by Pippa Grant
He takes another bite of my donut and makes a contemplative noise. Then he glances down, and all of his features soften into utter adoration for the curly-furred puppy that’s gotten the towel off my oven rack and is barking and cussing at it while alternately smiling happily with his crooked tongue.
Brooks has got to stop acting human, or I’m going to forget one of these days that he’s a baseball player whose habits and routines need to be fostered for peak performance.
I gesture to Coco Puff. “Do you take him to the ballpark?”
“He has a puppysitter.” I get a dubious eyeball, like that’s my fault.
So I give him the what’s your problem? eyeball back.
“Cooper’s cousin,” he clarifies. “Who also won’t sleep with me, because she’s Cooper’s cousin.”
So apparently funny is blue, because that’s both hilarious and infuriating—the part where he casually mentioned he tried to sleep with another woman, I mean—and now, with the two emotions put together, I’m seeing purple.
He snorts like he’s suppressing a laugh, and I stifle a growl while I dig into my utensil drawer, looking for something else that I can toss to his puppy.
I riffle through my collection of Fireballs-themed pasta servers, spatulas, wooden spoons, and jar openers until I find what I’m looking for.
It’s a silicone mold of the New York logo that one of my coworkers gave me as a joke a few years ago.
Who knew this would come in so handy?
I toss it on the ground. “Here, Coco Puff! Here’s a new toy for you!”
Brooks isn’t laughing anymore. When I risk a glance at him while the faint scent of bacon sneaks into the kitchen, he’s not scowling either. “You get bullied growing up?”
That sound you hear? That’s the brakes screeching on this conversation while my heart leaps from zero to sixty at the same time.
No one talks about my family, my childhood, and my growing up unless I ask them to.
I try to sidestep him, but we’re caught in a dance of which way are you going so I can go the other way? and it’s not working right, and I can’t get away from him. “There’s too much different about this morning than the last mornings in your apartment. It’s not going to work. We have to go back to the porn cave tomorrow, and I take zero responsibility for what happens today. Good or bad. Do you know how to use a hot mitt and get your own bacon out of the oven, or do you need me to go ask Mrs. Miller across the hall to come in and take care of the poor helpless baseball player?”
He goes left with me. I go right. He goes right.
And I still can’t freaking get past him.
He finally grips my elbow to stop us both. “You grew up there? At Periwinkles?”
“Don’t think being a big bad baseball player with that baseball butt and that—that—that smile is going to save you from me kicking your ass if you don’t shut your mouth right now.”
“You’ve met my sister. And my sister-in-law. You think I’m going to mock your family?”
My heart’s pounding so hard it’s cramping, and my defenses are dialed up to eleven. “I think you’re pissed at me for caring more about my team than about your understandable wish to score with a woman, and people get irrational when they’re in a dry spell.”
Plus, he also knows I stole Meaty.
He’s basically hitting me in all my weak spots.
I don’t like it.
“What if I’m not pissed at you anymore?” He studies me like he’s staring down a pitcher, and I don’t like that either.
“You came here to make me late for work, and you ate my donut, because you’re not pissed at me anymore?”
“There’s a difference between being a cock-blocking asshole for the joy of being a cock-blocking asshole, and being a rabid fan who wants what every other fan wants.”
“You think I’m reasonable now?”
“More like almost understandable. Reasonable is pushing it.” He releases his grip on my elbow to slap the wall, and all the bobbleheads in the next room nod in agreement as the walls shake.
Gah, that grin. He needs to put that grin away, because even while my pulse is hammering and I’m poised to fight him if he so much as hints that there’s anything wrong with my family, I want to bask in that grin like it’s the first rays of sunshine at the North Pole after a long, drawn-out winter.
Coco Puff jumps on his leg, and he bends to pick the cavapoo up in a single hand. “I think we can find common ground and help each other out.”
“Why?”
“Why? I’m offering you a truce, and you want to know why?”
“Yeah. Duh.”
He sighs while he stretches his neck first one way, then another, eyes on the ceiling. “Because it feels like the right thing to do.”
“Is this your new tactic to get into my pants?”
“Do you want it to be?”
“No.”
“But what if sleeping with the right woman is what takes my game from exceptional to greatest of all time? What if the team needs you to sleep with me?”
Yep. He’s the asshole. “Out. No bacon for you. You’re done.”
“I’m being serious, Mackenzie. What if you’re my one?”
