Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(52)

“Dude. You eat bad sushi or something?” Cooper tilts his head at me. “Or is this about the thing where we don’t talk about who your dad is?”

Brooks shoves between us. “Your dad coming, Coop? Rather have your Pop and his parrot. That’d make for some good sound bites. We could mic him up during the game.”

Cooper peers around him at me. “Can’t be winners if you don’t face your demons. Makes for a better life too.”

“You got demons?” He grew up an hour outside the city, so we see all of his family regularly. Usually they come bearing food. Except his grandfather, who thinks he’s a pirate and comes with a cursing parrot. And if Cooper Rock has demons, I’ll eat my left cleat.

He nods seriously. “Can’t grow up a die-hard Fireballs fan without picking up a few demons. Plus, I saw my sister naked once.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Darren mutters as he strolls past us, pulling on his batting gloves.

Cooper beams. “Thanks, man. Good to know my hard work’s appreciated. What about you, Elliott? Your old man coming?”

Brooks nods. “Ma’s making him hit the Boston shops for baby stuff.”

We’d give him shit about the possibility of Mackenzie being pregnant, except we’ve also all seen the pictures of his two new baby nieces, and in my opinion, it’s completely unfair that Henri’s hair bends weird to make her look like she has devil horns, when Brooks’s younger niece, the one born to his former-SEAL brother and hyperactive, innuendo-spewing hacker sister-in-law, looks like an absolute angel in all the pictures I’ve seen.

If you’d met his sister-in-law, you’d expect demon-spawn too.

Mackenzie says the baby’s inhuman adorableness is balance in the universe. Brooks says everything will change when the kid learns to talk.

“My dad wants a Duck Tour,” Robinson announces.

Cooper nods. “Mine’s gonna mark another ballpark off his list. He hasn’t been there yet.”

“We don’t actually have to share rooms with our dads, do we?” Emilio asks.

“You do, Mr. Gonna-Get-Carpal-Tunnel-From-Whacking-Off-Too-Much-On-Road-Trips.”

Even I find a laugh before Lopez smacks the shit out of a line drive up the middle, and that’s all it takes for the focus to go back to the game.

That is, after all, why we’re here.

To play the hell out of baseball.

The rest of it doesn’t matter.

Not yet, anyway.





21





Henri



As I follow my new Lady Fireballs friends into Chester Green’s Sports Bar after the nail-biter game that we barely won, thanks to Cooper’s two-run home run in the eighth inning, I realize I have a girlfriend problem.

Aside from my long-distance writer friends, I’ve had very few girlfriends in my life that I didn’t meet through a fiancé. Which means I don’t have many girlfriends that I’ve kept past my failed weddings.

Okay, I have zero.

I have zero in-person girlfriends that I’ve kept after my failed weddings. I have Elsa, and I have a few cousins, and then I have a long list of girlfriends that I don’t see anymore because my exes always got them in the split. And here I am, with an all-new set of in-person girlfriends…courtesy of Luca.

Tillie Jean Rock, who’s not dating anyone on the team, but who lives close enough to the city that she joined the Lady Fireballs to annoy her brother, nudges me as we take our seats at a long table. “What’s with the frowny face?”

Well, Tillie Jean, since you asked, I’ve realized I probably won’t know you long. I shake my head. “I went to la-la-land. Thinking about a story problem.”

“Ooh, with Confucius?” Mackenzie asks.

“Yes.”

All four of my new friends stare at me expectantly. To the best of my knowledge, Marisol, Tanesha, and Tillie Jean haven’t read my books, but Mackenzie kept talking about Confucius, and also some of the early reviews on How to Train Your Vampire, while we were cleaning up after the whipped cream mascot fight, so I think they’ve basically picked up on the fact that I write slapstick humor in a paranormal package, and I’m not entirely right in the head, but that I’ve accepted myself for who I am.

“That’s all I can say.” I shrug, because it’s a writer’s first line of defense. “Anything else might be a spoiler. Or, I might totally change the storyline, and then you’d be expecting one thing and get another.”

We pause to order drinks, and when all of my friends order for their significant others—or, in Tillie Jean’s case, her brother—I realize I need to order something for Luca.

“Can I get a Shirley Temple and a tomato juice?” I ask the server.

Again, my new friends give me a weird look.

“Not mixed together,” I add quickly. “I want the Shirley Temple in one glass, and the tomato juice in another. It’s for my boyfriend.”

Tanesha’s baby makes a horrified sound, so she pulls him out of his sling and shoves a boob in his mouth while I get another round of weird looks.

“I’m allergic to alcohol,” I blurt.

“Oh, honey.” Tanesha’s brown eyes go soft and sympathetic. “Have you ever had a Riley Anna?”