Page 17 of Puck, Marry, Kill

Tyler takes his sunglasses off, hooking them in the neck of his shirt. “Aw, Briar, don’t be like that. I appreciate you coming to sit with my boy till I could get here.” He places a hand on Harley’s shoulder, pulling our son into his side for a moment, and flashes me one of thoseaw-shucksgrins that used to fool me.

This is his game.

For all his faults, stupidity isn’t one of them. He’s strategic. And this whole picture reframes in my mind. This is how he wanted it—me waiting for him, him heroically showing up to rescue Harley like the good-times-only dad, flaunting Amber in my face and me in hers. Every piece a pawn, but he’s the only one playing.

I ignore him. The gray rock method has become my way of taking back power, especially when all Tyler wants is to find some little way to still control me. Every time he tries to throw toxicity my way, I don’t react and just do my thing. I hug Harley tightly, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I’ll see you Sunday, honey. I love you.”

“You act like you’re never gonna see him again. It’s not even forty-eight hours, babe. He’ll be fine.”

The fact that he thinks I want forty-eight hours—hell,anhour—away from my son pisses me off. The last thing I want is to send him away, with his dad or anyone else. But I don’t react, knowing he’s baiting me with that and the endearment he used to call me. I haven’t been his “babe” in a very long time.

“Call me anytime.” I pointedly say the words to Harley and Harley only, nearly nose to nose with him so that there is no misconstruing my intention.

When Tyler doesn’t get the reaction from me that he’s looking for—whether that’s anger or affection, he tries another tactic. “Why don’t we do handover at my house on Sunday? I can grill out and we can eat dinner like the old days.”

The old days.

Sunday cookouts were our routine. I’d clean the house, top to bottom, making sure every nook and cranny was spotless, wash, dry, fold, and put away all the laundry, go to the grocery store, haul it all inside and put everything away, prep snacks and lunches for the week, and generally, do all the work, taking care of an into-everything toddler along the way, while Tyler played a round of golf with his buddies and drank too much beer. Then, he’d waltz in, disappear into the bathroom for an hour, reappear to throw the meat I’d trimmed and marinated onto the grill while I made side dishes and set the table, and then remind me to thank him for taking care of dinner as though he’d done me a favor.

And also, his house used to beourhouse. He kept it in the divorce because I couldn’t pay the mortgage on my salary. I have no desire to go back to the place where I was the unhappiest version of myself.

I don’t give him that truth, though. He’ll only hold it against me, delighting in any remaining echoes of the pain he caused. “The park is fine.”

He shrugs as if completely unbothered, but I see the muscle twitch beneath his eye, a telltale tick he can’t control when he’s angry. “Suit yourself. We’ll meet you there at five o’clock.”

“Four,” I correct before I can stop myself. Habits are hard to break, even after all this time, even when I know better. He intentionally said the wrong time to make me say the right one. It’s an example of “his cause, his desired effect.” Tyler’s every word is a bullet looking for a target, and I let him hit one. It’s not a center mass hit, but his grin says he still recognizes the win. The smallest, stupidest one, but a win nonetheless.

“Right, four.”

Why do I feel like he’s going to be an hour late for drop-off? Because he will be, especially now that I reminded him. Just to be ornery, to irritate me, to make me sit on a park bench and wait for him the way I sat on a school bench today.

“Dad, did you mean it about getting ice cream?” Harley asks.

I want to tell him to at least eat dinner first, but I swallow those words down. Still, Tyler knows I’m thinking them. Any responsible parent would be. Which is why he tells Harley, “Of course I did. Who would joke about ice cream? Get in. Amber can tell you all about the Fall Festival we’re going to tomorrow.”

“Festival?” Harley’s grin is nearly ear-to-ear as he runs toward the truck and climbs inside without giving me a second glance. “What festival are we going to?” I hear him ask Amber before closing the door.

I pray it’s actually fall themed, with pumpkins and leaves, and not Halloween, with zombies and monsters. Harley likes to fancy himself a brave, big kid, but scary stuff can still give him nightmares. I want to ask. I want to tell Tyler to be thoughtful about what he’s exposing our son to, but I don’t have any control over what they do on their visitation and have to trust that a haunted house isn’t going to let elementary-aged kids in if it’s too scary.

It’s ridiculous that I trust a haunted house to be more responsible for my son’s well-being than his father, but that’s where we are.

“Let me know if you change your mind about dinner Sunday,” Tyler tells me, his voice gone husky and his smile filling with heat. “Or anytime.” He lets his eyes drop over me from head to toe, making sure I feel every unwelcome caress of his weighted look and that Amber doesn’t see any of it.

“Four o’clock at the park.”

“Sure, babe. Whatever you say,” Tyler tells me with a chuckle. He walks away, and I swear he’s trying to strut around the truck with a little more pep in his step, as though he actually did something with our exchange.

As he climbs in, the back window of the truck rolls down. “Bye, Mom! I love you!” Harley calls out. He didn’t forget. He got distracted by the dangling carrot his dad threw out, but he remembered me in the end.

“Love you too,” I yell, but I’m not sure he hears me over the too-loud engine of Tyler’s truck as he pulls away. So I wave theILUfingers, hoping it’s enough.

Alone in the school parking lot, I wrap my arms around myself. Almost forty-eight hours until Harley comes back. These weekends are the worst. I don’t know what to do with myself and too often end up stress cleaning, doomscrolling, or forcing myself to do something fun and feeling ungrateful the whole time as I wonder what Harley is doing while I’m goofing off.

That night, I’m eating a bowl of popcorn for dinner, the remaining vestige of my movie plan, when my phone dings. It’s a text fromHockey Coach.

I’m free all weekend if Harley wants to practice?

It seems pretty straightforward, and I’d like to believe that’s true and Dominic is exactly what he says he is—a new-to-town guy who wants to share the sport he loves.