by Pippa Grant
So the baseball player who doesn’t seem to have any superstitions on the field has them after all.
They’re in his home life instead of at the ballpark.
Considering it doesn’t feel like he’s even started, I’m guessing Luca’s hoping he’ll get to retire in Copper Valley. Not just stay another season, but fully retire.
Nonna’s still staying with us, and she’s filled in a few blanks. I get the feeling she likes me more since I told her off.
And I’m sad that that’s what it takes to get accepted by part of his family. I don’t want to take sides. I want everyone to get along for Luca’s sake.
But I still appreciate knowing that his dad didn’t pay the child support he was supposed to after the divorce, and that by the time Nonna realized it, Morgan was so pissed with all of them that she told Nonna to take a flying leap.
Naturally, Nonna didn’t listen, or she wouldn’t be here, but things are still tense between them.
She also told me people worth having in your life are worth fighting for.
Wisdom from Nonna.
Maybe one day I’ll ask her how I managed to get engaged five times to men who couldn’t go through with marrying me.
She’d probably tell me because I’m a ducked-up basket case.
Yep.
Ducked-up.
I’m back on the struggle bus with using my big girl words.
Luca leaves for a week-long away trip, and after two days of staying in Copper Valley with me, Nonna heads out to Vegas for a thing with one of her new TikTok sponsors.
The Fireballs clinch a spot in the playoffs on their first away game after Boston, so everyone in all of Copper Valley is riding this amazing high. Mackenzie randomly bursts into tears during Lady Fireballs meetings.
So does Tanesha.
And Marisol.
I cry the happy tears with them, because how can I not?
This is a big deal. Luca told me the Fireballs only won something like thirty-nine games out of over a hundred and fifty last year, so to make the playoffs is such a drastic turnaround that even my dad texts about seeing it on the news.
My family knows I’m taking a time-out from life in Copper Valley. I don’t think they follow small-time gossip pages enough to have picked up on the fact that I’m fake-dating a baseball player, which is fine.
Really.
It’s better this way, because I don’t have to answer the questions about if Luca makes enough money to pay for this wedding, when there won’t be a wedding, which is the whole point of me getting to know him in the first place.
I take myself out of Copper Valley and drive an hour or so to reach the Blue Ridge Mountains and go hiking for an afternoon after that, because I need the break from my break.
It feels like both seventeen years and also like a blink of an eye by the day Luca’s supposed to be home again.
Kids are back in school. The weather’s getting comfortably chilly at night, and the kitchen is the perfect spot to sit and write with the windows open now that we’re well into September.
And that’s exactly where I am when my phone rings near dusk.
It’s Elsa, and her due date is approaching, so of course, I drop everything and answer.
And I immediately wish I hadn’t.
She’s not in labor. No one’s hurt. Nothing like that. No one’s dying, no children were stung by bees or fell down a well.
It’s just…
Well, it might be Elsa being Elsa, and this time, she’s completely broken me.
I manage to hold myself together until I can get her off the phone over an hour later, and as soon as I’ve hung up, I wish Nonna was here, because I need a hug.
I need a hug so bad that I’d ask Nonna to be my Nonna for five minutes and hug me.
Okay, confession: Nonna’s not my first choice of who I’m wishing was here.
But I’m pretending like she is, because I can’t handle wishing for Luca on top of handling the bomb that Elsa dropped.
I could call Mackenzie, or Marisol, or Tanesha, except they wouldn’t get it.
Not the way my writer besties will. So I log onto my computer and send an SOS to a couple close professional friends.
In ten minutes, I’m huddled at Luca’s kitchen table, a fan blowing on me because I’m so upset I’m sweating despite the cooler temperatures, my favorite glittery Addicted to Love Stories coffee mug filled to the brim with hot chocolate, and my laptop open while my three friends log onto our video chat.
Dorothea is first, and yes, that Dorothea. The one that Luca nicknamed Granny Romance, the one whose blow job paragraph I accidentally sent to him, and the woman who’s responsible for half the hot flashes around the world.
