The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1)(40)

Rachel pulled back and glanced around the kitchen as if she’d never seen one before. Only then did she notice Thea. Her eyes widened. Her glossy lips parted. Thea half expected fangs to appear. But then she suddenly seemed to remember other people could see her.

She held open her arms. “Oh my gosh! Hi, Thea!”

She click-clacked over and hugged Thea with the accuracy of a boa constrictor. “I’m soooo glad you are here,” Rachel said, pulling back. “I’ve missed you!”

“You’ve missed me?”

“Well, I mean, you weren’t at the last game—”

Oh, slinging arrows already.

“—and you missed our last luncheon—”

“I wasn’t invited—”

“And with everything else, I just assumed you wouldn’t be here.”

Wow. There was sooo much to unpack in there. Thea couldn’t help herself. Impulsive Thea was in control of her mouth all of a sudden. “Why wouldn’t we be here today?”

Rachel’s smile turned sugary. “Oh, I mean, you know . . .”

Thea stood firm. “No, I don’t know what you mean.” Thea stared, her eyebrows raised, daring her to finish.

Rachel finally clasped her hands in front of her. “So, you and Gavin are back together?”

Ah, there it was. What Thea had been waiting for. “That’s not really any of your business, Rachel,” she said quietly.

Rachel’s eyes widened just enough to show she was shocked that anyone would dare stand up to her. Jake cleared his throat and sidestepped his wife. “Good to see you, Thea,” he said, loosely hugging her in the way people do when they feel sorry for someone. “You look adorable, as always.”

Rachel nearly broke a tooth. “You do always look so adorable,” she said, her eyes doing a slow, disdainful walk up and down Thea’s outfit. “But this is a new look for you, isn’t it? I guess comfort really does trump style some days, doesn’t it?”

“Absolutely. Just like class trumps beauty.”

Jake winced. “Where are Gavin and Del?”

Thea gestured toward the back door. “Out back frying a turkey.”

“That’s not good.” Jake took off.

Rachel clasped her hands in front of her body and pasted a smile on her face. Thea nearly laughed because it was a purposefully fake smile. The kind where you want someone to know it’s fake, not because you want them to feel better but because you want them to feel worse. For God’s sake, Rachel was pretending to pretend.

It had always been like this with Rachel. Always. Beneath her friendly facade was an ugly underbelly of competitive wifedom that revealed itself the very first time Thea met the other wives and girlfriends. She’d innocently asked a group of WAGs what they all did for a living, and it was like someone had scratched a needle across a record.

“This,” Rachel had said.

As if that explained it all.

Over time, it did.

For many of the wives and girlfriends, being a baseball wife was their profession. For some, that was simply because balancing the demands of their husbands’ careers with the demands of raising children was more than a full-time job.

But for others, this was their identity. As if they’d been groomed for it like the debutantes of old. They flaunted their relationships with their rich, handsome men as if it were the natural order of things that all the beautiful people were destined for each other.

And then there was Thea. The outsider who barely understood the rules of the game, who had married a baseball player because she got pregnant, who’d joined their exclusive club without having to put in any of the work that the rest of them did. She didn’t have to slug it out for years when he was a prospect or during the long, impoverished minor league years.

And Rachel hated her for it.

Thea used to pretend she didn’t care, but in reality, she did. Being an outsider was a lonely place to be.

But soon she’d be free of their animosity, and it was that thought that allowed her to focus on helping Nessa without straining to hear what was being said behind her back.

Finally, the food was ready. Nessa yelled out back for the boys to bring in the fried turkey, and Thea offered to help set everything out.

After Thea and Gavin fixed the girls’ plates and got them settled at the kids’ table, they joined the rest of the grown-ups in the dining room. Thea sat next to Nessa, because she desperately needed an ally. Unfortunately, she was right across from Rachel.

Twenty minutes into dinner, Del stood at the end of the long table. “Everyone shut up.”

Conversations quieted as everyone focused on Del, who held a beer in one hand and his wife’s fingers in the other.

“Nessa and I want to thank you all for being here today to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. Some of you we love to have. Some of you we just put up with.”

Everyone laughed, but Thea suspected there was a lot of truth in his words. Thea smiled at Rachel, who smiled back. Thea could’ve sworn blood dripped from one corner of Rachel’s mouth.

“So I could stand here and do a long speech about being thankful and all that shit, but I don’t feel like it,” Del said. “Because Nessa and I have something to announce. Something we’ve been keeping quiet for a couple of months now.”

Nessa jumped up, her arms spread wide. “I’m pregnant!”