And I was worried if I saw Christy, I might do something everyone would regret.
But now, as Louie raced toward me and took a running leap with this smile the size of the sun on his adorable face, I hated myself for worrying about those people when I had someone so perfect waiting, happy to see me. It was people like Louie and Josh, like the Larsens—my family—who really mattered in life. Everyone else’s opinions and perception shouldn’t even begin to factor in my day.
And as I caught Louie with an “oomph” that knocked half the wind out of me, I accepted that I’d go through everything with Christy all over again if I had a homecoming like this from my boy.
“I missed you, Buttercup,” Louie practically screamed into my ear as his arms went around my neck and he hugged the little bit of breath I had left right out of me. “I missed you. I missed you. I missed you.”
“I missed you too, poo-poo face,” I said kissing his cheeks. “Oh my God, what have you been doing? Are you planning on hibernating for winter? You weigh like ten pounds more than you did before I left.”
Just like when he was a baby, Louie reeled back, smacked his hands—which I was 99 percent sure were dirty—on my cheeks, and jiggled them as he leaned close enough to touch the tip of his nose to mine. “Grandma gave me a lot of pizza and chicken nuggets.”
I laughed. “I can smell it on your breath.”
His giggle went straight into my heart. “Did you bring me anything?”
“Vanny sent you some toys and clothes.”
“Can I have them?”
“When we get home. They’re in my suitcase, greedy.”
He sighed and let his head drop, his entire body arching backward with the movement, making my arms strain with his weight. “Okay.”
“Uh-huh. Let’s go see Grandma and Grandpa,” I told him, already walking with him in my arms.
Louie started to wiggle and I let him slide to the ground, where he took my hand and led me in the direction of his grandparents.
“Were you waiting for me?” I asked, wondering how he’d seen me when I still had no idea where the Larsens were sitting.
“Yeah. Grandma told me you were on the way, so I was sitting there for you.”
This kid. I gave his hand a squeeze and we exchanged a grin. Sure enough, sitting on the first row were the Larsens, their eyes locked on the field. The long, furry white body at their feet made me grin. They’d brought Mac, too.
“Grandma! Tia’s here!” Louie shouted for half of the parents sitting there during practice to hear. I could see them out of the corner of my eye, trying to see who he was talking about, but I made sure to keep my eyes firmly on the only two adults there I wanted to interact with. Mac’s head turned to our direction, his nose twitching, and in the blink of an eye he was up; that white tail slashing through the air violently.
“Diana, honey,” Mrs. Larsen greeted me first with a closed-mouth smile as she got to her feet and gave me a hug as Mac squeezed in between us, hopping off his front feet for attention. Kneeling, I wrapped the giant dog in a hug and buried my face in his coat as he tried licking the skin off my face.
Standing again, I hugged Mr. Larsen next. “Thank you so much for watching the boys for me.” I’d already told them this exact same thing every time I’d spoken to them, but I really was grateful. When my mom heard that I had left for San Diego and that the Larsens were keeping the boys in the meantime, she had gone on this spiel about how I couldn’t just pick up and leave them like that. ¿Que te crees? Who did I think I was, she’d asked. By the end of the conversation, I’d been torn between crying and screaming.
“Any time you want,” Mr. Larsen confirmed, giving my back a pat. “Vanessa and the baby are fine?”
I took a seat on the bleacher beside Mrs. Larsen with Louie taking my left, his hand palming my thigh in a way that had me grinning. “She’s great, all things considered.” I made a line across my stomach and shuddered. “And the baby is perfect.” I set my hand on top of Louie’s and wiggled my eyebrows. “Your new cousin is almost as cute as you are.”
“He is my cousin, huh?” the boy asked.
“Yup.” He’d been calling Vanessa his aunt his entire life. “Maybe we can go visit them soon and make a trip to Disneyland out of it.” I could already picture grumpy Josh’s groans about Disneyland, but he’d have to live with it.
