And it wasn’t difficult to care about a kid like Sophie Breslin. For the next thirty minutes, Seth had a blast with the girl. They were sprawled on the living room floor on the brand-new hardwood that sparkled from the sunlight streaming in through the window. Sophie had brought out half a dozen dolls, along with tiny doll accessories—hair elastics, little pink hairbrushes, barrettes and clips of all shapes and colors.
If any of the guys had asked, he would’ve said it was the lamest thing he’d ever done in his life.
The truth?
It was pretty frickin’ fun.
As his huge fingers tried to grip a teeny hairbrush to brush the silky blonde hair of an anatomically-incorrect Barbie, Sophie was laughing at him so hard her face had turned beet red.
“You have giant fingers!” Pure glee radiated from her little body.
“I can’t help it,” he said defensively. “Okay, new plan. You do the hair brushing, I’ll braid this foxy mama’s hair.” He reached for the voluptuous Latina doll in the hot-pink minidress.
“Deal,” Sophie said, grabbing Barbie.
They were so absorbed in their respective tasks that their heads jerked up in surprise when they heard the front door fly open.
“I’m home!”
A second later, Jason skidded into the living room, halting when he noticed what Seth and his sister were up to. “You’re playing with dolls?”
Seth couldn’t have answered the question if his life depended on it. The second he laid eyes on Jason, his throat closed up to the point that he couldn’t suck in a single breath, and he felt like he’d just gotten knocked in the gut with an iron beam.
Holy f**king shit. He was going to have a panic attack. His heart raced so fast that all he could hear was its frantic beating in his ears, and his palms were tingling. Black dots appeared in his vision—he actually welcomed them, because that meant he didn’t have to focus on the little boy standing in the doorway. The white-and-blue-striped uniform and blue baseball cap and little black sneakers.
The hat was the wrong color though. It was supposed to be red.
“—fun and you don’t hafta.” Sophie’s haughty voice broke through Seth’s anxiety attack, but it sounded tinny and incredibly far away. “Me and Sef are making Emily and her friends pretty. You can play with Sef after.”
“Can we? Can we play after?”
Seth felt a pair of eager brown eyes boring into him. He couldn’t do it, though. He couldn’t look at Adam again or else he might pass out.
Jason.
Shit. That wasn’t Adam. It was Jason.
He bit hard on the insides of both cheeks, doing his best to breathe, to control his dangerously fast heartbeat.
“Can we play catch outside when you finish playing dolls?” Jason asked.
Seth abruptly shot to his feet, the doll in his hand falling to the floor with a thump.
“Hey!” Sophie protested, lunging for the doll.
“I…I’m going out for a smoke,” he blurted out.
He felt both children watching him in confusion, but he ignored them as he hurried to the kitchen.
One foot in front of the other. Keep walking. Don’t think about that f**king baseball uniform.
Yeah, maybe he would’ve stood a chance, if Jason hadn’t scampered after him like a dog nipping at his owner’s heels.
“Please, Sef?” Jason pleaded. “I wanna show you how good I pitch!”
Seth swallowed. His throat was so clogged it burned. Memories he’d banished years ago came out of exile, pouring into his brain like floodwaters streaming into an unsuspecting city. Adam used to beg him to play catch too. Sometimes he’d say yes. Most times he’d scoff and tell him to quit being a whiny brat.
Agony constricted his heart. He’d been a total shit back then too, hadn’t he?
Should’ve been you, man. Should’ve been you.
Seth’s eyes started to sting, his hands shaking so badly it was a miracle he managed to dig his cigarette pack from the front pocket of his button-down. It took two tries to open the sliding door that led to the backyard. Five tries to get his fingers to work the lighter. And then he inhaled a lungful of smoke in a pull so long and so deep he got a head rush.
He exhaled shaky puffs of smoke that got carried away by the evening breeze. It was still light out, but the sun was beginning to dip toward the horizon.
“And I wanna show you my new mitt,” Jason was babbling. “Mom got me a new one because my old one got wet from the storm but the old one still works great so now I have two gloves.”
Seth’s heart continued to race. He kept his gaze focused straight ahead, his jaw tense, teeth grinding together. He couldn’t look at the kid. He couldn’t do it, damn it, otherwise he’d break the f**k down.
“Mom says smoking is bad for you,” Jason said matter-of-factly. “You should play sports ’stead of smoking.”
He took another desperate drag of his cigarette. Fixed his gaze on the bird feeder hanging across the yard.
But Jason wasn’t having it. The kid was determined to be paid attention to, come hell or high water. He moved in front of Seth and started bouncing around, a bundle of energy and smiles. That baseball uniform was all Seth could register, and that rush of pure helpless agony seized his chest again.
“You wanna play now? Can we play now?”
“For the love of God, I don’t want to play baseball with you!”
Silence crashed over them.
Jason was stricken for a second, and then his entire face collapsed, his bottom lip beginning to tremble.