Katharine James-Taylor follows almost immediately. She’s British, in her mid-forties, married with two kids, living in Montana—don’t ask—and writes dark romantic suspense that makes me worry about her sometimes.
Last to join us, though only by like four seconds, is Jen Persimmon, pen name Jack M. Hughes, and yes, I mean that Jack M. Hughes who writes legal thrillers, and if you tell anyone he’s actually a woman, I’ll never speak to you again. Jen and her wife, Lin, just adopted their third baby, so I didn’t expect her to hop on so quick, but here we are.
“Henri, I love you, but if you’re telling us you’re engaged again—” Jen starts.
“Wait, that’s my line,” Dorothea interrupts.
“Elsa’s writing romance novels,” I say, and then I burst into tears.
It’s ugly.
I’m embarrassed.
I know I’m overreacting, but all three of my friends gasp and stare at me in horror through the computer screen, and maybe I’m not overreacting.
“No.” Katharine leans closer to her camera. “Why—when?”
“Right?” I sob.
Jen leans back and crosses her arms, tapping her fingers slowly over her biceps. “I’ve met a hacker or two. Want me to take care of her computer?”
“Not necessary.” Katharine smiles, and she manages to smile in a way that’s both deviously terrifying and also as soothing as her voice, which I could listen to basically all day, with or without the accent. “She’ll find out soon enough that writing a book is harder than it appears.”
“Romance novels,” I repeat. “She could’ve written self-help. Or a yoga book. Or a memoir. Or a new kind of planner. But no. She says she has to write romance novels. But none of that silly paranormal stuff. She’s writing a modern-day romance where the heroine dies.”
Katharine drops her teacup, mutters what the fuck in that lovely British accent that makes it sound like she’s asked if you’d like to take a stroll through the park, and disappears from view.
“Isn’t the whole point of a romance novel that they all live happily ever after?” Jen asks.
I’m hiccupping now. I’m crying so hard I’m hiccupping. “She’s going to be—hic!—famous and—and everyone—hic!—will think she writes b—bet—better romances than me when—hic!—she doesn’t write romance at all.”
“Psh. She’ll get six hundred words in and give up,” Dorothea says.
“Elsa never fails at anything.”
Dogzilla hops onto my lap, then tries to climb my chest, which is awkward in all the ways it can possibly be awkward, not the least of which is that she’s dressed in her alien costume today and her tentacles are going up my nose.
Katharine pops back onto the screen, wiping her arms with a cloth napkin. “What did you say to the twat when she told you what she was about?”
Usually I love her soothing accent as she lets out a solid twat, but today, the question itself makes me sob harder. “She asked—hic!—me for a—aad—advice.”
Jen leans right into the camera. “Tell me you didn’t give it to her.”
Katharine’s leaning in too. “Tell me you did, but you gave her awful advice.”
I reach for my hot chocolate. “I can’t doooooo thaaaaaat,” I sob.
The front doo
r slams.
Dogzilla jerks while she has her claws in my chest, yowls in terror, and leaps onto my laptop, but she misses and hits my arm, which sends my hot chocolate flying everywhere.
Everywhere.
“No!” I leap to my feet.
Towels.
I need towels.
I can’t lose my laptop. I can’t lose my laptop.
“Henri?” All three of my friends blink and stare, and then everything goes black.
“Nooooo!”
“Henri?” Luca calls. “What’s—oh, shit.”
Dogzilla yowls again, looks up, sees Luca, and then collapses on the floor like she’s realized we’re not being invaded by Nonna, or Luca’s mom, or Elsa and her family, or something not quite as terrifying like an angry hoard of bees on steroids or a pack of saber-toothed tigers that have traveled through time to eat us, and my cat has officially checked out of duty.
Luca’s leaping all over the kitchen. He throws me a towel, then skids on the hot chocolate on the floor as he grabs another towel.
I lunge to wipe off my laptop.
