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Chapter Thirty
ETHAN
That next Tuesday, I asked Mia to wait for me in the locker room, but she wasn’t there.
Ryan is in the middle of the crowd again, and I do my best to avoid him, but he seems determined to find me, so it’s unavoidable.
“Hey, man!” he greets me energetically, but I can’t muster the same enthusiasm. “How’s the new addition to the family going?”
‘What’s it to you, assface?’ I want to ask, but I don’t need our mother pestering me on the phone just because I called out her favorite kid.
“Fine,” I say, grabbing my clothes and heading for the shower stall, “But I thought you had Mia’s contact. Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“Huh…” he leans on the outside of the stall, then sighs, “Now I think she blocked me.”
“Nah, she didn’t,” I say, getting rid of my underwear and turning on the water. “Mia is too nice to do something like that.”
“Wanna bet?” His voice is bitter. “Anyway, I just really wanted to know how everything is going. Is Mia going to the doctor yet?”
“Not yet.” I rub shampoo into my hair and take advantage of the suds to wash the rest of my body. “I keep asking her, but she says she’s too busy. We’ll make an appointment soon.”
“Huh… Nice,” Ryan says. He’s sounding weird and robotic. “Dude, are you taking notes?!”
I open the stall door a little and see him dropping a notebook on the wet floor.
“No! Eh… I mean…” He grabs the notebook back and evaluates the damage.
“Who else did you tell?” I ask, my head poking out of the stall.
Ryan goes red but doesn’t flinch to confess, “Mom.”
I bang the door of the stall shut again. I pat myself dry with the towel and jump into a pair of boxers, then my pants, and then I’m out of there.
“So, Mom knows, and she hasn’t called me yet?” I scoff in disdain, making my way through the crowd toward the wives’ room. “Whatever happened, did she die?”
I turn to Ryan with genuine concern, but he laughs, only half-nervously, clearly unsettled by my joke.
“I just told her before the game, dude,” he calms me down, and we keep walking. “She should be calling you any moment now, though.”
Like clockwork, my phone rings. I don’t want to deal with Mom right now, so I do the first thing that comes to mind and toss my phone down the bleachers.
Ryan says nothing.
We make it to the wives’ room in silence. Mia must be in the kitchen, but Ryan, always quick to know when he’s unwelcome, doesn’t leave my side and takes a seat right across from me on the lounge.
“We need to talk, man,” he says, concern in his voice and his gestures.
“I’ll have Mom to talk to me for a lifetime, don’t worry,” I say, tapping my foot in the air.
“Ethan…” he starts. Through the ages, I’ve grown to hate hearing my name both in Ryan’s and Mom’s mouth. “She was actually happy! She’s having another grandchild, that’s amazing for her.”
I place my hands over my knees and lean forward, looking Ryan dead in the eye. “Did you tell her that the mother is your ex-girlfriend?” I ask.
The answer becomes obvious in his body language, but I still need to hear it to be sure. “No,” he crosses his arms in front of me.
“That you are going to leave for me to tell, right?” I grit my teeth. “You gossip like a schoolgirl, Ryan, you know that?”
We’re in a staring contest. The folks start to arrive in the room, but everyone leaves us alone, just by instinct. In the end, Ryan is the first to lose his cool and utters, full of frustration, “Well, I’m not sorry! You were always the one who had the nicest things, and now you even have Mia! And you know what’s worse?”
