![]() Throwing his arm around Chris’ shoulders, he launched them both over the edge. Reluctantly, he allowed his friend to drag him away, only to twist and stagger at the final moment. Jim paused and looked down at his mother and she pressed her lips into a taut smile, grateful for the apology that flickered through his eyes. Jimmy was laughing as Chris tried to coax him back, meeting the jeers of the crowd with an irreverent finger. Now.īefore she could move to cut the music the figure took a few nimble steps and extended a long, brown arm across Jimmy’s chest.Īt once her body relaxed, the relief so acute she felt lightheaded. It would kill Jimmy, but the party had to end. God forbid the kids take it into their heads to all start jumping. She looked up to see a dark figure climbing up the guttering and her hand flew to her throat. Had left her as she was now, a single mom standing in her trashed backyard on the verge of a mental breakdown. Times when your brain stopped working and the only thing you could remember to do was breathe.Ī single drunk driver, a careless stranger in the night, had stolen the life they’d snatched up in their enthusiasm and claimed as their right. He too would be faced with moments like this, when everything seemed too hard, too relentlessly unfair. The trembling anticipation, the easy assumption that everything would work out fine, because it always did. It was so long ago, but she was still young enough to remember what it felt like to have her whole life before her, as Jimmy did now. With a pang, she realized he was the age Ryan had been when they first met, and only a year younger than when they’d learned they were going to be parents. Golden hair slicked back and shoulders rippling from a season of training, they could have been brothers. He was as dark as Jimmy was fair, and as Elle looked upwards once more she was struck by how much her son resembled his father. Chris dragged his gaze down from the roofline and caught her eye, before turning back to his date. For years he’d been the perpetual shadow at her son’s side, reproving him when he’d gone too far, or encouraging him when he hadn’t tried hard enough. The serious other half to Jimmy’s levity, Chris McKenzie was too preoccupied worrying about Jim to enjoy himself. Behind them she spotted her son’s best friend Chris talking to a small, pinch-faced girl who was sloshing her drink around in an effort to hold his attention. The outdoor dining set had been submerged, a group of bikini-clad girls sitting waist-deep and laughing at the gyrating boys above them. Elle had been so naive, thinking it would be just like Jimmy’s 16 th, but those two short years had made all the difference.Įlle stood at the corner of the pool. It had been a big mistake to decline the Davis’ offer to help chaperone. None of the kids were overly wild, there were just so many of them. Everywhere, the ground was littered with crumpled cups and paper plates, her “fairy food” ravaged within thirty seconds of the doors bursting open. ![]() He wasn’t a child anymore, and she’d wanted to show him that she understood that.īut she’d never intended to host Oktoberfest. Faced with his palpable humiliation she’d reluctantly agreed to the beer. The table laden with his favorite cream and jelly rolls, cupcakes and hotdogs hadn’t helped either her attempts at mothering taken as sabotage, like she’d wanted to make him look silly in front of his friends. They were the first words he’d spoken in hours, furious at her for festooning the house with colorful balloons and streamers. “Despite your best efforts, it’s the party of the season.” ![]() ![]() “Word’s out on The Face, Mom.” He didn’t even have the grace to look chagrined, smiling at a group of girls as they sauntered up the porch steps. Instead he’d shrugged and made an obscure comment about social media. ![]() Jimmy had promised a “gathering” of his lacrosse team and a few of their girlfriends, so when the entire senior year turned up she’d gripped his arm and demanded that he send them home. The kids went wild but Elle suffered an entirely different form of hysteria, her heart catapulting into her throat. She stood, frozen, as he dangled his foot into the abyss and pretended to totter and fall. Elle had watched her son leap plenty of times, but never with a plastic beer cup in hand and a hundred screaming teens cheering him on. The chant morphed into a roar as Jimmy stepped to the edge of the roof and peered into the pool. ![]()
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