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Chapter four, For the Children. LESSONS IN ACCOUNTABILITY!
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LET THE RECORD SHOW that Ada Tartt did not want to be at this club, and that had she known her dinner with Jamie would end up consisting of beer nuts and pretzels then she would have ignored his text and stayed home.
But the thing was that she didn't know, and so she had responded to the dropped location with a nice enough "On my way!" and an honest "Fuck you for taking so long to reply".
It was yesterday that she had asked him about their dinner plans, and he only graced her with a response a few hours ago — around the same time that Roy Kent dropped her off at her house, a sleepy Phoebe in the back seat and dark chocolate staining the upholstery of his car.
And it was a few hours before that that Ada had watched Roy entertain school children by engaging in a game of headers.
"Hello, Roy! I didn't know this was a retirement party!"
It was Colin that he butted now.
And where ice cream had once stained her hands, it was the blood of a friend now pooling in the papillary ridges of her fingers.
Ada flinched at the sound of bone crushing bone. She was sure that Jamie did, too, from his place in the booth. Whist her hands were occupied with shoving a tampon up Colin's nose (it was a wonder that she even had any left, considering the fact that Ted Lasso had needed three to soak up all the blood from his own Kent-induced nose injury), her eyes watched as Roy stalked closer to where her brother sat with Keeley and a few other friends.
The idea of him near Jamie made her hands still. She knew he wouldn't harm him, not severely at least. Jamie was his teammate. More importantly, he was the only chance Richmond had at winning. But any harm was bad harm; the boy bleeding all over her now was a testament to that fact.
Could she stand by and let something happen to Jamie?
(Again?)
The voice in her head told her not to worry. That this Roy was the same one from earlier. Hadn't he just bought her ice cream? Taken her and his niece to the park when he noticed how much they were both dripping all over the interior of his car? Hadn't he laughed with her? Well, it was more an amused huff than a laugh, and it was at her rather than with her, but wasn't that enough proof of a tolerance? Were they not civil – for Phoebe's sake, yes, but civil nonetheless?
