Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,98

I’d seen lying around our house. This copy was new. “And I wanted to give you this, too. I read it last year, and I’ve been telling all my friends about it.”

On hearing the word “friends,” a tear came to Polly’s eye—also made up in shades of cream and gold. “I love it,” she said, clutching the book to her chest. “Though not in my wildest imagination would I have thought my new husband’s ex-wife would want to be my friend.”

She hugged my mom tightly, and my mom hugged her back. “You’re an amazing woman, Dierdre,” Polly said.

I saw a tear slip from my mom’s eye, too. “So are you,” she said.

If my mom and my stepmom could get along, maybe there was hope for me and Candace. We were talking, but not really talking. She didn’t know about me being team captain, and I didn’t know what was going on with her and George. But maybe two women who approached how to be a woman in completely different ways didn’t have to feel like threats to each other.

“Ms. Jeffries, is this the girl whose colors I’m doing?” A brisk woman in a belt that appeared to be suffocating her waist took my shoulder and turned me around, kind of roughly. She gasped. “Oh my God, her eye. How am I supposed to do colors for someone with an ugly shiner?”

Polly gave the woman a prim smile that somehow conveyed that the woman better watch it. “Well, it’s a good thing she’s so beautiful. Isn’t it?”

It seemed clear, then, that in my parents’ noncliché of a divorce situation, I could be a cliché, or I could appreciate that I’d been the one in a million picked to win the child-of-divorce lottery.

Twenty-Seven

Since my last visit, Polly had outfitted the condo’s second bedroom with a new queen-sized bed for me, a small desk that looked out the window, and a poster of a Manchester United soccer player. “I went to the little shop in Evergreen Park that sells British imports, and that was all they had,” she said. “But you can decorate however you want. Your Dad and I are hoping you might want to stay overnight more often.”

“It’s perfect,” I said, looking forward to telling Joe about what was sort of a punk rock move on Polly’s part. My dad probably hated the poster.

I was keyed up thinking about the game, but eventually the clean scent of the soft sheets lulled me to sleep, and I didn’t wake up until my alarm went off at seven. I dressed in my soccer gear and took both my duffel bag and the garment bag containing my bridesmaid dress that was hanging on the closet door. I neatly put the heels and the new Estée Lauder makeup bag in with the rest of my stuff.

Polly was already up and had a breakfast of toast and eggs laid out for me. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Is that your uniform? It’s cute. Who’s your game against?”

“Actually . . . St. Mark’s . . . the boys’ school,” I said. It felt a little wrong to tell her when I hadn’t told Mom, but Polly had asked outright. What if lying to a bride on her wedding day was bad luck? I explained how I’d challenged Ken.

“Wow,” Polly said, nodding as she took a slow sip of her coffee. “This Ken sounds like a real jerk.”

She paused, and I was so nervous she’d tell me I couldn’t possibly go head-to-head with a bunch of angry boys on the day of her wedding. She put her coffee down on the counter and crossed the kitchen toward me. She took away my plate with one hand and put her other hand on my shoulder. “Sounds like you need a bigger breakfast if you’re going to kick their asses.”

We’d agreed to meet at the gate outside the field a half hour before the game. Everyone was even earlier than that, and everyone was nervous.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Dana asked me.

“We can’t call it off now,” I said. My captain voice was my normal voice, just louder. “They’d call us chickens.” That seemed worse than anything else they’d called us.

I pushed through the gate, aware of my teammates behind me.

The stands were empty. We’d obeyed Bobby’s request not to risk the game or his job by spreading the word—and really, I didn’t expect people who saw us challenge St. Mark’s at the party to remember it