He stops next to me and tries to pat down my arms while I’m trying to use them to clean up my laptop.
And I can’t stop sobbing.
“Henri. God. Are you okay?”
I nod. “I’m fiiiiiiiiine.”
“Jesus. No, you’re not. Did someone die?”
“No—hic! I—I’m okay.”
“This is not okay.”
Well.
When he puts it like that, the only thing I can do is sob harder.
“Don’t cry, Henri. Don’t cry. I’ll buy you a new laptop. Do you use a cloud back-up? Tell me you use a cloud back-up. Never mind. Not important. I’ll pay for your hard drive to get recovered. Oh, shit. Shit. You named it, didn’t you? You named your laptop and now you’ve lost a friend and shit. I can’t fix this.”
Ohmygosh.
I didn’t name my laptop.
I didn’t name it, and I should’ve, and now it’s gone to the great laptop heaven in the sky, and it was my friend and I didn’t even give it a name.
I’m a complete and total laptop mama failure, and my sister’s going to be a bestselling author in like two weeks, probably without naming her laptop either, except she’s Elsa, so of course she’ll remember to name it, and it’ll be something beautiful like Violet Sparkle von Gorgeous, and I can’t even have a proper pity party.
Also, Luca’s hair dye is fading, and it should look like a light brown rainbow of poop, but instead, it’s utterly adorable, like a chestnut wave kissed by a unicorn that would look spectacular on one of the billboards on the interstate where his current billboard holding Kangapoo resides, whereas my hair is once again at that perfect length where I caught myself having devil horns when I glanced in the mirror three hours ago.
“It’s something else, isn’t it?” He pulls back, his green eyes going wide and worried. “Did someone die? Fuck, Henri. Tell me how to fix this.”
I shake my head and grip his forearm, and holy crap, his forearm is solid.
Also, I’m not sure we’ve been this physically close since the hotel room in Boston—at least, not when someone else wasn’t watching—and I like it.
Especially when he throws his towel on the table, mutters, “Screw it,” and grabs me in a giant Luca hug.
It’s not a normal hug, because it’s bigger and stronger and like being cradled by a giant teddy bear that acts like a tyrannosaurus rex but only because he’s been taught for so long that it’s the only way to keep his heart safe.
He squeezes me tight and buries his nose in my crazy hair and all of my panic and insecurities and sobs slow until I’m a giant blob of worn-out muscles and jelly bones.
Check that.
I’m an embarrassed giant blob.
“Elsa’s writing a romance novel,” I whisper.
His body goes so tense that the hug shifts from a teddy bear cuddle to trying to rub myself against a steel refrigerator door. “Your sister Elsa?”
I nod into his chest.
“The Elsa with the twenty-three kids and ten pets and forty-three volunteer organizations and her own YouTube channel? That Elsa?”
Once more, I nod.
“Why the fuck is she doing that?”
I swallow hard and don’t answer.
“Because you write romance novels?”
There’s a deadly calm in his voice that should probably make me worry, but it’s hard to worry when I’m snuggling a steel door with a heartbeat getting stronger and faster under my ear, and when I suspect he gets it, and I like that he would instantly understand why I’m upset about this, when I shouldn’t. It’s a free world, and if Elsa wants to write a romance novel, I shouldn’t stop her. I know how it feels to have people try to keep you from your dream, and even if I’m horribly jealous and broken and neurotic, that’s no reason to make her the same way.
“Henri?” Luca’s voice rumbles through the kitchen and makes me shiver in the good way. “Tell me she’s not doing it because you do it too.”
“She has everything else. Why does she need this too?” I shudder and try to grab the words back. “If this will make her happy, of course she should do it. There’s plenty of room in the world for her stories too. And I always say every story has a reader.”
“Christ on a tortellini,” he mutters. He pulls back again, grips my arms, gets right in my face, and growls, “Stay.”
