by Pippa Grant
My hands shake while I shove the keys into the ignition, and I’m losing precious seconds.
Finally—finally—I get the key inserted and crank it.
Nothing happens.
I press the brake and crank it again.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Fuuuuuuuck.
I crank the wheel, because sometimes it’ll lock up in the wrong position and keep me from starting the car, but it goes smoothly this way and that, and I still can’t start my car.
Henri leans in the window. “Luca?”
“I’ll get fined if I’m late.” Technically true. Except today, late would be like, three in the afternoon, and it’s currently ten AM. “Stand back. Gotta go.”
“Do you want to, erm, put on clothes first?”
I look down at my bare legs and my boxer briefs, then squint harder at my junk.
It’s shrinking, isn’t it?
Nonna Eyed me. She didn’t even wait for the ziti to get done.
A cold flush makes goosebumps break out all over my chest.
Henri leans in closer, her crazy-ass curly hair getting all up in my face as she peers at the steering wheel. “And your car won’t start?”
I could lie. Say it does this all the time. That I have to talk sweetly to her, except I don’t sweet-talk my car. That’s ridiculous.
I could also pull up an app on my phone and have a ride here in five minutes.
Henri pulls back, pats my hand on the steering wheel, and smiles brightly at me. “I’ll go get you some clothes, and then I can give you a lift to the park. You could try an app-ride thing, but I think they have rules against nudity. Or that might depend on your driver. Back in a sec, and if you get your car running before then, no harm, no foul.”
She turns and jogs back to the house, calls something to Nonna, and I sit there and stare at the windows of my personal sanctuary.
I have officially lost all control of my life.
8
Henri
Luca doesn’t say much while I run him to Duggan Field—technically, he drives, because he says he knows the way—and I don’t press him to communicate, because look at us not talking!
This is great.
It’s like another example of all the reasons relationships aren’t something I need in my life. They’re awkward, where you think you know what the other person is thinking—usually, that they’re madly in love with me as much as I’m madly in love with them—but you really don’t.
Because surely Luca isn’t thinking I’m a pain in the ass, even though I probably would be if I were him, even though I feel like that’s what he’s thinking.
And if he is, he’s wrong.
I’m going to be the best fake girlfriend ever.
Good thing I have so much experience being a real girlfriend.
He pulls up to the special authorized personnel only entrance at the ballpark, and he shoots me a look for the first time in the twenty or so minutes since we left his house. “What are you doing today?”
“Writing.” At least, that’s what I hope I’m doing. It’s been difficult to get in the mood the last month.
His green eyes scan me, landing on my hair, which I probably should’ve covered with a hat or a bandana, but then, he tried to drive here naked, so he can’t talk.
“Where?” he asks.
“At your house.”
Wow. His entire body just twitched.
I rub my hands down my thighs, because I can’t sit still. “Or at a coffee shop. Because it has running water. Do you have a good local coffee shop? I like to support local places. Not that chain places aren’t local—local people work there, right? But there’s something magical about finding a local coffee shop where there’s an awesome staff that knows your name and they have air conditioning and they’ll play seventies disco music because they know your vampire family loves it.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and does the kind of deep breathing that my grandma tried to teach me after my third failed wedding.
I should probably shut up, but I can’t. It’s a thing. “Is this me, or is this because of your nonna?”
“Yes.”
“Can you explain the significance of the ziti to me?”
“No.”
“I can run to the store for the ingredients for—”
“No. And can you skip the part where you go back to my house before you find a coffee shop?”
“My computer’s at your house. But don’t worry. Grandparents love me. So do parents. I’m like, the parent whisperer. I still talk to all of my exes’ parents. And grandparents. And sometimes their cousins or aunts too. We trade Christmas cards. My second ex’s sister even asked me to be godmother to her baby. It was their sixth baby, and they were running out of options, but still. They asked, and I accepted. Want to see pictures?”
“No.”
“Right. You have a fake emergency meeting to get to. But you should look at the pictures anyway, because little details like this are what will make our fake relationship convincing. And by the way, I’m only okay with lying about that because I think it’s overbearing and underhanded of grandparents to use curses and threats of dying or disinheritance to make you marry someone you don’t love. I do believe in love. I just need to learn how to not fall in it.”
“You’re not staying at my house more than another day. As soon as Nonna’s gone, you’re gone too.”
I sigh. “Luca. Listen. I don’t want to be a burden, but I think you need me. Your Nonna looks intense, and if I leave, she’ll probably bring in a string of other women for you to date, and you don’t need that kind of distraction from your job. Not when you’re this close to the playoffs with a team that almost got disbanded last year. If you want me to go, I will, but…give me a chance, okay? I can be the buffer you need so you can concentrate on your game. You won’t even have to tell the lies. I’ll take care of it, and then I’ll pay the price of The Eye.”
He doesn’t answer, and instead, after a few seconds of staring at me, climbs out of my SUV, leaving me waving after him. “Bye, honey! Hit the ball good today!”
He shuts the door, takes three steps, stops, and turns and walks back to the car as I’m unbuckling to climb into the driver’s seat. I glance behind me, thinking he must’ve forgotten something, but instead, he taps on the window.
