The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(75)
My kids. My friends. And my bookstore.
That’s what I need to be grateful for today.
And the few weeks this year that Levi Wilson played the part of my boyfriend.
I’ll always have the memory, right? “Do you think he’ll be okay?”
“Ingrid, honey, even if I knew the man at all, there’s literally no good answer for that.”
She’s not wrong.
But if life’s taught me anything, it’s that time heals.
So I ignore his text.
It’s the kindest thing I can think to do for him.
No matter how much it bruises my soul, and no matter how badly it hurts behind the smiles I fake for my kids and friends all day long.
Levi and I don’t have a future, which is exactly what I want from him, so I need to let him go.
Twenty-Seven
Levi
I’m a shellshocked mess, but Thursday, I manage to go through most of the motions of pretending it’s an awesome Thanksgiving Day with my family despite the fact that Ingrid hasn’t texted me back. In the end, I cut the day short and plead a sinus headache brought on by the cold front moving through.
Yeah.
I plead a headache.
I can’t get Ingrid’s face out of my brain.
The pain. The tears. The crack in her voice.
I hurt her.
I hurt her, and I don’t know how to fix it, and while I should be playing poker with Mom and Tripp and Lila, instead, I’m lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, except for the times when I roll over and sniff my sheets and wonder how long Ingrid’s scent will linger with me before I breathe it all gone.
Then it’s somehow Friday.
Tripp’s wedding day.
I smile broadly through the ceremony, which is the biggest small wedding ceremony I’ve ever been to. Our immediate family, our extended family made up of my entire circle of close lifelong friends, the family they’ve brought into the mix with marriage and babies, most everyone who works for the Fireballs, from players who could make it to the office staff and all of their families, and a few of Lila’s closest friends from her time in New York—they’re all here.
And they’re all going about life as if nothing’s broken.
Like it’s sunshine and rainbows on a tropical beach, instead of cold and desolate and gray.
I’m falling in love with you.
When the fuck does love make you leave?
When all the formalities are done, and my smiling brother and his beaming bride take to the dance floor in the reception hall of Heartwood Manor, a renovated mansion from the early nineteen hundreds that sits on a couple thousand sprawling acres atop the highest hill in Copper Valley, I take to the bar and a quiet corner of the room, my back to the wall, sitting in an extra seat, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking kids playing on the brown grass outside to my right, a dance floor getting more crowded by the minute to my right, and tables of scattered people enjoying the end of dinner in front of me.
Doesn’t take long for Mom to find me. “Lovely day to be a grumpypants.”
“I’m not grumpy. I’m introspective and recovering from a sinus headache.”
“Grumpy,” Wyatt echoes.
The two of them sit, uninvited, on either side of me, while Davis lurks by himself at a nearby table too.
“Violet couldn’t make it?” Mom asks cheerfully.
I slide her a don’t start look. “Stan couldn’t make it either?”
Her lips twitch, and I realize I know that twitch.
It’s the twitch of gotcha.
Fuck.
I glare at Davis, who’s not watching, but his beard moves like he knows it and he, too, is having an attack of the lip twitch.
“You’re not dating Stan Sheldon,” I say to Mom.
“And you never dated Violet. Not for real, anyway.”
Fuck. I signed a non-disclosure agreement on that one. It was a good career move for both of us at the time—Violet needed someone to help with her image, and I was getting ready to go on my first stadium tour and needed the extra press. My family isn’t supposed to know.
It all feels as dumb and stupid now as being sentimental still about a toy from childhood.
I can’t think of anything good to say, so I settle for glaring at my mother a little more.
She laughs. “What? I had to make sure your brother heard something. And I’ve been enjoying dinner with your team’s manager isn’t so bad comparatively now, is it?”
My gaze whips around the room until I locate Jimmy Santiago, who’s not actually easy to find since I tend to listen to more Fireballs games on the radio than I watch.
But when I do find him, I wonder why I didn’t see it sooner, because he keeps shooting covert looks at my mother from his perch across the room.
And he’s the only one.
“Tripp’s gonna kill you,” I mutter.
“No, he’s not. We’re both grown-ups, and it certainly didn’t impact Jimmy’s performance in the play-offs, now did it?” She pats my knee. “Your performance, however…”
“I’m fine.” I’m not fine at all.
“You had a fight with Ingrid?”
“Said I’m fine.”
“Levi. You’re not fine. And on top of not being fine, you still have glitter in your hair, and you still won’t tell us why.”