by Aven Ellis
It was wonderful and right, just like Barbara described.
I can’t help but wonder if Brody is my Dominik.
Could he be The One?
My heart leaps at the thought. I always thought I’d wait until I was secure in my career before thinking about romance. I envisioned myself with someone older and mature. I didn’t want to date anyone right now, let alone fall in love.
But now it’s exactly what I want.
And I only want to find it with Brody.
Chapter Eighteen
Katie is studying in her room, so I have my iPad in the living room so I can chat with Brody. After riding the recumbent bike—this time for a whole eleven minutes and fifty seconds—I took a shower, re-applied my makeup, styled my hair, and slipped into an outfit I’d wear on a date. I decided to show off my collarbones because, according to a DC fashion blog, they are alluring. I put on a cream silk slip tank that dips into a slight V, and paired an inky charcoal, slouchy shrug sweater over it. I thought about putting on my stretchy yoga pants since he won’t see my bottom half, but I decided I needed to take this seriously. It IS a date, and I wouldn’t wear stretchy yoga pants in front of Brody until . . .
Well, not until I’ve dropped five pounds.
Or bought some with a stomach control panel.
Then yoga pants might be acceptable.
Way down the line.
I peer at my iPad, chewing my lip and wondering what his ex-girlfriends were like. I picture California blondes with six-pack abs and bronzed skin. Hmm. I wonder if I should do a self-tanner before our next date.
Suddenly, Brody’s face pops up on my iPad, signaling he’s calling. I happily tap the green accept button and we’re connected.
“Hey, you,” Brody says, grinning at me. He’s leaning against the headboard at the hotel with white fluffy pillows tucked behind his back. Brody’s wearing a long-sleeved, pale blue dress shirt, which makes his eyes look even bluer.
Gorgeous.
I smile back at him. “Hey, yourself. How’s Boston?”
“Good. Went out with AJ and Tanner for dinner. Lobster. It was incredible. “
I nod. AJ I know, as Katie drools over him whenever he’s on the TV, and Tanner plays shortstop, at least that is what the announcers say.
“I’m jealous,” I say as Pissy jumps up into my lap.
“Pissy!” Brody says, his face lighting up at the sight of my fluffy gray kitten.
Oh, a man who likes kittens, I am going to be in full-on swoon mode in six seconds.
“It is Pissy. She’s happy Katie is in her room,” I say.
“That evil Katie,” Brody teases.
Pissy makes a circle and sits in my lap, purring happily.
“Hi, Pissy!” Brody says.
She cocks her head up, and I touch Brody’s face on the screen. “There’s Brody!”
He grins. “She’s so cute.”
Pissy stares at my finger, and when she hears Brody’s voice, her ears perk up.
She meows.
“Did you hear that?” I ask excitedly. “She meowed for you!”
“I did,” Brody says, and his whole face lights up.
“She likes you a lot,” I say as she puts her head down to sleep.
“I hope her momma likes me a lot, too.”
Ooh!
“She does,” I say, finding the words easy to say.
Because they are true.
“Good, because I like you a lot, too.”
I find myself in full-on melt mode once again from my sweet, sexy baseball boy.
He clears his throat. “How was your dinner?”
“Not as good as yours,” I say, thinking of fresh lobster and drawn butter and then about my dinner of a veggie burger and zucchini rounds, which was sadly lacking two things:
Lobster and butter.
“I was talking about you with my brother tonight,” Brody says.
My heart skips a beat.
“Oh yeah?”
Brody flashes me that smile that reveals the dimple in his cheek. “Well, I wasn’t telling Brady about you sending me snaps of yourself in a sheer bra, but yes, I was talking about you.”
“Shut up,” I say, laughing at myself.
“Are you wearing that bra now?” Brody asks, raising his eyebrows.
“No.”
“Damn.”
“So, how is Brady?” I ask, changing the subject from my nightmare accidental sexting.
