Chapter 14

14

Lila

I can't get my pulse under control after watching Tripp jog off with his happily-shrieking daughter bouncing on his shoulders.

There's a voice that I can't silence whispering that if he lied once, he'll lie again. But everything else I'm learning about the man says that he's more like me than I ever could've anticipated or prepared for.

Grief makes a person do a lot of things they wouldn't normally do.

And attraction makes a person overlook more than they should.

But it's not like Tripp's tried to be attractive this week. I know he doesn't like me. He doesn't like me sitting in the owner's office. He doesn't like me suggesting publicly that the Fireballs need a new mascot. He doesn't like having the tables turned when he tries to pull a prank.

Although, if that duck poster—all of them—doesn't get burned this weekend, I'll be painting over it with red paint myself.

Fireballs red. Not blood red. For the record.

But the problem is, I'm actually smiling about it.

Wondering if he'll retaliate with the fifty other duck posters he claims he had made.

I retreat to the firepit, where one of the Rivers brothers has built a massive roaring fire, and slip into the open spot next to Knox to eat my delicious dinner. Parker's chatting with Mackenzie—aka the Fireballs' real number one fan—and Mrs. Ryder.

"You okay?" Knox asks me. He and Parker have completely sorted Uncle Al's house, leaving several boxes of personal letters and pictures for me to go through, several more boxes of items that probably shouldn't be set out during the estate sale, and generally cleaned up most of the mess.

Part of me wants to inspect every last statue and figurine and music box in the house, looking for hints of my mom, but first of all, I know logically I'm being ridiculous in thinking I'll feel her in things , and second of all, I'm nearly certain Uncle Guido's been coming in at night and doing just that.

We don't talk about it, but I know he was always secretly in love with my mother.

"I'm okay. Just surprised," I tell Knox.

"That they haven't murdered us yet?" he asks with a grin.

"Yes."

"Oh my god, he is not !" Mackenzie suddenly squeals. She's an adorable blonde in Fireballs gear from her hat to her shoelaces, and someone said her car's even covered in Fireballs decals.

Parker laughs. "Honestly? I thought my other brother was being an idiot when he suggested it, but it makes sense. Brooks is always talking about scoring with women, but there hasn't been a single photo of him with one anywhere . And I have a friend who's like a super hacker, and she hacked all the websites where the bat girls hang out—bat girls? Is that what they call themselves? The women who like to score with baseball players? Anyway. Never mind. My point is—she swears there's no record of anyone ever saying they've slept with him. Cross my heart, I think he's staying a virgin because he thinks his game will suffer if he ever scores off the field. His high school girlfriend told my other brothers that they got all the way to third base one night, and for the next week, he couldn't hit a single ball, so he broke up with her. He never dated a single woman in college, and the one time I saw him on what I thought was a date, it turned out he was talking to a psychic because his teammates set him up when they heard he hadn't been laid in forever. Like, literally forever. Isn't that crazy?"

"Is she telling her brother's secrets?" I whisper to Knox.

"Mackenzie just confessed to going totally mute every time Cooper Rock comes around," he whispers back. "I don't know if Parker's trying to make her feel better, or if she's just had too much sangria, but there's no way I'm stopping her, because I haven't heard this yet and I still owe her brothers for what they did to my eyebrows after I proposed."

"I fully support your vengeance plan."

"You saw me after the eyebrow thing. You better."

I laugh and dig back into my plate of food, and I realize this is helping. Talking to my friends. Having conversations about other people's sex lives. Being welcomed by people I'm still suspicious of—I know they want the team, and maybe this is their way of convincing me that they'd take good care of the Fireballs—but there's a bigger part of me that doesn't care tonight.

They're kind. And funny. And if any of them are harboring aspirations of putting my face on a dartboard, they're hiding it well.

It's exactly what I need.

"Excuse me," a soft voice says, and I glance up to find a young boy watching me. He's not young- young, not like Tripp's kids, but I don't think he's a teenager yet. "Did you kill Fiery?"

And there goes that rib I was eating getting lodged in my throat.

"Fiery's not dead, Tucker. He's just sick and getting better." Wyatt. That's who the boy belongs to.

"Is it heart disease?" Tucker asks while Mackenzie goes silent. "I thought Fiery knew to exercise."

"Sometimes exercise isn't enough." Gah. Tripp's back, and there goes my pulse.

I concentrate on the big brown eyes shining behind a pair of glasses instead of the man pulling up a seat too close, his sleepy daughter clinging to him like a security blanket, and I clear my throat.

"He'll come back and visit," I tell Tucker. "He's just tired. It happens when people get old."

"But he's not a person. He's Fiery ."

"Exactly," Mackenzie agrees softly.

"Hey, Tucker-dude. You want to play catch?" Beck Ryder suddenly appears with two gloves. "Betcha I can throw farther than your dad."

"In the dark? Good way to lose your balls," Wyatt replies easily.

Tucker snickers.

Tucker.

The kid. Who can't be more than ten.

Tripp and Beck both cough and share a look.

"Yeah. That's happening," Wyatt mutters.

Tucker snickers again.

Beck joins him.

And soon all of the men are giggling.

Including Knox.

