Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(59)

“I know. I’m pretending you weren’t. Call me back if you need anything.”

I hate her sister, and I don’t even know her sister. All I know is that every time she talks to her sister, she gets off the phone looking like a lost puppy dog who was abandoned by some railroad tracks and had to make friends with the grass fairies who always talked crap about the puppy dog behind its back.

She hangs up, and the closet door wrenches open. “You jacking off in here?” Nonna asks.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Good. Get out here. You’re up. Torres! Get the pink unicorn! My grandson and I are going to Gel together while in matching costumes!” She looks me up and down. “I took care of the problem. I’d apologize for it being a problem in the first place, except then I wouldn’t have you, and I will never apologize for you. At least, not when you’re doing what I tell you to.” She winks. “When’re you shooting your next shampoo commercial?”

“November.”

“Good. You have time. Torres! Nix that! Grab the hair dye instead. We got some work to do.”





23





Henri



By the time I’m off the phone with Elsa, who wanted to tell me about her latest cravings and the state of her cervix at this point in her pregnancy and Titus’s new words and about their new rescue dog and about a fundraiser she’s organizing for a women’s shelter between batches of homemade bread that she’s donating to a bake sale supporting a save-the-turtles initiative, I’m exhausted on her behalf.

How does one person do that many things?

But I’m not too exhausted to worry about Luca.

He called me.

He called me because he needed a friend, when he could’ve picked any one of his teammates.

I want to call him back and check on him, but I know—I know—he doesn’t want me to. We’ve had our moment, and that’s it, and now he wants me to leave him alone.

Or possibly my newfound don’t fall in love radar says that I need space.

Space?

No. Forget space.

I need brownies.

But the oven is still broken—I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to see my six different proposed plans for in here, especially with what he said about getting traded so often, because who wants to design a dream kitchen only to spend the next however many weeks and months waiting for word that it’s time to give it all up?

Gah.

And I thought losing my house to Barry was bad. At least I knew it was a starter house. My second starter house—don’t ask about what happened with Winston Randolph, please—but still a starter house.

I give up on trying to get any more work done, and I text Marisol.

Two hours later, we’re camped out in her adorable kitchen while brownies bake, her drinking a gin and tonic, me drinking Dr Pepper out of matching mugs that declare us both to be crazypants, talking about our favorite episodes of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Stacey & Lacey: Twins on a Mission.

She and Emilio live in a cozy four-bedroom house in a middle-class section of Copper Valley. They, too, could live somewhere more upscale, but Marisol tells me she put her foot down when Emilio suggested they look somewhere more expensive. “I told him I was here for the man, not the money, but…four years later, here we are, and he still hasn’t proposed, and I don’t know what else to do to convince the man that I need a ring. I mean, not a ring-ring, but a formal commitment.”

“Maybe you should propose to him?”

“And maybe I’m meant to live in sin and be excommunicated from my family until my parents forgive me in the name of seeing their illegitimate grandchildren.”

“There’s goodness in being the one who screws up. It means the bar’s lower for what counts as right.” I clap a hand over my mouth and eyeball the Dr Pepper that I drink when I want alcohol. “Sorry. I don’t mean you’re a screw-up.”

She laughs. “We’re all screwed up in our own ways. And you’re not wrong.”

Mackenzie strolls in through the back door right after the brownies come out of the oven.

Actually, strolls isn’t right.

More like hefts.

She’s grunting and sweating and pulling three massive trash bags behind her.

Marisol leaps to help her. “Oooh, is this Meaty, Phase Seven?”

“I have no idea what you’re—oof—talking about.” Mackenzie pauses and pants against the countertop. “Also, can we maybe toss these in your basement for, I don’t know, twenty years or so? Don’t look inside. Then you’re not a hair tie.”

“A hair tie?” I’m so confused.

Marisol snorts in utter glee. “She means an accessory. But if she calls it a hair tie, we don’t know we’re helping her commit crimes against the mascots. Ohmygod. Mackenzie! You didn’t.”

Mackenzie shoos her away from peeking inside the bags. “Don’t look!”

“Honey, I’ll do you one better than storing those in the basement. We’ll light us a bonfire tonight.”

“Toxic fumes!”

I manage to get a glimpse too, and I gasp. I don’t know if it’s horror or delight or somewhere in between, but I know that the Dr Pepper is giving me a caffeine buzz that’s distracting me from wondering what Luca’s doing and how he’s coping and if Nonna got rid of his father or if he’ll know his dad is in the stands at the game tonight.