Violet grabs my arms, yanking my hands away from my mouth. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. You can’t shout swear words in a room full of kids.”
“There are parents here, too.”
“Never mind. Just start jumping,” she says, uncharacteristically shoving my chest, pushing me. She laughs when I stumble, tripping onto another trampoline, almost falling flat on my ass.
I catch myself, bouncing back up to my feet like a boss.
“Someone isn’t as light on their feet as they think they are,” she teases, beginning a steady bounce.
Up and down…up and down…crossing her arms protectively across her chest, holding her rack like she’s afraid they’re going to be flopping around.
I smirk.
“I don’t know why you’re holding your chest like that. You have almost no boobs,” I say it in an effort to be helpful, because seriously, the girl has no tits.
Judging by her flaming red cheeks, I’ve embarrassed the shit out her, and she presents me with her back. Slows her roll. Stops jumping all together and makes her way to the edge of the padded safety mat.
“Hey, where are you going?”
She ignores me.
I roll my eyes.
“Oh come on, don’t get pissed.” Jesus, why is everyone so damn sensitive all the time? “Can’t you take a joke?”
She spins around, narrowing her eyes as she climbs backward down the ladder. “It’s only a joke when other people find it funny.”
Zeke
“Hello?”
“Ezekiel?”
I scowl into the phone. “Jesus, no one calls me that. Who is this?”
“This is Krystal Jones. Kyle’s mom.”
Well, shit.
I glance down at the kid, who is half asleep in the passenger seat of my truck. We’re on our way home from an arcade to meet his mom. “Oh. Hey Krystal. What’s up?”
“I have a huge favor to ask, and I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t desperate…”
“Lady, if you’re propositioning me—”
“I need you to watch Kyle tonight, just a little longer. One of our second shifters called in sick and I really need the money from this shift but have no one to watch Kyle.”
Uh, what does she think I am, a fucking babysitter?
“Ms. Jones…”
“I just need an answer.” It sounds like she’s in a crowded diner, and I hear her glancing over her shoulder. Hear someone calling her name in the background. “Can you watch him?”
I squint over at her son. He’s half out of it, head against the glass window, mouth falling open from exhaustion. Gross.
He better not drool on my damn seats.
“Uh…”
“Please.”
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
“At my place or what?”
“Yes, if you could. I’m sorry. I don’t even know if I trust you, but I’m desperate. I know it’s against the mentor rules to even be asking you to babysit, but I need to keep my job. I need the hours.”
The desperation in her voice has me squeezing my eyes shut and pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.
“Fuck,” I draw out.
Krystal inhales a breath. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”
“Ugh. I’ll do it if I have to.” I hate myself, but I’ll do it.
The call disconnects without any further instructions. Kyle peers at me through sleepy, hooded eyes. “Was that my mom?”
“Yup. Sorry dude, you’re coming home with me.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Do I have to?”
“Trust me, Kyle, I’m not thrilled about it either.”
Heading toward my house, I give him another glance. He really does look tired, and for a brief moment, I wonder about his parents and life at home.
“Where’s your dad, kid?”
“Where’s yours?” Jesus, even half asleep the kid is a little smartass.
Still, it’s a fair enough question. “My dad is…let’s see, how do I put this so you understand? My dad is a bag of shit.”
His eyes go wide. “Did he hit your mom?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask Did your dad hit yours? but I hold back—I’m not that insensitive.
Fine, I am. But still, I bit my tongue.
“No, my dad didn’t hit my mom. In fact, they’re still married.”
“Does he buy you stuff?”
“Yes. He buys me stuff.” Stuff I charge on his credit card.
“How can he be a bag of shit if he buys you stuff?”
I snort. “Kid, you have a lot to learn about life. Just because someone buys you stuff doesn’t mean they actually care. Let’s use my parents for example—they give me things so I won’t bother them.” I shoot him a frown. “You know, I’m kind of like you in a way; I was shuffled around when I was young while my parents worked. They worked night and day, starting their business and inventing stuff. Stuff that made them a lot of money. I had tons of babysitters, all that shit, just like you. Sometimes I think they forgot they even had a son.”