Brody sighs. “He’s a mess. He’s pitching down in New Orleans, but it’s not going well. I swear if I could catch for him, he’d be a star. I know his strengths and weaknesses better than anyone. I’m his twin; if anyone could help him, it’s me, but I’m the last person he’d listen to.”
“Why? You’re the major leaguer. I think he’d be looking to you for advice all the time.”
Brody snorts. “Oh, hell no. Brady would sooner quit baseball than take advice from me. He says he needs to do this on his own.”
“I don’t understand. You can help him.”
“Of course, I can, but he’s stubborn. He doesn’t want to be known as Brody Jensen’s brother. He wants to make it in the Chicago organization on his own. I watch his games online, and I can see where he’s struggling. If he’d freaking listen to me, he’d be in the majors. That, and he needs to break up with his drama-loving girlfriend.”
Ooh, this sounds interesting.
“What do you mean?”
Brody leans back against the plush hotel pillows and sighs. “Brady falls hard and fast. He goes all in, and he seems to go for women who create drama. Fighting, tears, stress, all that shit. Heather is the latest one. She calls him upset he’s away, as she’s still back at Palo Alto, yet she knew he was a baseball player when they started going out. We travel. It’s part of dating an athlete. We’re gone a lot from April to October. She’s always crying that he’s being unfair by chasing this dream and telling him to come home. She says that if he loved her, he would. It’s been a disaster for both of them. Watching Brody get leveled, relationship after relationship, made me avoid them. Who needs that?”
My stomach lurches from his words. Brody doesn’t want a relationship. Is this what he’s reinforcing to me? Did this conversation with his twin remind him of why he shouldn’t be tempted to pursue one? I know we’re just dating, but I see so many wonderful things in our future if we continue down this path. His words scare me. Does he not see these same things with me?
“But then,” Brody says slowly, “this gorgeous girl tried to pick me up for a one-night stand. Her pickup tactic of throwing iced coffee on my crotch got my attention. Now this girl, she has me rethinking this whole thing.”
My heart lifts. We’re still on the same page.
“Good, because I feel the same way,” I say.
I make a note of his feelings on relationship drama. Zen-like Brody doesn’t want that. Not that I do, of course, but all couples fight and have issues. I’ll have to be mindful, if we do become a couple, of how to effectively communicate with him.
Crap. I have no experience with that. I’ve never had an adult relationship.
Fear fills me, as it always does when I’m approached with something I have no experience in.
I’ll mess it up.
I’ll start reading up on it. There have to be things I can do to improve my non-existent relationship skills.
“Hayley? What are you thinking?”
I blink. Brody obviously said something and I totally missed it in my panic.
“Um, sorry, just remembered something I need to work on,” I say, which is the truth.
The dimple pops out in his cheek and oh, I melt a bit at that sight. “I’d better up my conversation skills if you’re drifting off.”
“No, no, it’s me. What were you saying?”
“I said enough about Brady. Those are his issues, not mine,” Brody says. “Back to my original point: I did tell him I was seeing a girl here in DC. He couldn’t believe it.”
&nb
sp; Aah!
“What did you say?”
“I said you were the coolest woman I’ve ever met.”
I feel tingles all over.
“What makes me cool?” I ask.
“The way you’re always talking. How you say whatever you think. You have drive and ambition. An amazing collection of appliances. And you send sexy dressing room pics to my phone.”
Then he winks so I know he’s kidding.
“You shut up,” I say, laughing.
“So tomorrow is your Friday. Any plans?” Brody asks.
“Yes. I have a hot date. With The Ultimate Modern Girl’s Guide to Self-Motivation, Zen, and Being the Absolute Best You Now! book and a glass of rosé. And watching some dude I know play baseball on TV.”
“This dude isn’t playing tomorrow,” he says. “I’m off.”
“What? Why? You’ve been playing awesome; that doesn’t make sense. Oh, no! Unless you’re hurt. Did something happen? Are you okay?”
