Remy

“We need to talk.”

This was it. She took a long drink from her water bottle.

She had come close to texting him back over the last week. But she had work to do on herself, and she didn’t want to fall into the same pattern. And, she felt ashamed.

Troy looked worn out and ready to go home after a long, steamy Friday night practice in July. He leaned against the door of his pickup, arms crossed in front of him.

Elliot had gone home with Brandt for the night to try out some skateboard moves, so Remy finally had mustered the courage to say what she needed to say. She had spent all week thinking about it. She even went to see a therapist she could barely afford. She had deliberately kept her distance, afraid that connecting with Troy before she was ready would only lead to kissing, and kissing would only lead to hands ripping clothes off and forgetting what it was they needed to talk about.

He shook his head. “I’ve been trying to talk to you. I can’t believe you would have that kind of an outburst in front of the kids and then refuse to talk to me about it.”

She wanted to point out it was a rotten call. But she stopped herself from shifting blame, as her therapist put it. She took a step closer and said, “I’m sorry.”

Troy did not melt immediately. “You need to understand what your sorry about. The ref’s call is the call. And that’s it. You undermined the ref, you used your status as my girlfriend to try to bend the rules. This is the same damn problem you and I have been going around and around about since before we even met.”

“I understand,” she said, meeting his eyes, which were still angry. It was killing her to see that look on his face. “But I also need you to know that it felt to me like you enjoyed kicking me out. You were pretty quick to do it,” she said.

Troy was no longer leaning against his truck but standing up straight, ready for a face-off. “I had to! I can’t have parents acting like lunatics. And if you think I enjoyed that, you don’t know me at all.”

She was tethering her temper with a frayed string at this point. “I do know you, you don’t care about winning at all, and I do. But I just started talking to someone about my issues, and I have learned that I need to look past that.”

Troy turned away, opening the driver door. “I don’t even know how to talk to you right now. You think I don’t care about winning? It’s universally understood that everybody fucking cares about winning. The point I’m trying to make is we need to let these kids enjoy the game! I don’t know how else to say it, woman. I’m not always going to do things you like, sometimes you will hate me. But when you love someone, you talk it out. You don’t freeze the other person out. And you don’t fucking use my past against me. That was really below the belt, maybe even worse than throwing a fit in front of the kids.”

Remy finally fell silent. She knew he loved her. She knew from the last two weeks, all the unsolicited help around the house, the little gifts, the way he looked at her. She knew. And she’d treated him like garbage. And now, he just looked hollow, tired and angry.

She looked down at her feet and recalled all the ways Elliot had responded after last week’s game when he’d witnessed her antics. He looked at her differently, as if he was waiting for her silence to turn into something else. The fun mom he thought he had gained from having Troy around was suddenly turning back into an intense and uptight pushy mom again.

A great boulder of shame felt like it might hammer her whole body right into the ground. “I’m sorry, Troy. You’re right. I’m sorry I made you do that.”

She looked up as she fought back tears. He was halfway in the driver seat, shaking his head. “And I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. I shouldn’t have humiliated you in front of everyone like that.”

Remy sighed. “So now what?”

“Get in the truck.”

“No.”

“Get your ass into my truck now,” Troy insisted. “I have something to show you.”

“And I’m asking you, what woman in her right mind would get in the truck of a man who is angry with her and won’t tell her where he is taking her?”

“Because we’re gonna go park behind the Office Quest and bone the shit out of each other now.”

Remy thought about it for a moment.

It was a very quick moment.

“Let’s go.”