“I always wanted a cousin…,” Louie started to say, blinking.
God, he was so cute.
“And a sister.”
I coughed. I coughed like I’d come down with emphysema randomly. What the hell did he want a little sister for? What was I supposed to do? Pull one off a tree for him?
What was the best response for that?
There wasn’t one, so I pretended not to hear him.
Mrs. Larsen heard him, too, because when I turned to face her, her blue eyes were wide and she had her lips pressed together. I’m glad one of us thought it was funny, because I sure as hell didn’t. I peeked at Louie again, making sure not to make eye contact, and wondered where the hell he’d gotten that from. Didn’t every kid want to be the baby in the family?
The rattle of the fence protecting the people in the bleachers from the field had me glancing up to find a tall boy I could recognize even with a mask and helmet on, as well as a jersey that covered him from his neck to his hands. “Josh!”
He waved his bat and hand at the same time; I could tell he was smiling even with the black mouthpiece protecting the lower half of his face. I really had missed these kids. I couldn’t imagine my life without them.
Josh had just turned around to continue on with practice when I happened to glance to the side and saw him. Dallas was standing off by third base with his hands in the pockets of his frayed, ancient jeans, and he was staring over in my direction. He wasn’t casually looking; he was definitely staring.
I waved, and I was pretty sure he smiled.
* * *
“Goo, are you gonna fall asleep in there, or what?”
“No,” Louie answered, two spaceships held up in the air, their noses inches away from each other.
There was no way the bathwater was still warm. He’d been sitting in the tub playing with his spaceships for the last half hour while I was busy trying to sew the knee of a torn pair of his school pants. Usually on nights when Josh had baseball practice, I didn’t insist that he bathe, but Josh had admitted to me that neither one of them had taken a bath in two days and that just wasn’t going to work for me. While I made a quick dinner of frozen taquitos and a bag of frozen corn in the microwave, the eleven-year-old had showered.
“Then come on. You know you have to go to school tomorrow and you need your beauty rest.”
He smiled at me shyly as he climbed to his feet, still completely innocent, not caring that he was naked. A year ago, back when we’d shared one bathroom, I’d accidentally walked in on Josh. He’d been buck naked and had yelled like I’d gone in there to kill him, screaming with two hands covering his privates, “Don’t look at my nuggets!”
As if I hadn’t seen his little pistachios a thousand times before.
Within the next five minutes, I had Louie dried off and watched as he slipped on his pajamas. The top was Spiderman, the bottom was dinosaurs. After ruffling his hair, I cleaned up the mess we’d made in the bathroom and headed to the laundry room to put a load into the washer. I had just put detergent into the machine when I heard a knock at the front door. I didn’t need to look at my watch to know it was damn near ten at night. Who the hell would be coming by so late?
My neighbor, that was who.
Dallas’s face was tipped to the side when I peeked through the peephole. Letting out a long breath through my nose, I thought about not answering but then changed my mind. I was going to have to see him again soon anyway. Why the hell not get it over with? Maybe he’d forgotten what I said, and if he hadn’t… too fucking bad, I guessed. I couldn’t take it back now.
“Hi,” I said, opening the door w
ide. He was still dressed in the clothing I’d seen him in during practice, except he wasn’t wearing a baseball cap. I still had his in my car.
“You got a second to talk?” he went right out and asked, his hands loose at his sides.
Was he going to tell me we couldn’t be friends anymore? I knew I was bossy and hardheaded. I was well aware I wasn’t the easiest person to get along with sometimes either. But he wouldn’t be telling me to fuck off now, would he?
Dallas took a step forward, the tips of his worn tennis shoes crossing over into the doorframe, pretty much stopping me from closing the door in his face. His hand went to the back of his neck. He looked tired and tanner than he had before I’d left. “I called you.”
Where was he going with this? “I know. I was just… busy. I’m sorry. I was going to call you back, but every time I remembered, it was already late here.”
