The Grumpy Player Next Door: Copper Valley Fireballs #3

by Grant, Pippa

  Pretty sure I’m getting the general area for her eyes right. “Work hard. Play hard. Take a chance.”

  She looks back at the door. Cooper’s not there anymore, but I have zero doubt he’ll be back.

  Can’t blame him.

  I’m playing with fire here. If I fuck up—even if this is temporary fun and Tillie Jean and I both know it—next year could be ugly.

  Or, clearing the air, taking a chance, and working on being a better me—on the inside, not just the outside—might be exactly what the team needs.

  “You’re a grown-up. I’m a grown-up. We know the score,” I add when the barista slips out of hearing range again, Nana following on her heels, looking for a muffin.

  Tillie Jean doesn’t answer.

  It’s not a no.

  It’s not a yes either.

  “Ball’s in your court, Trouble Jean.” I rise and stroll to the counter. “Got a mop?” I ask the barista.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “If my options are cleaning the floor while you make Tillie Jean another coffee, or making her wait for her caffeine, I’ll clean the floor.”

  Yep.

  That’ll get back to Cooper too.

  Ball’s not just in Tillie Jean’s court. It’s in his too.

  Let’s see what they both do with it.

  26

  Tillie Jean

  For all that I love my brother, he’s annoying the crap out of me today.

  We’ve been at Mom and Dad’s place for two hours, had a late lunch, played sixteen rounds of Go, Ash, Go, and now he’s demanding a seventeenth round because I’m up six games to his five. Annika and Dad split the other five rounds while Mom and Grady sat on the sidelines debating which of us would get violent first over that stupid Firequacker card.

  I hope Cooper dreams in quack, since he’s the one who keeps making the rest of us quack through various rounds.

  But Meaty?

  I’m starting to really like him. All because his cards always upend the game in the most interesting ways.

  “I’m done,” I repeat to Cooper. “Mom can sit in, but my head hurts and I’m going home.”

  “You’re going to hang out with Max.”

  “One, I have no idea where Max even is, and two, so what if we hang out? Do you know what your problem is? You talk big about team and family, but you also want everyone to follow your rules without considering what’s good for anyone else. Grady gets to be friends with your teammates. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Max isn’t the settling down type.”

  “Maybe I’m not the settling down type. Maybe I want to travel to thirty cities every year and sleep with a different guy in every one.”

  He rears back, horrified, while Annika snorts in laughter. “She’s got you there, Cooper. Don’t have double-standards. Dick move.”

  He growls and stomps out of the house.

  “Maybe don’t tell us if you go on a thirty-city dick tour?” Dad says. “I won’t tell you how to live your life, but…”

  “Jesus.” Grady leaps to his feet and leaves too.

  Mom clears her throat and goes back to the refrigerator, where she pulls out the leftover cheesecake and dives in without cutting herself a slice. “Mmph?” she asks Annika, holding out the fork.

  “No, thank you, Libby.” Her eyes are dancing in amusement. “I think you need it more than I do.”

  The dishes are done. Food’s put away. Except for Mom’s half of a cheesecake, of course.

  I could stay and play Mom and Dad in Scrabble or Clue or Yahtzee, but instead, I reach for my coat on the back of my chair too. “I’m in the middle of painting something, so…”

  “Sure,” Dad says quickly.

  Mom mumbles something around her cheesecake again.

  “Oh my god, I’m serious. I’m going home to paint. And I don’t want the trouble of finding worthy dick in thirty different cities, okay? It’s hard enough to find it in one. Mom, I’ll see you at aerobics tomorrow morning. Dad, I’ll see you after. Annika—”

  “I’ll walk with you.” She hugs my parents. “Thank you for lunch and the entertainment.”

  “Be honest,” I say when the two of us slip out the front door. “Am I being ridiculous, or are they?”

