Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 98324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
“The thing is, my mother will have to be on her best behavior. She’ll hold back on some of the depressing stuff she says when we’re alone. Even a twenty-five percent reduction in her bullshit would help.” He makes a face, then shakes his head. “Hell. You know what? This is a bad idea. I don’t want you to be subjected to the other seventy-five percent of her crap.” He takes a gulp of coffee, looking miserable.
“Hey,” I say, reaching out to touch his arm. It’s like tapping a lead pipe. “You’re forgetting the cardinal rule of family drama. Someone else’s mother is sixty percent less irritating than your own. So, once you do the subtraction and then multiply by the open bar, I’d really only be subjecting myself to thirty percent of her bullshit.”
He blinks. “Um, math isn’t really my thing. I’m a hockey player.”
“Well, I can math for both of us, and my sister is guaranteed to be ninety percent less obnoxious if you’re standing next to me.” In your new tux, I don’t add.
“So… you’re saying this isn’t a terrible idea?”
“Not terrible at all,” I insist, proving that I’m not a good person. Because I’m going to let Eric Tremaine do me a favor, and I’m also going to let him think it’s the other way around. “Let’s make a pact—you buffer me from my half sister if I buffer you from your sad parents.”
His shoulders drop a couple of inches. “Seriously? Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”
“I’m really not,” I admit. “You’ll see.” What he doesn’t understand is that I’m going to a wedding on the arm of the most famous son of the North Shore of Massachusetts. In his Porsche.
The pecking order just rearranged itself in my favor. My sister will swallow her tongue.
And the Wedding Experience just got a thousand percent more interesting.
Chapter 9
Interesting Job You’ve Got There
Darcy
June
The end of a playoff run is always so jarring. We fly back to New York, and the team walks down the gangway and into their summer vacations. Some will spend time with their families. Some have plans to hit the beach or the golf course.
But it’s different for the support staff like me: After a few days off, I go back to work part time. Simultaneously, I take two college courses that the Legends pay for. And I somehow wedge in a couple of visits with my mother.
That’s why I’m currently standing on a chair in my apartment holding one end of a piece of fabric, while she holds the other one.
My mother squints up at the window frame. “How about we raise the rod a couple of inches?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Darcy.” She cackles.
“Sorry, Mom, but you can’t spend three hundred days a year with a hockey team and not have a teenage boy’s sense of humor. Now go on. Why do we want to raise the rod?”
“It will make the windows look bigger,” she says confidently. “We’ll have to spackle over the holes and repaint that bit. But it’s really no big deal. Do you have a Phillips screwdriver?”
“Sure thing. Let me find it.” I hop off the chair and retrieve my tool kit from the closet.
“Do you want to handle the hardware or hem the curtains?”
“Hardware,” I decide.
It takes me only half an hour to reposition the curtain rod. And then I spackle the wall while she measures the white fabric we bought on Thirty-Eighth Street. We’re going for a boho look. We also bought some velvet upholstery fabric to re-cover my throw pillows.
When we spend time together, we always do a project or two. It’s our love language, established during the difficult year after my cheating father moved out.
I have to give my mother credit—she channeled her rage in some very healthy ways. Not two weeks had gone by when she drove me to Home Depot after school and announced, “I’ve always hated the upstairs bathroom. We’re going to give it a fresh look.”
Until then, I’d never seen my mother touch a toolbox or a paintbrush. But that day, we picked out a peach color that my father would have hated. She bought sandpaper and primer and brushes and rollers, and we got busy on the walls.
We watched YouTube videos to learn how to fix the leaky faucet. We also regrouted the tile and caulked the tub. Money was pretty tight, so we couldn’t just waltz into a store and choose fancy new towels. Instead, she sewed colorful trim onto some cheap white ones from the dollar store.
The next summer, we went even bigger—we replaced some rotting boards on our deck, which was a task my mother had been asking my father to do for years. And we built flower boxes to hang off the railing.
“We don’t need him,” she often said. “He was holding us back.” And even if I could hear the shrillness in her voice—as if my mother badly needed to believe it—it was empowering to see her remaking her life on her own terms. And I learned a lot about sewing and home repair.