Page 126 of Play For Me

I’m not sure if Will notices my fresh tears, because he keeps talking. “And you should have seenhim.” He laughs a little, looking over to Wyatt, who’s also smiling. “It was like, super hero shit, the way he locked in.” He turns to Silas on the phone screen. “I wish you were there, Si. Half the family is all gathered around her treatment table, totally getting in the way, being a major nuisance, and this guy didn’t give any of us a second glance. Just went straight to CeCe and took care of her.” Will shrugs. “It’s hard to not like a guy who clearly loves you that much.”

I wipe at my eyes but the tears come faster. “Guess it doesn’t matter much anyhow,” I manage in a thick voice. “Since he dumped me and everything.”

This time Will reaches for the whole Kleenex box and hands it to me. “I’m sorry, Ceece,” he says, his voice regretful. “About the concert. Maybe I’ll get a chance to apologize to him sometime. Once he feels better and realizes that he just let the best thing that ever happened to him walk away.”

I give a watery laugh. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do,” Wyatt says firmly. “You’re the best, Cecelia Ransome. And I’ve known you since the day you were born, so I’m an expert.”

Silas sighs through the phone. “I guess you’reokay,” he says, and I finally laugh for real.

My brothers stay there with me for a while. We find a soccer game that Silas can also access on his laptop, and Wyatt goes to find some of the myriad of snacks mom stocked for me. It feels good to veg out with my brothers and let my brain turn off for a while. When dad comes home (with a ridiculous amount of food) and sees us in the midst of our “sibling bonding” as he calls it, he beams, and we spend an enjoyable few minutes ragging on him for being such a sap.

Eventually, Silas has to get off the phone to get to sound check. Since Will and Wyatt left their wives home to deal with the kids, they decide they should get going back, too. I hug both my older brothers for a long time, and I’m pretty sure they’re a little teary, too, when they finally go.

After the boys are gone, Mom and Dad convince me to get up and go for a walk around the neighborhood. “You’ll feel even worse tomorrow if your knee locks up,” she tells me and I grudgingly admit she has a point.

They must sense that I’m feeling emotionally wrung out after talking to the boys, because they chat easily about family news while we walk without expecting much response from me.

“That’s a beautiful sight,” Mom says when we’re nearly home. Our house is set up pretty high in the hills, giving us gorgeous views—when the LA air quality isn’t too bad— of the city below and the expanse of sky, streaked with pink and orange as the sun sets. She looks over at me. “Want to sit outside with me for a bit?”

I agree and we go to get comfortable on the patio swing. Dad bustles around, bringing us blankets and drinks and setting up the gas fire pit.

“I’m stressing him out,” I tell mom after his third trip back outside with something else unnecessary in an attempt to make us more comfortable.

“He doesn’t like seeing you sad,” she says. “He told me earlier that he’s always worrying about you getting hurt playing soccer, but he never thought to worry about your heart.”

“Ugh,” I mutter, rubbing my chest over the offending organ. “That makes me feel awful.”

“I think he’s been in denial. You’re so strong all the time, he hoped it would mean he’d never have to see you deal with heartbreak.”

“I wish that was true,” I mutter. “Heartbreak fucking sucks,”

My mom laughs and puts her arm around me, and I snuggle into her. “You know, it’s funny. The same reason your dad never worried about you is exactly why I did.”

I pull away to look at her, surprised. “What do you mean?”

She pulls me right back against her. “My fierce, loyal girl. Your whole life I’ve watched you push your way through the world, never taking no for an answer, creating the life you want for yourself and for your people. That’s an admirable quality. But it’s not going to work with this.”

“Because I can’t force him to love me back?” I whisper.

“Well, no, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.” She chuckles, the sound a little sad. “You can’t see the way he looks at you, babe. That boy’s eyes are on you no matter where you go, just constantly following you. And he gets this expression on his face like…it’s like he’s in awe. It’s incredibly sweet.”

I wipe at my eyes. I really don’t want to hear this. Because what does it matter if he looks at me like that when he’s the one who sent me away?

“So no, I don’t think him loving you back is the issue.” She pauses. “You want to tell me what you overheard with his dad?”

As much as I feel guilty for it, I do need to talk this over with someone. So I tell her every awful word I heard that man say, and I tell her about Solomon’s face while his dad was talking. And how he reacted to just seeing his mom in San Jose.

“I don’t understand how parents could treat their kid like that,” I say.

“That’s a tough road he has to travel, sweetheart. And I don’t think this is going to be a situation that you can fix for him by sheer force of will. No amount of your fierceness or determination is going to repair Solomon’s issues for him.”

A memory comes back to me, something that I’d meant to bring up with Sol but got distracted with my injury. In the caron the way back from the concert, he’d said he wished he could always feel easy and relaxed.If I wasn’t such a fuck-up, maybe I would get to keep her.

Is that why he did this? Does he feel like his issues are so serious that he was destined to lose me eventually, no matter what he did? The thought makes me feel sick to my stomach. Was he really that insecure about us? How did I not see it sooner?

My mom kisses the side of my head. “Learning to let go and trust the people you love to take care of themselves is going to be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do.”