Brody begins laughing. “I love that you don’t know anything about baseball.”
“That, sir, is a lie,” I tease. “I know things, just not many.”
We both laugh.
“I’m fine, but we have two day games this weekend and it’s too hard to catch a Friday night and then turn around and play a Saturday one o’clock game,” Brody explains. “Mario is catching tomorrow night and Sunday, and I have the Saturday game.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” I say.
Brody rakes a hand through his hair. “Sometimes a pitcher connects better with a different catcher, too. Lino Reynaldo prefers Mario, so whenever he’s up, I don’t catch for him. If Brady were on our team, he’d refuse to take orders from his brother, so he’d ask for Mario, too.”
“Well, they should both want you as far as I’m concerned,” I say, feeling proud of what Brody has so far accomplished in his debut for the Soaring Eagles.
“You’re so adorable when you get protective of me,” Brody says, his eyes shining with warmth.
I feel my cheeks grow warm. “I’m protective of people I care about.”
“I’m glad to be one of them,” he says.
Ooh!
“So what will you do Saturday night in Boston, since you have a day game?” I ask, wondering what they actually do with a night off.
“I’ll grab a meal with AJ, Tanner, and anyone else who wants to go. Then maybe I’ll go see a movie. I see a lot of movies during the season.”
“Do you get popcorn?” I ask.
Brody laughs. “I like how your brain goes straight to popcorn. Yes. Yes, I do. I might workout five times a day, but I still eat crap.”
I pretend to be serious. “Do you get extra butter?”
“Yes. Do you?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s essential.”
“Good, we can share popcorn when we go to a movie,” he says.
Oh, I love the idea of going to a movie with Brody and resting my head on his arm. I’ve never done that on a date.
And now I only want to have that date with Brody.
“Do you get candy?” I continue. “Because I need sweet with my salt.”
“Milk Duds,” Brody says. “I must have Milk Duds.”
“I need Junior Mints,” I say.
“Okay. Idea. You’re coming over on Sunday when I get back, but what about doing a movie night at my place on Monday? I have that day off. We could get dinner out. Then we can come back and have candy and popcorn with our movie. I assume you have a popcorn maker somewhere in your vast collection of life-assisting appliances?”
“Please. Of course, I have a popcorn maker,” I say. “It’s at my mom’s. I’m going over there on Saturday for dinner, so I’ll get it.”
“Do you have dinner with your parents a lot?” Brody asks.
“Usually a few times a month,” I say. “Very traditional, in the dining room, with no electronics and lots of conversation. Ethan and his wife come down from Baltimore, too. Sometimes, my cousins and aunts and uncles join us. Mom plans this whole menu and cooks out of Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, complete courses. It’s a Carter Family production,” I say, smiling. “I enjoy it. It’s old-fashioned, but it’s good to catch up and really talk.”
I notice a shift in Brody’s eyes as if he’s trying to picture this in his head.
I want to tell him my family would love him, because I know they would, but we haven’t even been dating a full week so I can’t say that to him.
Unless I totally want to put pressure on him that he doesn’t need.
“We are so different in some ways,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. “I’ve never had a family meal like that in my life.”
“We are different,” I say, acknowledging that fact, “but we both like popcorn and candy. We have the important stuff nailed.”
Brody grins. “True.”
“So we need to pick a movie for Monday,” I say.
“Let’s do a double header.”
“Huh?”
He laughs. “Double header is when you play two games in one day. We could watch two movies, like a movie and a sequel to it.”
“That sounds fun. Something totally popcorn worthy, like action movies.”
“Iron Man?” Brody asks. “I like that series.”
“You’re on.”
As we continue our conversation, I’m already counting down the hours until Brody is home and we can have our movie date.
And I can’t wait to welcome my baseball player home with a kiss on Sunday.
Chapter Nineteen
The Ultimate Modern Girl’s Guide to Self-Motivation, Zen, and Being the Absolute Best You Now!