The deep, slow breath he let out seemed to hit my chest. “You didn’t come to any of the practices in two weeks. You never answered the door any time I knocked.” He paused, his eyes zeroing in on my face. “You left the game that day. I was going to give you some space, but I didn’t see you after that and I was worried.”
He’d knocked on my door too? “I was out of town, that’s all.” I blinked, making sure to keep my facial expression even. “We’re fine. You didn’t do anything to me.” It was me who had made an idiot out of myself. “I’m sorry for making you worry.”
The relief seemed to punch through the lines of his shoulders. “We’re fine?”
If he wasn’t going to make this weird, neither was I. “Yeah.” Then I said the words that made my throat itch like hell. “Of course we’re all right. We’re friends. Want to come in? I have beer.”
Chapter Seventeen
Josh had just walked up to the mound to pitch when my mom decided to lean into me. “He’s hitting better?” she asked like he hadn’t already been hitting awesome before.
I nodded, keeping my eyes on the eleven-year-old on base. Almost two weeks had passed since I’d gotten home from visiting Vanessa in California. I’d been busier than hell. This was supposed to be my weekend off with the boys, but I’d needed to catch up on appointments I’d had to cancel while I was gone, and the Larsens had offered to pick up Josh and Louie that morning so they could take him to his tournament, leaving me to work. When my last client of the day called and cancelled at the last minute, Sean and I made the executive decision to close the salon an hour early. The tournament Josh’s team was playing that weekend was luckily only a half hour drive, and I’d gotten back fast enough so that they had only played—and won—against two teams after their pool games. This was the first time since I’d gotten back that I’d been able to make it to anything baseball related; I’d been having to stay late to catch up with all the clients I’d had to reschedule.
The Larsens had stayed through the first four games before heading out when I’d shown up, with my parents showing up immediately afterward. This was also the first time I’d gotten to spend more than ten minutes with my parents in over a month, too. Things were still weird between my mom and I. She would never admit she had taken something too far, and I wasn’t going to back down from my feelings. I didn’t regret or feel bad about going to visit my best friend and her baby, no matter what she said or thought.
“Yeah. His batting coach is great and the coaches have been working with him a lot during practice, too.”
The coaches. I couldn’t help but kind of glance over at a specific coach standing by third base with his arms over his chest. I hadn’t seen much of him since that night he’d come over when I got back. He’d come inside with me and drank the last beer in the fridge while I’d told him about visiting my best friend. He hadn’t been able to believe whom she was married to. While I checked on Josh first, Louie had come out of his room and invited Dallas to sit with him while I told him his daily Rodrigo story.
“Who are the coaches again?” my mom asked, dragging me back to the present and away from the mental image of my neighbor sitting on one side of Louie’s bed while I’d been on the other as I told him about the time my brother had thought he’d lost his phone but had left it inside the refrigerator on accident.
I side-eyed her and somehow managed not to shake my head. My parents didn’t come to as many of Josh’s games like the Larsens and I did, but they had gone to enough so that she should know more. The thing was, when Josh had first started talking about playing sports, both my parents had complained. Why not soccer? So I’d said, “Because he doesn’t want to play soccer.” After so many years, you would figure they’d get over it and accept that he was a natural at baseball, but these stubborn-asses I’d been born to hadn’t.
I pointed at Trip first, who was standing by first base and then slowly, more than a little resigned, at the big man standing closest to us.
“Why does he look familiar?”
I eyed her again, not fooled by her question. “You met him at the party.” This woman had the memory of an elephant; she didn’t forget shit. She still brought up things I’d done when I was a kid that, for some reason or another, still made her mad from time to time.
“Oh.”
I didn’t like the way she said “oh.” So I waited.
“The one with all the tattoos?” she asked in Spanish.
All the tattoos? They only went to his elbow. “Si.”
She said it again, “Oh.”
