by Pippa Grant
Sorry, Meaty. Ignore that last message. Also, you should probably get a new burner phone too. Or maybe we can learn Morse Code and talk from the roofs of our buildings. Eloise can’t hack that.
Shit. I just realized she probably can. Satellite imagery and all that.
Fuck me. If she didn’t have the idea before, she does now.
Can you please call me? I meant what I said about the crash course in all things Fireballs, and it really is vital that I get an outside perspective.
My dads huddle together, cackling as they read all the messages while we wait for our soup and salads and milk shakes at lunch. The café is a ray of sunshine on what’s turned into a gloomy spring day. All yellows and whites with fresh flowers on all of the cozy tables to battle the gray in my soul matching the gray clouds outside.
“And I thought you were a disaster today,” Papa says to Dad. “This poor man. He’s a train wreck.”
“I can see why he’s never been laid.”
“Dad.”
They give me matching you know we’re right looks.
I frown at both of them. “We’re cleansing the auras. Not being shameless gossips.”
“And the child becomes the parent,” Papa murmurs over his coffee as Dad passes me back my phone. “Also, I thought we were here because you needed an excuse for ice cream.”
“I’m serious. I think everything I’ve been doing to cock-block him is messing with the Fireballs winning. It’s a team thing, right? He might be hitting the ball, but they’re not winning yet, and it’s probably because he’s passing on the crankiness to someone on the field, or it’s keeping him from bonding properly. I need—I need the guilt to go away.”
Dad squeezes my hand. “Will your guilt going away make him do better, or will it help you do better?”
“I can’t put out good vibes for the team if I’m miserable and guilty.” And don’t ask about how conflicted I am about that kiss this morning.
That kiss is exactly the sort of thing that should be good luck, because oh my god that kiss, but I’m terrified it’s going to send his not-great start to the season further into the hole.
“You’re not the only reason the Fireballs are losing.” Papa points to the phone. “He basically says it himself. He’s self-sabotaging on some level because he misses his old team, who didn’t want him anymore.”
“So he’s getting a double whammy with me laying the guilt on him, plus his own insecurities. Awesome, Mackenzie. Just awesome.”
“Stop.” Dad steals the sugar packets I’m arranging in the little holder beside the carnations. “You do plenty for that team. You helped one of their awful mascot contestants get to the top of the voting so far, and you ate cotton candy until you almost puked because it was cotton candy night.”
“We lost anyway.”
“But you’re doing what you need to do. That’s more than anyone else in this city’s doing.”
“Technically, the whole team is trying to win.”
“Would you stop downplaying your role in all of this? Please? Just once?”
Papa smiles at both of us. “Billy, she’s fishing for compliments.”
“I’m aware, and I’m not going to give her what she wants until she compliments herself. Self-esteem and self-worth come from within. She has to forgive herself before it’ll mean a damn thing that we forgive her.”
I lean back as our server delivers the milk shakes. My dads both pounce on theirs as soon as she’s gone, but I sit and stare at mine.
I don’t deserve a milk shake.
I’ve been messing things up for my team when I really need to stay out of their way. “This is why I shouldn’t talk to the players.”
Dad scowls at me. “Those players are damn lucky to have you around to brighten their lives.”
“Not all of them.”
“Repeat after me, baby girl. Those players are damn lucky to have me around to brighten their lives.”
“Are they? Are they really?”
Dad heaves a sigh and looks at Papa. “She’s being difficult. Fix her.”
“I shouldn’t have gone to spring training. Then I wouldn’t be interfering with the Fireballs.”
“Or maybe you’re learning where you fit, same as he is.” Papa taps my phone. “This is new. Change takes work. You can’t get it all right the first time, but that doesn’t mean you quit. It means you adjust, and you keep going.”
“But what if I never find what works?”
“Baby girl, they’re coming off the worst three seasons in the history of the world. No matter what you do, if you do it with your heart, you’re going to help. It’s your intentions that count.”
“My intentions involve perpetually angering a player who’s supposed to be the last key to lifting us out of the worst losing streak in professional sports ever.”
“Did he have a dog BCV?”
“BCV?”
“Before Copper Valley. Keep up, little bit. Did he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So maybe the dog’s the problem.”
I gasp.
Dad gasps.
And then Papa gasps too.
My brows start to crinkle when I realize a shadow’s fallen on our table, and no sooner have I processed the subtle scent of grass and pine before a large frame drops into the dainty open chair next to me.
Brooks points at the burner phone on the table, flashing with a new message notification from “Spike the Echidna,” and yes, it’s in quotes in the contacts. “You’re not answering my messages.”
This is where I should find my tongue, but my dads and I sit there gaping at him.
He shouldn’t be here.
He should be at practice.
And he really shouldn’t be taking the chance that he’ll look at my dads wrong on a game day. Or in the middle of the season. Because if he does, I don’t care who he is, I will curse him with yesterday’s moldy meatloaf and top it with a hex on his sinks.
And clearly, if hexing his sinks and giving him a few plumbing problems is the best I can come up with, especially given the situation he’s already living in, it’s probably a good thing that I have a day job.