I hit the button to roll it down. “What’s up?”
“Thank you,” he says gruffly.
My heart melts in direct proportion to the soft smile I feel coming over my face.
He sighs once more, I remember The Plan, and I imagine a bucket of ice in my chest re-solidifying everything in there that needs to stay ice cold. I make myself take on a growly-bear frown too. “We all have to make sacrifices,” I say in as gravelly a voice as I can manage.
“Don’t talk to Nonna. She’s not a normal grandmother. This TikTok Nonna thing? It’s a trick. She’ll eat you alive.”
This time when he turns back around, he doesn’t stop until he’s inside the ballpark, and I can’t see through the door, so I don’t know if he stops then either.
But I know one thing.
I was definitely imagining him smiling at my stoicism.
I crank up my Trolls Soundtrack playlist, get back to his house with a bright smile, walk in the door, remember that I forgot to ask him if I can turn on his air conditioner or if he has a preferred plumber to call about fixing the faucet in the kitchen, and come face-to-face with his nonna right in the middle of the construction zone that is the living room, which smells like flaming cheese and sausage.
She has her legs spread wide in her rainbow leggings and her arms crossed over her honestly pretty fabulous rack. All she needs is a toolbelt, and she could be Builder Nonna.
Especially with the pile of carpet in the corner and the boards leaning against the wall. There’s not even furniture in here.
“How much is my grandson paying you to pretend to be his girlfriend?”
My eyebrows sho
ot up to the second floor and my hand flutters to my heart without conscious thought.
So this is the Nonna he warned me about. “He’s been breaking your heart for years, hasn’t he?”
She arches her own brow. “How long have you been dating?”
“Not long. I did just get out of a relationship.”
“Why are you here?”
“He was comforting me after that last relationship ended, and it stuck with me, so I came to thank him for his kindness. I would’ve been here sooner, but I didn’t want to trust that instant connection that happened after my—well, after my wedding didn’t happen, because I couldn’t trust myself. But I can’t stop thinking about him, and it turns out, I’ve been on his mind too.”
“Have you slept together?”
“There’s no right answer to that question, considering you’re his grandmother. Can I ask how you get your hair done? I’d love to do the unicorn rainbow thing, but with this mess…” I rattle my curls and smile harmlessly.
She doesn’t smile back. “Are you certain you’re in a relationship with my grandson?”
“Unless all those things he said last night were a lie…” Wow. I am earning this today. Dogzilla pokes a lazy head in from the kitchen, and I squat down and click my tongue at her. “Here, kitty kitty.”
She flops to her back and peers at me upside down. It’s Dogzilla-speak for if you want me, human, you can come to me, because I’m a lazy ass.
Possibly also for the demon can sense that you’re stalling.
Not that Luca’s Nonna is a demon.
But she’s also not as approachable in private as you’d think she’d be after watching her TikTok feed. Where’s the woman who used the green screen to make it look like she was bronco-riding a rhinoceros to that new rap song? And who read Goodnight Moon to a roomful of dressed-up mushrooms and substituted rhyming words for every item we say goodnight to?
I have a friend who lives for her weekly videos of setting the Sunday afternoon dinner table while lip-syncing death metal.
“Do you really give good Eye?” I ask Nonna.
She replies by glaring at me.
“Okay. So, that’s a yes.” I climb back to my feet. “Can I be super nosy and ask if you give The Eye because you want control, or if you give The Eye because you want your grandson to be happy?”
“If you’re in this for Luca’s money, you’re out of luck, sweetheart.”
Seriously not anything like her TikTok persona. Wow. Just wow. “Please. I don’t need his money. I make my own.”
“Twenty million in a year?”
“Anything over a million in a year is overkill for the average person. Besides, I get so much more than money out of my job. I get personal satisfaction, and that’s priceless.”
“Are you a phone sex operator?”
“No, I write paranormal romance novels.”
Her frown is getting frownier, but the frown isn’t making her face any wrinklier. She must have some kick-ass face cream. I’ll have to ask her about it once she’s convinced I’m harmless.
She taps her fingers on her biceps. “So you come from money and get to pretend your hobby is a job.”
Good gravy. She sounds like my father. If you can’t have a real job, you should get a husband like your sister and make something of your life. Oh, right…we’ve tried that, haven’t we? “I haven’t taken money from my family since my third book took off. I make my own way.”
She squints at me.
I smile brightly and pretend we’re not talking about how many weddings my father has paid for, though for the record, I’m on a payment plan to pay him back. “Do you have baby pictures of Luca? I love baby pictures.”
Her squint goes harder.
I’d match her intensity, except if I smile any harder through this, my cheeks will fall off and then I’ll not only be Henri of the Five Failed Engagements, I’ll be Henri Who Shows Her Gums All The Time. That won’t go so well for the next time I do a live video for my fan group. “Anyway, I need to get to work, because these books won’t write themselves! And I have readers waiting for the next installment of Confucius’s book. I’ll go get him and my laptop and get out of your hair for a few hours. And I do love your hair. It’s the best.”