  She glances at her phone, which I’m nearly certain has a text from Grady saying he’s chasing after Cooper to commiserate about the fact that their baby sister has a sex life. “Oh, they are. Completely. But if you are planning on sleeping with Max—”

  “Team dynamics, blah blah blah,” I mutter.

  “Actually, I was going to say, my phone’s always open if you need to talk or if you need someone to run interference with Cooper. Grady and I are both in. I’d offer my door being open, but—”

  “But you’re still a honeymooner and I wouldn’t touch that offer with a ten-foot pole.”

  She laughs.

  And I smile.

  But only for a minute. “It would be a short-term fling,” I say quietly. “He has his own issues, but he’s hot, and he’s next door, and he’s leaving in another month. You can put an end date on a fling, right? That’s a thing?”

  Yes, I am asking as someone who’s only had one serious relationship in her life.

  “Some people can. Some people can’t. Only way to know if you’re one of them is to try.”

  “What if I really do fuck up his game?” I whisper.

  “Then that’s on him,” she replies firmly. “You can’t manage other people’s feelings and you can’t be responsible for them lying to themselves. You can be responsible for being upfront and honest with him about expecting things to end when he leaves for spring training, and you’ll probably want to consider how much you want to stay involved with the Lady Fireballs if it’s awkward afterwards, but he has to decide for himself if you’re worth the risk to his game.”

  I’m twenty-six.

  I love my life, even on days when I fight with my brothers and have the hangover from hell.

  But I also know sometimes you have to leap. You have to pay attention to the signs.

  Even if you leap wrong, you learn something from it.

  And I don’t want to leap with a one-night thing in the city with a guy I found on a hook-up app.

  I want to see where things go with Max.

  I think I’ve wanted to see where things could go with Max since the minute he showed up at the ballpark after I chased him out of Chance Schwartz’s apartment.

  There’s always been something about him that screams I’m a good time, but I’m more if you can get past my barriers.

  And I very, very much want to get past his barriers.

  Not to win. Not because it’s a contest.

  More because over the past four years, he’s snuck past mine.

  He doesn’t know it.

  But he has.

  Sometime during that season when we met, I wrinkled my nose in passing when someone suggested Thai food for dinner before a club after a game, and Max gave me this look—no, this sneer, the one that said, whatever, small-town princess, and I’ve been on a mission to try new foods ever since in a way I’d never considered before.

  When the team had their parents’ weekends last year and Henri went out of her way to find Max’s old T-ball coach, I tracked her down and asked her what she knew.

  He told me he started arranging his own rides to baseball practice after his first coach realized he wouldn’t show up without help and picked him up the first two years he played ball.

  She’d added he also said if she told anyone he’d kill her in her sleep, which she didn’t believe. Henri is the best kind of optimist.

  But it was one more little poke.

  Your parents made sure you wanted for nothing important, Tillie Jean. Get out there and help some other kids.

  So now we have D&D afternoon at the restaurant for a bunch of kids who’d otherwise go home to empty houses, and I organized a sign-up to match retirees with kids whose families need a little extra help s
o they can get to extracurricular stuff like ball games and play practice and dance lessons.

  I joined the Lady Fireballs because of him.

  I volunteered to run senior aerobics because of him.

  I tried sushi for the first time because of him.

  Just the idea of Max has been pushing me to do better, without me actively acknowledging that’s what he was doing to me.

  What happens if I let him in all the way?

  What happens if I embrace all the little ways he steers me on a path to expand my horizon and look beyond my own little world?

  His SUV is in his driveway when we hit my street, but I don’t go straight to his house.

  Instead, I do something I’ve been dying to do since the last time I saw Henri.

  I draw a bath and drop in one of the bath bombs she brought me. Luca stars in all the commercials for Kangapoo, and they apparently send him product samples all the time.

  And after a citation, a hangover, a date with Max—oh my god, a date with Max, where we talked about real things and he flirted with me and my grandmother—and then Cooper turning into Cooper, I want some me time.

