so much that he couldn’t think straight and that he’d literally punched someone in the nose.”
I smiled a little, remembering how I’d felt seeing Leo lay Nero out on the ground. I’d been horrified, angry, and yet…
It had also been quite hot.
“What she’s forgetting to say is that she finally stopped being so stubborn and ignoring my flowers and phone calls and desperate apologies enough to see that I was crazy about her,” Dad said. “Literally. I loved her so much I did crazy things, like punch dudes twice my size.”
“In the end, what I realized more than anything was that while it wasn’t the way I wanted the situation handled, it was how your dad showed he loved me. He didn’t punch that guy for his own satisfaction,” Mom said. “He did it because he saw someone touching me when I didn’t want to be touched.”
“I saw my girl being threatened,” Dad amended. “And I didn’t care about anything else but protecting her.”
“Ew,” I said with a laugh. “That’s so weird but also sweet?”
Dad beamed like I’d called him a superhero.
“Anyway,” Mom continued, turning to face me. “All I’m saying is that maybe in a weird, caveman way… this was Leo showing his affection for you.”
“He lost you once, remember?” Dad added. “Does it not make sense that, now that he had his chance with you again, he would be a little crazy at the thought of someone you trusted hurting you the way Nero did?”
I pressed a hand to where my chest felt like it was splitting in half.
Why did it make so much sense when my father said it? And why was I just now realizing that my stubbornness came from my mother — the very one I’d always dug my heels in to defy?
“Let me ask you this,” Mom said when I didn’t respond to them. “Do you still care about him?”
I nodded.
“And does it make you sick to think of losing him?” Dad asked.
My eyes filled with tears on another nod.
Mom chuckled, grabbing my arms in her hands and giving me a little shake. “Then forgive him, stubborn girl. And believe him when he says he’s learned his lesson. Trust me — you can do much worse than a man who loves you so much he can’t see straight.”
That made me burst into tears, and Mom pulled me into a hug. Dad was enveloping us both in the next breath, and I felt like a little girl again. It gave me permission to fall apart.
When I could catch my breath again, I swiped the tears from my face. “I’m scared,” I admitted.
“Well, obviously,” Dad said. “Why do you think you pushed him away in the first place? This was never about the fight with Nero.”
“It’s about the fact that you’re in deep,” Mom chimed in. “And it scares you to death. So, to combat that fear, you pretend like you’re in control. You push him away just to prove that you can.”
“It’s like you understand the feeling or something,” Dad mused.
Mom nudged him with a smile.
Then, my phone rang.
It made all of us jump because I had the ringer turned all the way up. And when we all looked down to find Leo’s name on the screen, Mom swatted my knee.
“Speak of the devil,” she said.
I just blinked, heart in my throat as I stared at the photograph on my screen. It was us on the couch at The Pit, me in Leo’s hoodie that I was still wearing now and him wrapping me up from behind. He was kissing my cheek while I laughed and tried to shove him off me. It was dark and grainy and blurry. It was him who’d taken the picture even though I’d threatened him not to.
It was my favorite now.
I picked up the phone with numb fingers, and Dad kissed my hair before grabbing Mom’s hand and tugging her inside to leave me alone.
I tapped the green button on the screen to accept the call.
And then Leo was there.
He looked so good it hurt.
He must have just had a shower because his hair was slightly damp, a bit mussed, his jaw freshly shaven. There were dark bags under his eyes, but they lit up when I answered, and he sucked in a breath of surprise, dropping his chains that he’d been chewing on.
“Hi,” he breathed.
My heart.
It squeezed so painfully tight I hiccupped.
“Hi,” I said.
Leo licked his bottom lip, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I… I know I said I’d leave you alone. And I am. I will,” he amended. “I just…”
He swallowed, unable to finish the thought. And for a moment, we just stared at each other, as if the other wasn’t real.
“Can you check your mail?” he finally said. “I sent you something.”
I frowned, getting up and pulling the blanket snug around me as I padded inside. Dad always dumped the mail on the kitchen counter before Mom would sort through it, and everything was already in neat piles.
There was a large, thick envelope addressed to me.
I propped the phone against a candle and carefully opened it, pulling out a brick red jersey with gold trim sleeves.
“The rivalry game is in two days,” he said as I unfolded it. I held it up, using it as a barrier to cover my smile when I saw that it was his jersey, the number thirteen and his last name sprawled across the back.
I lowered it, finding Leo staring back at me hopefully.
“I have a ticket waiting for you at will call,” he said. And before I could reply, he hurriedly added, “You don’t have to come. I understand if you don’t want to. I just… I wanted you to know that you have a ticket.” He swallowed, shaking his head. “No, I wanted you to know that I want you to be there.”
I swallowed, looking down at the jersey in my hands with my parents’ words circling in my mind.
“I’m sorry I went back on my promise to leave you alone,” he said, the corner of his mouth crooking up a bit. “But to be fair, I warned you I’d likely leave you disappointed.”