"See what I mean about being one of too few women?" Sarah says as she squeezes in next to Mackenzie with a marshmallow on a stick.

"Go play catch," Mrs. Ryder says. "Go on. Shoo. Did you grab the ball that glows in the dark?"

"Both of 'em," Beck says, and the men all dissolve into fits of laughter again.

"Just like being home," Parker says with a sigh. And not a happy, nostalgic sigh, but the sigh of every woman who's grown up with too many men who fart and make testicle jokes all day.

Not that I've had that experience. She spelled it out for me one day when we overheard ball jokes at lunch.

The men all head out into the yard, dragging Tucker with them.

Except for Tripp.

While two green, glow-in-the-dark baseballs fly through the yard, accompanied by laughter and squeals, Tripp stays by the fire, holding Emma, who's snuggling into his lap, stroking the silky part of a blanket and sucking her thumb while her eyelids get heavy.

This is why I live in New York, with a career and friends who don't have children, and a social life that's mostly me staying in and reading books.

A family isn't in my future. But seeing Tripp with his daughter is making me want things I know better than to wish for.

And watching a whole family—a family of friends, not of blood—enjoy one of the last nice nights of fall makes me ache for something I don't even understand.

"'Scuse me, Miss Vow-atine?"

James leans in between Knox and me, waving a marshmallow on a stick. "Do you know how to woast this mah-mawow?"

Could he be more adorable? His brown hair is sticking up at all angles, he smells like barbecue sauce, his shirt is stained with baked beans, and his big eyes are staring at me solemnly like a roasted marshmallow holds the key to his happiness.

"Yes," I answer automatically, even though I don't actually know the first thing about roasting marshmallows.

Or little boys.

Beyond how to pull quarters out of their ears, I mean. Uncle Guido taught me that trick years ago, and I've had very few opportunities to practice it.

James pushes in and positions himself on my knee, and when I put a hand to his waist to steady him, I have an overwhelming urge to pull him into a hug and promise him he's going to grow up happy and healthy and loved by so many people. And that it'll be okay to miss his mom, but she'd be so happy to know he has this amazing family helping look out for him.

"So, how do we do this?" I ask him.

"We sticks it in the fiya," he says.

I shift in the seat, and he clings to my shirt while we lean together toward the fire, extending the stick just like Sarah's doing.

"Lila, you might want to—" Knox starts, but before he can finish, the marshmallow is on fire.

Engulfed in flame.

James sucks in a breath, and I struggle to not shriek and leap to my feet.

I can navigate New York's subway system with two eyes closed, and still get on the right train to get off next to the stairs at any given stop in the city. Ask me the historical significance of an obscure cup in Henry the Eighth's cabinet, and I can write you an essay.

I can even bake croissants from scratch after getting a wild hair about two years ago to learn how to bake and spending three straight weekends with YouTube videos and more pounds of flour and butter than I'm willing to publicly confess to.

But bonfires? Marshmallows?

This is not where my expertise lies.

"Here, honey." Tripp's mom, a lovely woman in her early sixties with round cheeks, short gray-brown hair, and a white sweatshirt with paint handprints declaring her the world's best grandma , bustles over, grabs the first stick, blows the flaming marshmallow out, and shoves a new marshmallow stick into James's hand before he finishes sucking the breath that I suspect will end with a wail.

This is what moms grow up to be.

And suddenly my throat is thick again.

"Like this," she says kindly, squatting beside us and helping both me and the preschooler angle the marshmallow stick toward the fire without instantly sending it up in flames. "The trick is to get it close enough to melt the marshmallow on the inside before it gets too toasted on the outside."

Her hand covers mine like it's the most natural thing in the world, and I have to swallow hard.

Parker and Knox's moms both hugged me at their wedding.

But this feels maternal in a way I haven't experienced in twenty years. One simple touch, and I know that even if the world turns into a dumpster fire, we'll be okay, because Tripp's mom has this.

She's a mom.

Of course she does.

"Miss Vow-atine made fiya, Gwamma!" James says on a giggle. "It was big fiya!"

"Steady with the stick, James," she replies softly.

"Thank you," I whisper.

She shoots me a guilty smile. "Oh, don't thank me until you know I let you set the first one on fire. Grandmas need to feel useful sometimes too."

Her blunt confession surprises a laugh out of me. "And now I see where he gets it," I muse.

"Who? What?"

" Someone's mischievous side."

"Tripp? He's the responsible one. Is he misbehaving at work?"

"Yes."

"I don't have time to misbehave," the man himself replies. " Someone keeps putting too many tasks on my desk without a game plan beyond you sort it all out ."

"Trial by fire."

"Yes, but you didn't have to do it to the marshmallow too."

I look at his mom.

She's struggling not to smile.

And it's impossible not to smile too.

These people have known grief. They've known loss. They've probably known betrayal, because it's a rare person in the spotlight who hasn't.

And they're moving on with their lives. Leaning on each other and letting new people in, and not holding themselves back because of fear.

I know why I was invited tonight. I know they want me to know my family's team would be in good hands.

But I don't think they know just how much watching them in all their familyness could sneak under my skin.

And not in the bad way.

"Better check that marshmallow," Tripp's mom says.

And for a split second, I'm almost positive she knows she's talking about my heart.