Coco Puff leaps at my leg while Brooks pulls a notebook from the doggy diaper bag he’s carrying. “You need to ash-tray the ascot-may.”
“You smoke?” Papa asks.
Dad tsks. “Ascots are so last century.”
“Did you just speak pig Latin?” I whisper.
“Yes.” He scrubs a hand over his face and sighs. “And I promise to not do it again. Did you? Did you…get rid of…the thing?”
“You should learn French, honey-pie,” Dad says in his Queen Bijou voice. “Goes over much better with the ladies.”
I give him a look.
He plays innocent with his eyebrows, but I know what’s going on.
He’s testing my current obsession.
“Do any of you know French?” Brooks asks.
“Ooh la la,” Dad says as Papa snorts out a guttural “Ohn ho ho.”
He stares at them a moment, then turns the full force of his gaze on me. “Your dads can never meet my sister-in-law. Where the fuck are you hiding the package? I’ll take care of it.”
I should tell him the mascot issue isn’t a big deal. That I already cleared the air through a mediator, and he has nothing to worry about. “Why would you do that for me?”
You know that moment in a movie, when the sassy, spunky, awesome heroine looks across a diner at the man who’s been a thorn in her side forever, sees him helping a little old lady into her chair, and realizes she’s misjudged him, and he’s basically everything she’s ever wanted?
I’m getting the oddest feeling that’s what Brooks is feeling today, except I haven’t helped any little old ladies into their chairs, or saved any babies from a rabid pack of otters in the park, or even introduced him to the super secret magic trick to hitting a ball out of the park even when he’s not in the mood, because I don’t actually know
that secret.
But he’s looking at me like of course I help people that I like, and I don’t know what to do with the idea that he might not hate me at all for jock-blocking him in the name of the team.
He taps a pen on the notebook. “Fine. We’ll come back to the package when you’re ready. For now, we have thirty minutes. Tell me everything you know about every prank ever pulled in the dugout, starting with last season and working backwards.”
“He’s a few feathers short of a boa, isn’t he?” Dad says softly.
Brooks gives my dads the apparently, duh look, then turns back to me. “Or we can start simple. Worst call the umps made last year? How do the fans feel about the whole coaching staff getting sacked last year? Who’s got the best dance moves on the team?”
“Oh, honey, Francisco Lopez. No question. Moves like a disco queen.”
Brooks looks at me expectantly, like he needs me to confirm Dad’s opinion.
“Max Cole has the voice of a lounge singer,” Papa offers. “You know the kind. The ones who get a rise out of you without even trying?”
Brooks is still watching me for confirmation.
I stare at him, because what the hell is going on?
He shrugs, scribbles the two names in his notebook, and notates moves for Lopez and sings for Cole, then turns to my dads. “What else?”
Dad flaps a hand over the notebook. “What is this?”
“Finals week cramming. I need to know my team. I need history. Connection. Blackmail material. All that stuff you’d know about family.”
I’m still staring. If I blink, I’m going to open my eyes back up and find that I’m swooning. “You want to be a Fireball.”
He shifts his seat to face me again. “I am a Fireball.”
That’s a morning shot of joe straight to my clit. There is nothing sexier that a man could ever say to me. Ever.
Which begs the question—was I terrified to talk to baseball players because I was afraid to make mortals out of my gods, or was I terrified to talk to baseball players because I couldn’t handle it if they turned into assholes about my dads and broke the one thing that always made me feel like other kids?
Dad fans himself. Papa grabs my milk shake and puts it in front of Brooks. “Nutella bacon. You need to drink this to absolve Mackenzie of her sins.”
My skin flushes. All of my skin. And while I could squirm away the aching in my clit, I can’t hide a whole-body blush.
Perceptive hazel eyes flash back to me, and he starts grinning. “Nutella bacon?” he repeats.
“Don’t get a big head, sweet cheeks. She always orders that.”
Oh, that smile. It’s getting bigger, and I want to kiss that corner of his mouth that never gets as high as the other. “So you liked breakfast?”
I force myself to sit on my hands, because if I don’t, I’m going to reach for his dog, and then I’m going to reach for him, and of everything I need to do for the Fireballs, not sleeping with Brooks Elliott is at the top of the list.
Having a crush? I’ll live.
Destroying the team by sleeping with him? Absolutely not. That won’t be on me.
I clear my throat. “Cooper grew up in this little town called Shipwreck, and they have the hugest rivalry with this other town down the road called Sarcasm. If you want to get his goat—I mean, figuratively speaking—you should wear a shirt from the Sarcasm Unicorn Festival the next time you go out with him.”
His face twists like he’s eating a vomit-flavored jelly bean. “Always unicorns.”
“You don’t like unicorns? But you have a unicorn chandelier in your bedroom.”
“It’s a sign that I don’t hate you that I’m not telling you about my sister and her husband and their unicorn fetish right now. Sarcasm unicorns. Got it. What else?”