As if that’s possible in any dimension. I’m the freak who makes my best friend go to the bathroom every time he’s up to bat. I’ve cock-blocked him directly twice, and probably indirectly several more times. Also, I say goodnight to my Andre Luzeman bobblehead every night, for luck.
There’s not a man on the planet who wants my kind of crazy, especially one who knows I’ll never sleep with him so long as he’s wearing my team’s uniform. “I have Tripp Wilson on speed dial, and if I call him and tell him you’re harassing me, he’ll fire you before he calls the cops on me for anything you think I may or may not have done with a mascot costume.”
He makes puppy dog eyes at me. Then lifts Coco Puff to double the puppy dog eye effect.
“Gah.” I slap my hands over my eyes. “Out. Go away. Get out. And go do your damn job and freaking win today.”
I spin to my oven, shut it off, snag the towel from the floor as a hot pad to pull out the bacon, and toss it in the trash.
Pan and all.
I’ll dig the pan out later—of course I’m not going to throw the whole thing away. I’m a freaking trash engineer, and I know better than anyone how important it is that we don’t make unnecessary waste.
Except the hot pan is melting the garbage bag, and if plastic melts all over my pan, I’ll never get it off. “Gah!” I shriek again.
I grab the whole thing with my bare hand, and pain sears up my palm.
Brooks leaps over, snags it from me and tosses it back in the trash, and drags me to the sink, where he thrusts my hand under cold water. Coco Puff squeals nearby, and for once, his collar is spot on. “Oh, shit!”
Tears prickle my eyes, because fuck, my skin’s already puffing up, and the cold water on my burnt skin smarts.
Brooks wraps a hand around my waist, leaning his body against mine while he holds me there, smelling like pine and grass clippings, running water over my booboo.
The pain recedes from my palm in direct proportion to me embracing this feeling of all of that baseball god surrounding me.
When I’m watching a game on TV, the guys are these fit athletes running the bases and swinging bats and throwing balls.
When I’m at Duggan Field in person, they’re a little bigger in stature, but still, they look kinda normal.
But when I’m here, basically wrapped up in Brooks Elliott, it’s one hundred percent obvious how big baseball players are. He has to be at least six-two, and he’s broad as a bat is long.
His thigh against my ass is solid muscle, and I know exactly what that is poking into my lower back. I can’t smell the bacon anymore, and I can’t even feel the water running over my hand and spilling up my wrist.
We stand there in silence, me attempting not to hyperventilate at how close he is—or, you know,
throw myself at him since it’s been a while since I’ve been this close to a man that I’m attracted to—and him firmly holding my hand under the running water.
We’re about to enter awkward territory when he finally speaks.
“New York is home. Being here—for me, it’s the same as asking you to give up the Fireballs and fall in love with a new team all over again. I’ll do my job, but being happy about it—it’s taking time.”
And there goes any lingering anger or distrust.
Poof. Just evaporates.
All because that makes so much sense, my heart hurts for him.
Could I survive having to root for another team?
Not without a lot of emotional trauma and pain. His being traded here is to him what Copper Valley losing the Fireballs would be to me.
And here I am, standing in the way of the one thing he wants to ease that pain.
I am such an asshole.
He twists my palm and pulls it out of the water, bending over to inspect the skin and giving me a whiff of whatever it is he uses in his hair to make it so perfect like that.
“You have any burn cream?”
I nod.
“You need help with it?”
I shake my head.
Coco Puff is whimpering and jumping on my leg. He’s so small, it’s like being attacked by a leaf in the wind.
A very profane leaf, but still a leaf.
“I gotta get to the field. There’s a thing.”
There probably is. The new management and owners have reinstated community outreach, and the guys are meeting VIPs every day before games. And by VIPs, I mean kids from the children’s hospital, veterans groups, breast cancer survivors, little baseball players from lower-income neighborhoods with pro dreams, and so on.
The only rich, famous, and powerful people getting access to the Fireballs right now are the ones who pay to watch the game from the stands, the ones coming to sing the national anthem or “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” or who know the guys personally and hang with them anyway after hours.
Brooks lifts Coco Puff back into his sling, kissing the puppy on the head and getting a lick on the nose in return. “Do you want me to call or text anybody?”
I shake my head again.
He’s not looking at me. He’s looking past my shoulder. “I—sorry, Mackenzie. Just…I’m sorry.”
He ducks his head and retreats from the kitchen.
And I finally find my voice. “It’s not your fault.”
It’s my fault.
My fault for, well, being crazy.
Something needs to change.
And that something is me.
17
Mackenzie
My hand is still aching at 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.