  But not five minutes after I crack my bathroom window for steam control and climb into the tub, someone’s knocking on my door.

  I roll my eyes, reach for my phone, and text my brother.

  I’m in the bath.

  He replies with a side eye emoji.

  Fine, I type back. Come on in and see for yourself.

  There’s a muffled click beyond my bathroom, and then I hear two voices.

  “You’re on your own if you walk back to her bedroom,” Grady says.

  “Chicken,” Cooper shoots back.

  “Whoa. Tillie Jean. Holy shit, your kitchen cabinets are awesome. When did you do that?”

  Grady’s still yelling from the front of my house. Good thing it’s small. “Six months ago,” I yell back. “Maybe you should come visit more often.”

  “I don’t visit single people. They might be naked.”

  “You can always call first.”

  “Then I know you’ll be naked. Shudder.”

  “Did you seriously just say shudder out loud?”

  “Trying to stay hip for when I’m a dad.”

  I laugh out loud, but the distinctive creak of my bedroom floor makes me shut up and rip the shower curtain mostly closed around my tub. “Are you seriously coming in here to make sure I’m alone?” I ask, and no, I’m not talking to Grady anymore.

  “Yes,” Cooper replies.

  “Get ready for an eyeful. Arlo, Sven, and Ricky are in here with me.”

  His face appears in the doorway, eyes mostly elevated, like he’s hoping his peripheral vision will pick up wherever anyone else might be hiding in my little bathroom. I can just see him through the crack between the curtain and the shower wall.

  “I’m not trying to be a dick,” he says gruffly. “But there are things—”

  “Did I say a single word when you hooked up with our night manager two winters ago?”

  “I didn’t know she was the night manager.”

  “But she did. And you should’ve.”

  “I wasn’t a dick to her. It ended…very nicely.”

  “Cooper, you might think it ended nicely, but that does not mean it wasn’t awkward as hell and not nice for everyone else.”

  “You flirting with Max is—”

  “If you say completely different, I fully support her climbing out of that tub and naked wrestling you into her dirty bathwater for a swirly,” Grady interrupts. I can’t see him, but he’s closer than he was before. He whistles softly. “Jesus, TJ. How long has your bedroom looked like this?”

  “Quit talking about her bedroom,” Cooper snaps.

  Grady ignores him. “If this Crusty Nut thing doesn’t work out, you could be an interior designer for the young and horny.”

  “You are not seriously getting turned on by Tillie Jean’s bedroom.”

  “Nah, man, I’m not young anymore. Horny, sure. But not young.”

  “Love you, Grady,” I call. “Favorite brother. You get the trophy.”

  “Hot damn. I never win trophies over Cooper. And to think—all it took was a few kind words and minding my own business.”

  “Would you two knock it off?” Cooper snorts, which is both amusing and a big warning sign.

  He doesn’t do mad well.

  Not a lot of practice.

  I peek out from behind the shower curtain, and uh-oh.

  That’s the same face he wore when he got sent home early from summer baseball camp for raiding the kitchen for a late-night party to celebrate one of the kids who got his first home run ever despite not usually connecting with the ball at all.

  His heart was in the right place, and he got punished for it.

  “You’re going to have to spell this out for me very clearly,” I tell him. “What’s your issue with me being friends with Max?”

  He grunts, which is also un-Cooper-like.

  He only grunts when he can’t fix something and he knows he’s being an idiot.

  At least, that’s how I see it.

  “You hear about the three dozen women Max has loved and left since he got here in November?” Grady says conversationally.

  I almost bolt out of the tub, except no. I haven’t.

  And that’s the point.

  I could wait until two in the morning to sneak over to Max’s house, climb in the window, and seduce the hell out of him, and I’d get away with it for one night.

  Maybe even a full week.

  But absolutely no more than that.

  This is Shipwreck, and someone will catch us.

  Probably.

  I also know Shipwreck.