“My mom doesn’t forget about me,” Kyle says with pride in his voice.
“No. She doesn’t. She’s working hard to keep a roof over your head. She’s a good mom.”
“Do your parents work a lot?”
“Kind of. They used to work day and night. Now my dad just works and my mom plays.”
Why the fuck am I telling this to an eleven-year-old?
“Where do they go?”
I have no idea. No longer care. “Anywhere they want.”
Any time. Any place. Any cost.
“Even on your birthday?”
“Yeah,” I say gruffly. Quietly now, “Even on my birthday.”
Birthdays. Christmas. Easter. Graduation. Move-in day my freshman year of college.
“But if they travel so much, where were you?”
“Nowhere, really.”
Here.
There.
Wherever they stuck me.
Wherever they weren’t.
Really, the only time I ever saw my parents was when their backsides were leaving while I cried. My mom used to hate when I cried. “It grates on my nerves,” she’d say in an even tone. I think my clingy behavior made it easy for her to climb into the car without a backward glance or a wave goodbye.
No kiss. No hug.
Obviously I didn’t realize when I was little that they were just fucking assholes, didn’t realize it was nothing personal.
All I knew was that it crushed me.
My mother didn’t do affection, even before success hit. She was too hurried for it. Always in motion, always on the go. Always moving a different direction. If I begged to be picked up as a toddler, I remember being shooed away, a burden.
I don’t know why they bothered having me; my mother had no business having kids.
When my parents started making money—serious money—the DVDs they’d play to keep me out of their way became nannies and caregivers. Aunts and uncles and people they paid to watch over me that really didn’t give a shit.
They were only in it for the money, too.
Then it really started rolling in, a windfall they earned when my father sold his first program to Microsoft. Bought stock in multiple dotcoms. Invested in several startups. This was back when I was very young, but I remember standing at the edge of the small kitchen listening to my mother cry with relief and joy. She cried about hard work and sacrifice. The long hours. The endless work days. The scrimping and saving, all on a bet that my father’s ideas would pay off.
And they did, twenty-fold.
But of all the sacrifices they’d made—cheap dinners, shithole rentals with a garage my dad could use as an office, walking everywhere because the car had to be sold to buy computer parts…
None were real sacrifices.
I was.
I was the real sacrifice.
Afterthought, burden—whatever you want to fucking call it, I was left behind after the big payday came.
My mom had always yearned to travel, even long before they had a pot to piss in. Exotic places. Dubai. Morocco. Iceland. China. She wanted pictures by the Taj Mahal and the great pyramids of Egypt.
Dad?
He couldn’t have cared less.
His passion was inventing and creating. Making something out of nothing. Technology out of thin air. His brain? Sharp and insightful.
Not insightful enough, it seems, because when it came to my beautiful mother, he was spineless. When she wanted to hit the road, charter private jets, and see the world?
He carried her purse and pulled her matching, newly minted designer luggage—only the best that her new money would buy.
“Who took care of you?” Kyle persists, his voice breaking into my thoughts.
“Some relatives.” I don’t tell Kyle they were paid to take care of me and only did it for the money. “Sometimes my parents’ friends.”
“That sucks.”
Yeah. It did suck.
I was shuffled off to my grandparents the first time my folks jetted off. It was only going to be a week, so no harm in that, right? One week turned into several, several turned into weeks on end, and soon my grandparents had thrown their hands up and cried defeat. They implored their daughter to take her son along. “Ezekiel cannot miss school,” my mother would say in this prissy, holier than thou voice, using any excuse to leave me at home.
The real reason: who could jet set with a young son desperate for their attention?
My mother has zero fucking maternal instincts.
My grandparents were older, retired, and not looking to raise a freaking kid. They’d done that already with my mom, who lived at home until she was twenty-two and had never been an easy child. My grandparents were tired.