Today’s Question: When is the last time you completely lost track of time? What were you doing? How did it feel?
Well, this is rather overwhelming.
I stand in the doorway of my old bedroom in Bethesda, Maryland, staring at a sea of boxes.
Sure, some are old things from my high school days, like yearbooks and pictures. Others are boxes filled with mementos from my life at Georgetown, including memory-inducing pictures and trinkets. But I’m picky about what I keep. And I do prefer to keep my memories in photo form, so most of them are splashed across my social media history anyway.
Which means most of these boxes are full of gadgets. Appliances. Tools.
I guess since I had them shipped to my house I lost track of just how many things I had ordered. I was buying things for my first true adult apartment, since I don’t count apartment living during my university years as adult, and I kept finding all these incredible appliances and tools to make my life easier. Since Katie and I shared a room in an apartment with two other girls, and we all had to share space and it never felt like mine. And I didn’t think Amelia and Britany would understand my need to have a stand mixer, a hand mixer, and an immersion blender taking up space.
So all my treasures came here. Now that I have a job and an apartment with Katie, Mom has nicely requested that I move this stuff out.
I’m obviously taking the popcorn maker, but I can’t possibly fit all of these things in our tiny kitchen in Arlington.
Or in the hall closet.
Or in my bedroom.
Shit.
“Are you formulating a plan?”
I turn around and find my mom leaning against the door frame. A smile plays at her lips, and I somehow feel my super-organized mom might be enjoying this a bit. She warned me I was amassing a lot of things, but I insisted I needed all of them.
And I do.
“Um, yes,” I lie, surveying the field of appliances and knowing I cannot possibly take them all home tonight.
“Hayley, you don’t need all these things,” Mom says, entering the room and moving beside me. She puts her arm affectionately around my shoulders and draws me to her, and I pick up the familiar scent of her Joy perfume, the notes of rose and jasmine that have lingered on her skin for as long as I can remember.
“Mom, I do,” I s
ay. “These are all designed to do the job perfectly.”
“Nothing is perfect,” Mom says, squeezing my shoulder gently.
“Of course not, but I want things that do the job the best way possible.”
“Speaking of jobs,” Mom says, moving into my room and pushing aside an Amazon box to make room so she can sit on the bed, “how is your job going? How was the first week? I know you said it was mixed, but now that you’re here, I want all the details. How did Belinda like your proposal?”
I busy myself with searching for the popcorn maker. Luckily most of my items have been taken out of the shipping boxes. I’m simply hoping that the popcorn maker is one of them.
I sigh. “I honestly don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
I pause as I pick up a box. Ooh! My soft pretzel maker, with a cheese warmer in the center for dip.
I wonder if Brody likes pretzels.
That’s a movie treat.
I’ll take a picture and send it to him. If he likes pretzels, I’ll bring this back tonight.
I’ll have to make sure I crop out the room in the pic or zen-like, minimalistic Brody might have second thoughts about me and the hot mess of appliances he will have to deal with if we get serious.
I need to add “streamline” to my list of self-improvement projects.
“Hayley?”
“Hmm?”
“Where did you go? I asked you about your job, and now you’re staring at that pretzel maker with a smile on your face.”
I bite my lip. Mom is super smart. Well, obviously, she does work at a think tank; she’s brilliant.
Little gets past her when she’s focused like this.
“I’ll get back to the work stuff in a moment,” I say slowly, “but I have some other news, surprising news.”
I put the pretzel maker down and move over to the bed, sinking down between Mom and my perfect pancake pan.
“What kind of news?” Mom asks.
“Mom, I met a guy, and I like him.”
Silence.
“He’s not what you might expect,” I say, as I hate silence.
“How so?” Mom asks. I hear a hint of concern creeping into her voice.
“His name is Brody. He just moved here for his job; he’s originally from San Diego,” I say. “He’s twenty-four and—”