  I could finagle this. I could make it work and keep it a secret.

  But Max seeing someone on his own?

  Nope. We’d all know.

  “He’s not fucking around with anyone,” Cooper mutters.

  And I believe him. We would’ve heard about it if he was.

  At least, all except those three weeks he was gone.

  And if he slept with someone while he was on the beach?

  It’s not like we were in any kind of committed relationship. That’s his right.

  Except I don’t think he did.

  He didn’t come back acting like a guy who spent three weeks hooking up with women. He came back acting like a guy who’d had a lot of time for self-reflection and made a big decision.

  “Huh.” I don’t have to see Grady to know he’s rubbing his chin like he’s pondering the magnitude of that statement, and also because he knows rubbing his chin like he’s pondering something will piss off Cooper. “Don’t you all fuck around basically every road trip and home series? Like you can’t play if your dick doesn’t get some action or something?”

  “It’s the off-season.”

  “All that free time. Playtime. Have women in from the city time with all that privacy you have up on the mountain… Or is it like, you have to be celibate in the off-season? Do you like, masturbate more to gear up for making it through sex-with-strangers season too?”

  I snicker, then clap a hand over my mouth and hide behind the shower curtain when Cooper shifts a glare at me.

  “No,” he snaps. “We don’t train our dicks for sex with groupies all season. Jesus. Why are we discussing this?”

  “Because you’re being an overprotective wanker?” I offer.

  “Wanker,” Grady says on a snort. “Nice one, TJ. Fist bump.”

  “Fist bump,” I call back.

  Cooper growls again. “You know what? Fine. Go fucking sleep with Max. But I swear to the baseball gods, Tillie Jean, if you fuck up his game by fucking with his head or promising him things you can’t deliver, you will be at every single fucking game sacrificing live chickens and making out with the damn meatball and doing whatever the fuck it takes to get his head back on. Got it?”

  I peek out from behind the curtain one more time. “You know I
wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt your team, right?”

  “Sure. Right. Whatever.”

  “Cooper. You’ve wanted to win a World Series with the Fireballs since before I was born. You get ten, maybe fifteen chances—”

  “Twenty,” he growls.

  “Fine. You get twenty chances at that, and you’re through like seven or eight of them already, and it’s only going to get harder. It’s easy to suck but it’s hard to win and now you’re the team to beat. I respect that. I’m not going to do anything to fuck up your chances. I want you to win. I want your dreams to come true. Could you maybe find a way to freaking trust me here? And maybe have some respect for your teammate at the same time?”

  He stares at me.

  I stare back.

  I’m not compromising on this one. If he doesn’t know I support his dreams, he needs to. And if he can’t respect his teammates’ abilities to leave their private lives off the field, he needs to do that too.

  Even with Max.

  Especially with Max.

  A guy who grew up figuring out how to get himself to baseball practice on his own before he was out of grade school—a guy who grew up to be a pitcher while getting himself to practice on his own—isn’t the kind of guy who’ll throw away winning or his career for a woman.

  “He’s a fucking professional, Cooper. He could have a foursome with me, Georgia, and Sloane, and you could quit talking to him entirely because you had your panties in a twist over the other adults in your life being consenting adults, he’d still strike out more batters than he lets on base next year, and you know it.”

  Cooper shoves away from the doorway, retreating into my bedroom with a muttered, “Fine.”

  “Not just fine,” I call after him. “Good. Trust is good, Cooper. And you know you can trust us.”

  I don’t have to see him to know he’s twitching at my use of us instead of me.

  Maybe I should be twitching at it myself.

  Except it feels right to be in this together with Max.

  Not that he has any clue we’re in anything together beyond a coffee date this morning that had more than a few smoldering looks from him making me feel completely naked.

  Okay.

  Yeah.

  He probably knows we’re in this together.

  If coffee meant he’s willing to risk pissing off Cooper to have a little off-season fling with me.