Troublemaker - Kayley Loring Page 0,12
tracks, turns around, and twists his lips to one side. “Can I ride in the cart?”
“Nope.”
“Can we get a donut at the Starbucks?”
Fuck, I want a donut from Starbucks.
“No. You just ate breakfast.”
“Can you get a coffee at the Starbucks, then? Because you’re being a really big grumpy dumpy face.”
He’s not wrong. I am being a really big grumpy dumpy face.
I was in the middle of some very enthusiastic and filthy reminiscing about Emmy From the Club this morning, when my son started banging on the bedroom door, yelling that my mom was on the phone and she said it’s an emergency. The emergency was that she saw her friend’s daughter post on Facebook about how the Office Max in her neighborhood was cleaned out of back-to-school supplies yesterday. She wanted to make sure I get to Target as soon as it opens. School starts in a week, and I was just going to order this shit online, but here we are at Target, and I just want to go back to reminiscing about Emmy.
It’s been two and a half weeks. I can’t stop thinking about her. I also haven’t had one free minute to do anything about it.
“I don’t need coffee, but thanks.” I muss up his hair. He’s a good kid. And he’s just trying to get me in a good mood so I’ll buy him the new Mario game, and I’m not falling for it.
He heaves a sigh of exasperation. “Well, what do you need, then?”
Emmy. I think I need Emmy From the Club. That mouth and those hands and all the surprising things she said and did with them.
“I need to get your school supplies, and then we need to drop you off at Grandma and Yayo’s because I have a couple of meetings. And then we’ll spend the rest of the day at home, okay?”
He hunches his shoulders, groaning and trudging along beside me.
This kid.
Ryder always comes first, but Nova really picked a shit time to drop a bomb on me.
I just wish there was some way I could find Emmy and explain why I had to bolt that night. I’d figured she was going to throw up and I followed her so I could hold her hair out of her face or something, but then I saw her go into the ladies’ room. And then I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. There were eight notifications from my ex-wife, so I went outside to call her back. That’s when she told me that she’d just been offered a role in the ensemble for the international tour of Cats, but she’d have to leave in two days. For an indefinite amount of time—a few months at least.
Which is insane. But she’d been in that ensemble ten years ago, so she knows the show and a lot of the people involved, and it’s been so long since she’s really been able to dance professionally. Being in her thirties, it might be the last big dance gig she ever gets. She was so excited. I knew that if I tried to talk her out of it, she’d resent it, and ultimately Ryder would be the one who’d be affected the most.
Because of Cats.
Fuck you, Andrew Lloyd Webber. You can kiss my magical Mr. Mistoffelees.
I had to go pick up Ryder so he wouldn’t have to be around the manic chaos that is Nova Tully when she’s getting ready for an international tour.
I had to call my agent to get me out of a TV job that shoots in Canada in October so I can be here for Ryder full-time.
And I am here for him.
Full-time.
I love having him around.
He’s my buddy.
But every so often, when he’s sleeping or watching Pokémon, I close my eyes and I can still feel Emmy’s lips on mine.
Those sweet, pink lips.
That kiss that felt like the end of all my jaded thoughts and the beginning of the kind of story I really want to tell myself.
That there’s still love and magic out there to be made, even when you know they both die a bewildering, miserable death eventually.
“Are you sure you don’t need coffee? Because you don’t look awake to me.”
“I’m awake. Where’s the school supplies aisle?”
Ryder points me in the right direction. He comes here with his mom a lot. I pull my phone out to look at the list that his teacher sent, along with a somewhat alarmingly cheerful email introducing herself to the parents.
And speak of the alarmingly cheerful