The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(64)

The entire Lightly family looks at my crotch.

“Oh my God, Dad, stop talking,” Bridget mutters. She’s in her own uniform shirt, with jean shorts, her bright sneakers, and a rainbow tie-dye ball cap with her ponytail falling out behind it. She gives me one last glare before turning her entire attention to her team and clapping her hands. “C’mon, team. Time to go. We have home field advantage, which means we’re out in the field first. Dad. You’re pitching. Willie Wayne. First base. Jane. Shortstop. The rest of you . . . gah. Okay. Carter, take second base. Mr. Lightly, right field. Mrs. Lightly, left field. Mrs. Grandma Lightly, center field.”

“Excuse you, young lady,” Estelle says with a sniff. “Exactly who do you think you are?”

“Team manager. I have mad coaching skills.”

“She does,” Jane agrees. “We let her pretend to be a grown-up and boss us around on snowshoe baseball nights. She’s a strategy goddess.”

“Thank you, Jane,” my kid says with a confidence that should be terrifying but always manages to reassure me that she’ll be fine. The world, maybe not, but my kid, yes. She nods to the Lightly women. “Tavi, how’s your arm?”

Tavi lifts her gloved hand and flexes. “I can be a beast, Bridget!”

My daughter, who would’ve gone speechless two weeks ago in the presence of one of her social media idols, questionable as I find that, sighs. “Um, you can lose the glove. We play without them. And how about your throwing arm?”

“She threw Carter’s amp across the theater this morning,” Phoebe says dryly.

“I did not. It slipped.”

“While you had it over your head and were aiming it at his bed.”

Bridget turns a nose-crinkling frown on Carter. “So is your bed, like, on the stage in the theater? Don’t you worry about people spying on you from the light booth? Or like, about Tickled Pink Floyd plopping down in a chair and watching you sleep?”

Tavi rises, almost trips in her snowshoes, and steadies herself with her arms spread wide. “He’s a vampire. He doesn’t sleep.”

“And the ghost of Tickled Pink Floyd isn’t real,” Phoebe adds.

Bridget’s brows go up. “Okay. You’re catching, by the way. Go squat behind home. Dylan? Can Phoebe borrow your catcher’s mask?”

“Sure thing, short stuff.”

“Call me that again, and you’re benched.”

“Bridget.” While I cringe at my daughter’s power trip, Dylan grins the grin that I’ve been told he used to full advantage back in his younger years.

“I’m already benched, Coach,” he says.

“Only until one of the newbies inhales too much sawdust.”

Tavi smiles at Dylan. “Is there a trick?”

“Don’t fall for it, man,” Willie Wayne whispers to him. “She smiles like that at all of us. I’m telling you, it’s a trap.”

Dylan turns his own grin on Tavi. “Trick’s to not fall down.”

“Y’all officially meet Dylan yet?” I ask the Lightlys. “He’s a plumber.”

Tavi jerks her sunglasses down and stares at him with undisguised lust. “You’re a plumber?”

“Oh my God, my savior.” Phoebe throws herself at him, trips in her snowshoes, and ends up face-planting in his crotch.

I growl and reach for her, but her arms are flailing as she tries to straighten herself, and my hat and sunglasses get knocked loose before I, too, fall into Dylan’s crotch.

“Dammit.”

“Whose idea was it to wear these ridiculous—oof.” Phoebe winces as Tavi, too, lands on top of us.

Carter doubles over laughing.

Margot attempts to assist us and trips over Tavi’s dog, who snarls and leaps back, while Michael tries to help Margot and ends up on top of her instead.

“For the love of Kate Spade, Michael, what are we doing here?” she shrieks.

“We’re becoming better people, Margot.”

“If I wanted to be a better person, I’d have my martinis neat instead of dirty, and I’d actually take the advice that my tarot decks give me! Estelle, I swear, I—” She cuts herself off as she spits sawdust.

“Don’t talk or inhale,” I tell Phoebe and Tavi.

“How are we supposed to—oh. Ew. Bleh. Bleh bleh bleeeeecchhhh!” Tavi tries to wipe her tongue on her uniform sleeve.

Her dog is going nuts, barking up a storm.

“Our asses are toast.” Bridget heaves a sigh loud enough to drown out Carter’s wheezing laughter.

“Don’t say ass,” I remind my kid.

“I don’t know which of you to help first,” Dylan says.

I grab Phoebe’s arm in one hand, Tavi’s in the other hand, and I haul them both up while Dylan stands there with his arms in the air.

“Nice,” I tell him. “Appreciate the help.”

“Not real keen on getting featured in the Tickled Pink Papers with my hands holding any one of you to my crotch, man.”

Dammit.

My sunglasses.

And hat.

They fell off and are now covered in sawdust, and there’s a row of photographers and locals aiming cameras and phones our way.

“The family that plays together eats sawdust together,” Estelle says from her spot down the way. Her butler came running—in regular shoes—to make sure she didn’t fall too. “But you’re all still a long way from having souls worthy of heaven. Let’s get this ball on the road.”