If I didn’t know my mom the way I knew her, I’d assume she was indifferent about Dallas. But I did know her. And for some reason, her “oh” while referring to him didn’t sit well with me.
In front of us, Josh got into position on the base and hit the ball straight between third and second, jetting way into the outfield so far I jumped up to my feet to cheer him on. Vaguely, I noticed my mom raise her hands in the air and start clapping. But it wasn’t until I sat down as Josh’s feet hit the third base that she finally said what I should have known she would say.
“I don’t think all those tattoos are good to have around kids, no?”
I groaned. “Tattoos don’t jump out and attack people, Mamá.”
“Sí pero… ve lo.” She huffed, the tip of her chin pointing at Dallas who had his hands on his knees as he talked to Josh. “He looks like a gangbanger.”
I hated when my mom did that stereotypical crap, especially while she talked about a man who had been pretty damn kind to me and the boys. It was unfair of him to get judged by his buzz-cut hair and a face he’d been born with. I had to grit down on my teeth to keep from saying something I’d regret. “Ma, he’s not in a gang. He’s great with the kids. He’s great with everyone.”
“Ay. Maybe, but why does he have to have all those tattoos?”
“Because he wants them,” I said in a snappier tone than normal.
Her upper body turned to face me, those black, black eyes narrowing. “Why are you getting mad?”
“I’m not getting mad. I think you’re being mean judging him. You don’t know him.”
She huffed. “¿Y tú si?”
“Yeah, I do. He was in the navy for twenty years and he owns his own business. He coaches little boys because he likes to be there for them. He’s—” I just about said almost but managed to keep it inside “—always been nice to Josh and Louie and me.” Before I could stop myself. Before I could think about the people sitting around and consider that they might be listening in, I said, “I think he’s great. I like him a lot.”
The long and drawn-out inhale that she sucked in seemed to suck up all the air within ten feet of us. “¿Qué qué?” What?
“I like him.” Was I egging her on? Maybe a little, but I hated, hated when she got like this on me.
“Why?”
“Why not?” We seemed to have this argument every time I liked someone who wasn’t Mexican.
“Diana, no me digas eso.”
“Te estoy diciendo eso. Me gusta. He’s a good person. He’s handsome—” She scoffed. “And he
treats everyone well, Mamá. You know the day after the party? He came over and helped me and the boys clean for hours.” I really hadn’t believed him when he’d left my house that night, assuring me that I should leave the mess alone because we could all tackle it the next day.
But he had. Time and time again, he’d done things he didn’t have to. We were nothing to him, but he’d done what other people hadn’t.
If that wasn’t friendship, I didn’t know what was.
“Not him, Diana. Not again.”
God help me, sometimes I wanted to strangle my mom. “Oh my God, Ma. Calm down. I’m not telling you to love him. I’m just telling you I like him. We’re not getting married. He doesn’t even like me like that. He’s just… nice.”
The woman who had given birth to me faced forward again. I could see her hands clenching the material of the long skirt she had on. “For now!” she basically whisper-hissed.
Oh hell no.
“You don’t know how to pick them,” she said, her gaze still forward.
I couldn’t look at her either, so I shifted to watch the next batter get a strike. “Mom, I love you, but don’t go there right now,” I whispered.
“I love you too,” she said softly, “but someone has to tell you when you make stupid decisions. Last time I kept my mouth shut and you know what happened.”
Of course I knew what happened. I had been there. I had lived through what I lived through. I didn’t need a reminder of how dumb I’d been. I would never let myself forget it.
Yet here we were again with her telling me what to do with my life and what to do differently. Sometimes I thought, if she hadn’t been so strict with me as a kid, I would take her “suggestions” more seriously, but she had been strict. Too strict. And I wasn’t in the mood for it anymore, no matter how much I loved her. “Mom, Rodrigo had tattoos. Don’t be a hypocrite.”
She acted like I shot her. Her hands went to her chest and her back when ramrod straight. My mom gulped, and I’m pretty sure her hands started shaking.
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