And then he turns and marches out of the kitchen, pulling his phone out of his pocket and giving me a view of his rear end that I’ve been trying very, very hard not to appreciate every time I watch a baseball game, because that ass ain’t mine.
To quote…someone.
Probably.
As soon as he disappears from view, I remember my friends, and I drop my own phone trying to pull it out to open the video chat app and get back to them.
Katharine, Dorothea, and Jen are still there, Jen bouncing the baby now, and they’re all staring intently at me while my phone takes sixty-five years to fully engage the app.
“Are you okay?”
“What happened?”
“Tell me that rugged baseball player you’re shacking up with came home and threw you on that table and had his way with you until you can’t feel your legs.”
“Dorothea. She’s upset. She doesn’t need penis.”
“Penis wouldn’t hurt. But then, she wasn’t gone long, so maybe that would’ve hurt.”
Jen makes a face. “Is your laptop toast?”
“I’m okay,” I tell them. “At least, I think I will be. I’m sorry I overreacted. I—”
“Oh my god, Henrietta, you are not overreacting, and stop apologizing for it. You’re allowed to have feelings when someone you love dismisses and pisses all over what you love simply because they’re jealous that you’ve done something they can’t.”
I open my mouth to defend Elsa. I don’t think she understands what she’s doing, except isn’t that what I’ve done with her entire life?
Have I?
I don’t think I’ve ever dismissed her life to her face. And I wouldn’t, because her life makes her happy.
I’m just…well, jealous.
And I don’t like that about myself, even though I know it’s a natural human reaction.
I wanted one thing that I could be better at. Just one.
And my career has always been it.
“Where’s Mr. Big Bat?” Dorothea demands.
“He’s—”
“Right here.” Luca squeezes my shoulder as he appears in the screen behind me, and he only does a brief double-take when he spots his Granny Romance. “Let me know when you’re done.”
“We’re done,” she says instantly. “Clearly, Henri has better things to do.” Video chat makes it hard to tell, but I’m positive she’s ogling Luca.
Katharine fans herself, and if it wasn’t for the simple gold wedding band on her hand, I’d think she was fanning herself over Luca.
Bu
t maybe she is?
Being married doesn’t make you blind, does it?
Jen shifts the baby. “Henri, sweetheart, he’s not my type, but I think it’s time for you to end this call and go tend to whatever it is he needs, which is hopefully to tend to your needs. Men always get that part wrong, I swear.”
Luca lifts a brow. “I’m not getting that part wrong.”
“Oh, gosh, my dog has to go out. Gotta run. Henri, ping us if you need anything.” Katharine waves, and Jen and Dorothea sign off too.
And then it’s only me, Luca, and Dogzilla left.
My cat is much happier now that I’ve stopped crying.
But I don’t think Luca is.
He’s frowning. And when he frowns, he gets this adorable crease between his eyes that I want to rub away with my finger, except I’m afraid to touch him, because if I touch him again, I’m not going to stop.
He starts to reach for me, then stops. “I called a computer repair shop. Their after-hours line should call us back soon.”
“Oh. Um, thank you. I could’ve—”
“You’re not happy.”
“I’m happy. I am. It’s hiding under a few clouds, but I’m fine. Really. Completely overreacting. Did I tell you Dogzilla got a new costume? It’s—”
“Do you want to go to a party?”
The question shouldn’t sting, but I was hoping he’d silence me with a kiss fit for a movie.
And instead, he wants to go somewhere with other people.
And not be alone with me. Or talk to me about my feelings. Or cuddle until he’s sure that I’m completely over the tears.
Of course. Naturally.
Because this is all pretend.
If I were bolder, I’d kiss him and tell him what I want, but it’s the exact opposite of what I need to do, so instead, I do what I’ve always done.
I plaster a bright smile on my face, fully aware that I probably look like a crazy lady with a blotchy face and insane hair that I should almost definitely cover with a hat before we go out, and while I’d love to tell him that he should go without me so that I can have my private pity party with my good friends Ben and Jerry, instead I nod enthusiastically. “I love parties.”