I hold my smile until I get to the top of the stairs, and then it all blows out on a huge breath.
TikTok Nonna is a tough cookie.
And I don’t think she likes me.
That can’t be good. It’s also as unusual as vampires being real, because parents always adore me.
She’ll come around. She probably needs some space to recover from her ziti going up in smoke, though I swear I heard her cackling when I came back inside to get Luca’s clothes and my keys before I took him to the park.
Maybe later I’ll ask him for some tricks to get into her good graces, since he basically needs me to become his grandmother’s favorite person.
But right now, I need to escape. And so that’s exactly what I do.
For a while, anyway.
9
Luca
I can’t stop checking my junk.
Hell, I can’t even get off this couch in the lounge. I didn’t tell Nonna to go to hell like Alonzo did, but I don’t know that disrupting her Eye ceremony and lying to her about having a girlfriend is better.
If anything, it’s worse.
Which means I’m probably in danger of getting hit by a runaway floor waxer or buried under an avalanche of balls if I leave this spot.
“Are you sure he hasn’t moved at all?” a familiar voice whispers in the doorway.
I open my eyes and pull my hand out of my shorts and glance at the small crowd watching me.
There’s Cooper. Francisco. Brooks. Max Cole.
And Mackenzie.
Brooks’s fiancée.
“Mackenzie! I need you.” I bolt off the couch and hold out my hand.
Brooks leaps between us. “Don’t touch my fiancée with your junk-hand.”
“It’s shrinking. My grandma put The Eye on me, and it’s shrinking.”
“Your hand?”
“My junk!”
All of my teammates—and Mackenzie, who’s a pretty blonde with a superstition problem—look at my crotch.
Brooks looks back at my face first. “You can get your own girlfriend to help with that.”
“I did!”
“You got a girlfriend?” Francisco’s raised brows say what everyone else is thinking.
Luca Rossi doesn’t date.
And not the same way that Cooper Rock doesn’t date. Cooper dates. Cooper dates all the time.
We don’t call it dating, because dating implies some level of intent to see the same girl again.
I shake my head. “My girlfriend isn’t superstitious, so she can’t help with this. Mackenzie. What do I do to get The Eye off me?”
Max plops down in the broken recliner across the threadbare carpet. It doesn’t collapse under him, so he leans back and adds a tally mark on the wall.
Yeah. How many times we can flop in that thing before it breaks is a game too.
“We need to talk about you having a girlfriend,” Max says.
“What are we, old grannies? We need to talk about breaking curses.”
“Man, all our curse-breaking energy is going on the field.” Cooper starts to sit on the couch relatively close to me, eyes my hand, then my junk, and sits at the far end instead. “We don’t have any curse-breaking left for your junk.”
“We still have the dildo cover,” Francisco says.
All of us except Mackenzie make shut up noises at him, because we don’t talk about what we all did together during spring training to start the curse-breaking for the team.
“Dil—” she starts, but Brooks covers her mouth.
“Shh, baby. Shh. You didn’t hear a thing.”
I drop my head in my hands and fall back into my seat. “I can’t leave this room until I know I’m not going to get Alonzo-ed.”
&n
bsp; “Alonzo-ed?”
“What happened to my cousin Alonzo when he told Nonna off when she put The Eye on him. It—it was bad. Like, career-ending bad.”
“Is he a race car driver?” Cooper asks.
“Accountant.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. She ended his accounting career. And then he still got married. So I’m sitting here, where it’s safe, until I’m de-cursed.”
“You know Lila fell through the ceiling here in the clubhouse and almost squashed Tripp last fall, right?” Mackenzie offers.
I stare at her, because no, I didn’t know the Fireballs’ new owner fell through the ceiling last fall and almost killed her co-owner.
Brooks snort-laughs. “Aw, man, I forgot about that.”
But I’m going lightheaded. “Something could crash through the ceiling here?”
“No.” Mackenzie’s eyes go wide, and she shakes her head with enough force to rattle her brain out of her ears. “That’s already been done. Definitely not.”
“I’m not safe.”
Max found a baseball, and he’s tossing it in the air. “Back up. Back up. Why did your Nonna put The Eye on you? Is this so you get yourself a woman and settle down? Because you told us you have a girlfriend, so…I’m missing the problem.”
“Having a girlfriend and getting married are two very different things. I don’t want to marry my girlfriend.”
“So why are you dating her?”
“For the sex.” Jesus. Jesus on a tiramisu. I need to shut the fuck up. “And I can’t have sex if Nonna shrunk my junk because she doesn’t like my girlfriend.”
Yeah. That wasn’t shutting up.
“Wait, your nonna? TikTok Nonna?” Cooper bolts straight. “We gotta tell Lila and Tripp to do a grandparent week, where—”
I lunge for him and rub my junk-hand all over his face until I get his mouth covered. “Don’t ever say that again.”
“Junk-hand! Junk-hand!” Cooper leaps up and dashes for the sink, spitting as he goes.
Francisco’s snickering. “What’s wrong with your nonna? I thought you loved your nonna?”
“Not when she’s putting The fucking Eye on me!”
