Chapter 17

Mackenzie

My hand is still achingat lunchtime, but I'm going to live. I've seen curling iron burns worse than the blisters on my palm. It's making typing at work around the bandages a pain in the ass, but I deserve the pain.

I needed the wake-up call.

And now that I've had it, it's time to face the music.

I'm sitting at a table at Chester Green's—no relation to Darren Greene, if you're wondering—because it's the hangout for all the hockey fans in Copper Valley. The Fireballs don't have a similar establishment.

They used to, but it shut down for lack of business about four years ago.

If my lunch meeting today goes south, I'm hoping the hockey fans will have my back. A few of them have already stopped to ask if I'm the chick angling to bring back Fiery the Dragon, and asked for Fiery Forever buttons of their own, so this was definitely a good choice.

My pulse is operating at warp speed, and my hands are getting clammy, which isn't the best feeling on my burn blisters. I'm about to start biting my nails when Sarah walks through the door.

Sarah.

My eyeballs go hot, and I sink low in my seat. Maybe she won't see me. Maybe she's grabbing take-out from the bar. Maybe?—

Maybe she's headed directly toward me with you are in so much trouble written in her frown.

I lunge across the table and cover the open spot with my hands, banging my injured hand hard enough that I stifle a yelp of pain. I don't have a purse, so I can't block the seat with that. And the weather's warm enough today that I'm not wearing a coat, so I can't use that either.

"Business meeting," I spit out when she stops in front of me.

She frowns and touches my bandage gently. "What happened?"

"I grabbed a curling iron. I'm fine."

Her brown eyes search mine, and after a moment, she sighs the same sigh I've heard her mother make all the times Sarah's refused a little more makeup before going out with Beck for the evening.

She pulls the chair out. "I'm going to let that one go, because I'm here to negotiate something else with you."

Uh-oh.

This isn't part of the plan.

"I really do have a meeting," I insist. "They'll be here any minute."

"I know. Lila sent me." She points to the baseball sitting next to the stand-up drink menu in the center of the table.

It's the sign I texted to Tripp that I'd use so he'd know where to find me to negotiate the return of the Meaty costume.

And there go my eyeballs getting hot again.

Shame isn't an unfamiliar emotion. I don't like it, but Papa always tells me to embrace it, because it's what makes me a normal, rational, good person.

I drop my eyes to the table. "I want Fiery to come back."

Sarah scoots her chair around the table so it's next to mine, and she wraps her arms around my shoulders and squeezes. "You are my favorite nut on the entire planet."

"Are they mad?"

"Honestly? I think they've suspected it all along. Tripp wants to put security on you the next time you go out as Meaty. Lila only wants the costume back because she'd like to let Meaty have a few outings to other cities. Like Minneapolis and Atlanta."

I blink at my hands in my lap, and I swear my bandage on my right hand blinks back at me. "You mean where the Fireballs have their next two away series?"

"Yep."

"I really hate the meatball, but he keeps growing on me every time I wear the costume. And now I've accidentally made him extra popular."

"Your Bring Back Fiery pages have half a million followers across all your social media accounts. I think you could influence the voting for the duck or the firefly just as effectively."

"Can I have those costumes too?"

"I'm not authorized to promise you that."

Look at that. I can still laugh about something.

She lets me go as our server stops at our table, and she orders for both of us without hesitation.

It's a game day, which means I'm having a soup and salad for lunch so I can binge on whatever feels right at the ballpark tonight.

As soon as our server leaves, she points to my hand again. "What really happened?"

"Brooks came to my place to ask for bacon, we had a fight, and I got stupid."

"A fight about what?"

"My dads."

Was it a fight?

Or was it me being a paranoid crazy person?

"He figured out who they are," I explain. "And…"

Her eyes soften, and she hugs me again.

I don't have to explain.

She's been there with me.

All of my relationships have ended one of two ways. Either my boyfriend meets my dads and freaks out, thinking they're going to try to dress him in drag too, or my boyfriend meets my dads and goes so far overboard trying to prove he's okay with them being drag queens that everything gets awkward.

I have yet to meet a man with romantic interest who can accept that my normal isn't his normal.

Beck's been cool, but he's Sarah's soulmate, so of course he is. Same for his buddies—most of whom toured the world with him in the boy band Bro Code back in the day, and who have seen a lot of things more atypical than my family situation.

But all of them are like brothers to me, and even if I had a crush on any of them, I know what they see when they look at me.

The baseball-obsessed freak who always turns into a goober whenever one of her baseball idols is around.

"Is Brooks still insisting you're going to sleep with him?" Sarah asks quietly.

"Not this morning. This morning, he said he needed me to make him bacon since I did that before the Fireballs' last winning home game. But…" I pull out my burner phone and flip open the text messages to show her everything we've talked about this past week.

Plenty of innuendos. Plenty of flirting.

She scans them quickly, and every time she starts to smile, she catches herself and frowns again.

I grab the baseball in my left hand and rub the stitches. "It's hard to believe any of that's real when I know he hates me for cock-blocking him."

"Are you still planning on cock-blocking him?"

I shake my head. "I'm done. If he wants to ruin his season…well, there are twenty-four other guys on the team, and Tripp and Lila know how to trade him away as easily as they know how to keep him. And it's not like we're breaking records even with him helping. Plus, that woman in Florida had her hands all over him, and he can still hit a ball."

"I don't think that woman in Florida was the woman he was supposed to be with."

"Well, duh, but they were still touching. And kissing. And I'm done talking about this, and if he wants to go have sex with a different woman every day—or even every hour—then that's his business, and not mine. Not anymore."

It hurts to admit defeat, but I have to move on. I can't subject my family to a man who's only interested in me to chase me away, because Babe Ruth only knows what else he'd do in the name of getting rid of me. And no matter how attractive I might find him, and how much the idea of him being intimate with another woman hurts, even irrationally, I won't be the one to sleep with him first.

Not when that would make me responsible for whatever happened to his game next.

I take the phone back from Sarah, and I type out a message in the text string with Brooks.

I lift it for her to read.

She nods.

Hugs me again.

And then sits there with me while I hit send.

My heart hurts, but I know it's the right thing to do. And I need to start doing the right thing, because I can't live with myself anymore knowing that I'm trying to cheat the superstition system.