Page 56 of Sportsball is for Lovers

nineteen

. . .

Sadie

The only wayI function is by utilizing the Do Not Disturb feature on my phone. Still, people know that if they call me enough times, they can bypass this and get to me.

Case in point: my mother.

“I can’t talk right now,” I tell her as I answer the phone. “Is everything okay?”

“I just miss you,” the master manipulator says. “You never call me.”

Rolling my eyes, I place my phone on speaker and set it back on my desk. There goes my productivity for the next hour. I move over to my treadmill and start it up. Might as well get some physical activity in during this bitch-fest.

As my mother recounts everything that my sisters and the niblings are up to, I get my steps in. Humming and “yeah”ing every few moments, it’s easy to pretend like I actually give a shit.

To be clear: my mom isn’t a bad person. She just doesn’t get me. She’s so preoccupied with appearances and keeping up with the Joneses she fails to recognize that I don’t care about any of that.

It wasn’t a big deal when I got my nose pierced. Surprisingly, my parents were okay with it. I mean, I was nineteen. Out of the house. On my own. Still, they didn’t care.

When I got a ladder of piercings up my ear a year later, they weren’t happy, but they recognized it was my body and my decision.

When I broke up with my college boyfriend and moved clear across the country to get away? Yeah, that was a big deal. They took it as a personal slight that I needed some distance, and not as me launching into a new phase in my life.

All three of my sisters got married right out of college. Well, Talia got married while in law school, but she was engaged the summer after undergrad. Tamar met her now-husband during her internship her senior year. Sarah and her spouse dated all through college.

And me?

My ex dumped me the day before our college graduation.

I thought I was getting a ring. I didn’t particularly want one, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to be dumped the night our parents met for the “joining of the families” dinner. Dinner, dessert, dumped.

It’s been five years and my mother still asks about him. I think I might still follow him on Instagram. Last I knew, Sammy was partying it up in Miami, living his best life. As much as I hold minor resentment for the way it went down, I don’t hold ill will toward him. Do I want him to contract a flesh-eating disease and die a gruesome death? Yes. Of course I do. But I don’t think about him.

Except when she brings him up.

Which is… every time we talk lately.

The front door opens and shuts.

“Honey, I’m home,” Yoni calls out.

“Who’s that?” My mother demands.

I roll my eyes.

“Nobody. What did Tamar say?” When in doubt: distract.

Yoni enters my office and, upon catching sight of me on the treadmill, sighs and shakes his head. He backs slowly out of the room.

A few minutes later, I can hear him puttering around in the kitchen. Good. He knows what to do.

Sure enough, half an hour of being berated later, we say goodbye and I hop off the treadmill. I’m shvitzing like crazy.

In the kitchen, Yoni has set out a charcuterie board of all my favorite junk food. There’s cheese and salami, cut fruit and vegetables, and also fun things like sour peach rings, honey mustard pretzels, onion dip and wavy potato chips, and chamoy mango slices. He’s uncorked a bottle of rosé, the glass chilled and waiting for me.

“I love you,” I declare, falling upon the stool at the kitchen island.