Chapter Eleven
BRIGGS
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The field is behindthe school on the North East side of town. As we turn off Main Street I’m hit with memory after memory of my youth. Loitering in front of Patty's, sneaking cigarettes and smoking them in the alley behind the post office, walking along the dirt path that ran parallel to the chain-link fence around the school, sneaking into the trees behind the track to make out with Xan during my fifth period spare.
The school is small compared to the ones in Surrey. In Raston there’s one school for every grade. Five years old to eighteen, you spent every day of your childhood in this building. A thought that squeezes me with fear. What if Millie wants to stay here? Go to school here?
Live with Xan.
My lungs tighten and I park the truck in the parking lot, closing my eyes as soon as it isn't in gear.
Millie puts a hand on my shoulder. "You okay, Mom?"
I suck in a long heavy breath that packs down all my fears and tuck them into the back of my mind.
"I'm fine, Sweetie. Let's get moving so we aren't late for your first practice." I do my best to put on my excited for you voice but I’m not sure it’s working.
"Okay," Millie says with some skepticism in her voice, but in half a second her easily distracted child brain sees the other kids on the field and she explodes across the parking lot, completely forgetting she's a little shy.
It’s a beautiful thing to witness.
"Well, hello to you to," Xan's deep voice rings behind me and I spin to face his tall, toned frame. He holds up a hand as if he’s waving to Millie's back as she runs toward Jet.
I crossed my arms as if it’ll make me stop noticing how handsome he is with his unshaved face and snug t-shirt over loose jeans.
"She's excited. Don't take it personally."
"Too late," Xan grins, his eyes deepening into playful pools of inviting blue like a sun warmed lake hidden deep in the forest.
Words escape me but the awkward silence doesn't last long when Delilah Ryker jogs toward us in cowboy boots, cut off jean shorts, a tight long-sleeved purple baseball T, and a Raston Wildcat’s softball hat.
"Briggitte, dah-ling," she drawls trying to sound like my French father, but it comes out New York socialite. I laugh and stepped into her instinctively, a tight hug filled with spicy perfume and memories.
"How are you, you crazy bitch?" She holds me out at arm’s length. She’s taller than me even though she's five years younger than me. It’s strange to see her all grown up and not her awkward twelve-year-old scrawny frame. I glance over to Millie standing off to the side in a group of young kids, her shyness keeping her from fully jumping in, but her excitement holding her in place, close to Jet who’s shaped like a house next to all the string bean kids.
"I'm good," I answer Del but she’s already striding down the grass slope toward the field. Xan falls into step with me and together we followed her.
"She was determined to come. She really wants to meet Millie." He tucks his hands in his pockets, his nerves flowing off him. His desperation is kind of sweet.
"That's fine. Millie is pretty pumped about the exponential growth in aunts and uncles," I say, smiling at my own joke. I have no brothers or sisters. My mother is dead, and my father forced me to choose between my baby and him, which we all know how that ended up.
The light tone of the joke falters for only a moment but Xan catches it.
“Are you okay?” he asks, watching his feet as we walk through the manicured grass.
“Yeah,” I say, then sigh because even after all this time Xan knows I’m lying. He gives me the same disbelieving headshake as he did when I was sixteen and broke up with him, telling him I didn’t love him. He absorbed me through dark lashes with ocean wave eyes and his thick lips pressed together to pull his dimple into his left cheek.
“You absolutely do love me,” he had said tipping my chin, so I was forced to look at him. “You can’t hide your heart from me, babe, so why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”
“Honestly?” I sigh as I watched Del shake Millie’s hand while my daughter is awestruck by doppelgänger.
“Always the truth, Briggs,” Xan replies.
I push all my nerves out on a big breath and steel myself to the truth.
“I don’t want to share her,” I say and Xan’s expression flips to shock. I quickly keep going. “It’s been me and Millie for ten years. No one else. She’s all I have and now I have to share her with you and with all your family. Even my dad is showing more interest in her now. Not seeing her the reason for all our family trouble.”