“Lopez stole Stafford’s lucky gummy bears before a game last year, and Stafford retaliated by filling Lopez’s locker with gummy worms,” Papa offers. “Apparently Stafford’s afraid of worms.”
Dad leans into the table. “Can you tell me about the unicorn fetish?”
“Dad.”
“I’m not doing my job as your father if I don’t make him uncomfortable, Mackenzie.”
“We’re helping a professional baseball player find his game. That’s it.”
Brooks slides another glance at me, and gah.
Not the smolder.
Not the smolder.
I tap his notebook. “Robinson Simmons has a niece who was born with Down syndrome last year. He doesn’t post her picture on his social media, but he’s trying to start a foundation for kids with special needs.”
“Trying?”
“Hello, rookie year. His contract’s tiny, and he’s twenty-two years old. He needs help.”
“How do you know all this?”
“You can’t just follow the guys once they get to the show. You have to track them in the minors too. Not that I’m a stalker. Stalking would mean knowing where all their houses are and driving by inappropriately while leaving them love notes.”
Dad throws his hands in the air. “One time. One time, a fan expresses his love for Aretha, and he never lives it down again.”
I crinkle my brows at him while Papa chokes on his milk shake.
“You stalked Aretha?”
He looks at me. Then at Papa. “No,” he lies.
He did. I’m so getting this story out of Papa next time we’re alone.
In the meantime, I have more gossip for Brooks. “Emilio Torres is looking at rings for his girlfriend.”
“Pretty sure anyone who’s seen him attached to his phone knows that.”
“She wants a dragonfly in amber instead of a diamond. And she’s worried he doesn’t know it, and she’d basically turn him down if he doesn’t figure it out, because she’s dropped seven thousand hints.”
“This is me not asking if you’re the crazy kind of stalker,” Brooks mutters while he scribbles the note, but there’s a smile playing over his features.
“And this is me not texting any of your teammates to suggest they fill your apartment with packing peanuts.”
“You’ve seen my apartment. That would be an improvement.”
His apartment.
His apartment.
Duh. Of course.
A man can’t play good ball if he’s not happy at home. And while my superstitions tend more toward the Sarah has to go to the bathroom every time Cooper Rock comes to home plate kind, I won’t dismiss chakras and feng shui and the benefits of a little aromatherapy.
Forget the milk shake.
I know what I need to do to cleanse my aura and help the Fireballs.
22
Brooks
I forgot what it feels like to be a team player.
My batting average still isn’t where I’d like it to be—probably need to see a psychic or ask Eloise for a recommendation to get rid of the residual memories of the woman I made out with at spring training—but we pulled off the win last night against Arizona.
I didn’t act on anything Mackenzie and her dads told me about the team, but I’m watching closer, learning my teammates, and getting back in the groove of reminding the younger players when to panic and when to let the bad stuff flow off your back.
Down by two in the third? We still have six innings to score.
Missed an easy hopper up the middle? Set us up for a double play, didn’t it?
Watched a video of Meaty touring Cooper Rock’s hometown, knowing it was Mackenzie under that costume hugging random strange men on the street?
Probably a good thing Stafford knows how to talk a guy off a ledge too.
What’s with you and the meatball fascination? he wanted to know.
I don’t like that it’s winning was my answer.
He’s not an idiot, and he didn’t believe me.
But watching the mascots rally the crowd before the bottom of the eighth inspired me, and so Tuesday morning, I decide to continue a tradition that clearly influenced us winni
ng last night.
With a little help.
“I can’t decide if you’re an idiot or a genius,” Luca says to me as we step off the elevator.
“Definitely genius,” Stafford pipes up.
“Idiot,” Robinson chimes in.
Like Luca, his voice is muffled.
And I’m grinning like an idiot. “Ready?” I ask Stafford.
He nods and knocks at apartment 1302, then steps back, the camera we borrowed from the Fireballs’ AV department aimed at all three of us. It’s a slick set-up—basically a phone hooked to a stabilizer that he can hold in one hand.
The door swings open, and Mackenzie shrieks and slams it shut again.
Robinson—or rather, Glow the Firefly—turns to face me. “That’s not good luck.”
I shrug my echidna shoulders.
Cooper—in the duck costume—bangs a padded fist on the door. “Don’t write off anything, rookie.”
The door opens again, and there’s Mackenzie in a knee-length sundress and strappy heels. Her hair’s mussed like she’s been running her fingers through it, and her pink lips are parted as she breathes rapidly. Pretty sure she slapped on two more Fiery Forever buttons, because she only had one stuck to her dress the first time the door opened. “Gentlemen. Or should I say, mascots. What brings you here this morning?”
“They’re sad that you don’t like any of them.” Stafford’s doing our talking since mascots aren’t supposed to talk, and he’s the only one of us not in a costume.
Which is a rule Mackenzie should’ve known the night we met, but I can make an exception for her. She had good intentions, even if I’m still pissed at the universe for that particular curse.
Not her.
Just the universe.
It’s complicated.
She purses those lips as she looks between the three of us in costume, and that tiny action combined with her still rapidly rising and falling chest makes my cock ache.