Real Fake Love

by Pippa Grant

  “Henri, this is what friends do for each other. C’mon. Breakfast and Benadryl. Then we can discuss if you’re putting on clothes.”

  She peers at me for a long moment, and I swear I can hear the questions in her head. Are we friends? Are we something more? Am I still leaving when the season is over? Are you going to hurt me?

  This is what her exes have done to her.

  They’ve taken Happy Henri and turned her into a mass of insecurities.

  I don’t like it.

  And no, I didn’t know her then, but you can’t tell me that the woman who showed up on my doorstep asking me to help her learn to not fall in love after five failed engagements hadn’t hit a breaking point.

  I also know that it’s my fault she thinks I wouldn’t want to do this for her. Because I’ve screwed up too.

  I’ll do better though. I will.

  “Thank you,” she finally says softly.

  I nod.

  Starting right now, this very minute, I will be everything she doesn’t even know she needs.

  32

  Henri

  Luca and I spend the last weeks of the regular season texting and talking on the phone while he’s on the road for the team’s last away series, and having a lot of sex and talking about everything except what’s going on between us when he’s home and not at Duggan Field.

  Denial becomes my second-favorite hobby, but since the tension involved with denial is so much more comfortable than the tension of not trying to touch each other, I’m okay with this.

  I’m embracing denial, which might also explain why I’ve had five failed engagements.

  Utter refusal to acknowledge everything that was wrong right in front of my face.

  Also, I’m worried that Luca’s put renovating the house at the top of his list when he’s not playing baseball or talking me out of my pants, checking off projects like fixing the broken stair—which had someone’s rock collection beneath it, and yes, I’m serious, and also, now I want to write a story about a fairy who fell in love with a pet dog and couldn’t tell him since they didn’t speak the same language, so instead, she left him rocks in their special spot.

  But back to Luca.

  He’s also having flooring installed in the living room and getting estimates on having an air conditioner re-installed before next summer and he asked if I had any ideas for what to do with the kitchen, like he somehow knew I would’ve thought about it, and now he’s having a builder draw up a formal plan based on my favorite idea.

  It’s like he’s accepted that the season is coming to an end, and if the Fireballs don’t renew his contract, then he’ll be ready.

  I don’t like it. I can justify staying in Copper Valley when the season is over, but I couldn’t justify following him if he’s traded to a new team, and he told me himself that it’s fate that as soon as he finishes a house, he gets traded.

  I don’t want him to get traded to a new team. He seems so happy playing for the Fireballs.

  And it’s not even that they’ve won so much, though I’m sure his happiness is just as tied to the winning as the winning is tied to his happiness.

  It’s more that he fits with this team, which is even more apparent when he takes me to Mackenzie and Brooks’s wedding on the day between the last regular season game and the first game of the playoffs.

  Yeah.

  Luca and I go to a wedding together.

  And as we’re taking our seats before the ceremony starts, we look at each other, and we both start laughing.

  And laughing.

  And laughing.

  We are legitimately the last two people anyone should want at their weddings, but there’s something comforting in knowing that this wedding will go off without a hitch—though, naturally, it comes with plenty of tears, as every good wedding does—and that Mackenzie and Brooks are exactly the right kind of crazy for each other.

  We both get another fit of the giggles as the groom kisses the bride.

  It’s like we’re both thinking so this is what the end of the wedding looks like.

  As though neither of us have ever attended one before.

  We’re ridiculous.

  And it fades fast, because everyone’s a bundle of nerves at the small private reception inside the locker room at Duggan Field after the wedding.

  They’re still happy. You can feel the joy radiating throughout the room, and the brotherhood amongst the players as they tease each other but also grab one another a beer or an extra piece of wedding cake, or come to each other’s defenses when the mascot contenders get too forward.

  Yes.

  All of the mascots are at the wedding.

  It’s Mackenzie’s wedding, at Duggan Field.

  Of course the mascots are here.

  And what’s even funnier, which I didn’t realize until the reception starts, is that all of the players are in matching mascot socks under their formalwear.

  “Is that bad luck?” I whisper to Luca, because I can see Glow and Meaty and Firequacker and Spike on his socks, but not Fiery.

  Luca’s grinning as he shakes his head. “To walk all over the horrible mascot options at Mackenzie’s wedding? Nope.”

  The team’s owners stop short of telling us which one will be the next mascot, and I swear that unites the guys on the team even more.

  “It means we still have a chance to get Fiery back, no matter what,” Robinson tells me.

  “Fiery forever,” Francisco agrees.

  Luca’s at my side the entire time. He tests the punch before he lets me have any, which makes Mackenzie roll her eyes, because of course her punch won’t be spiked.

  She also sends Glow over to give him what-for, which is funny, because Luca’s seriously creeped out by the firefly.

  “Do we need to talk about this?” I ask him.

  “No, we need management to pick the damn meatball so Mackenzie can move on to the next phase of her plan and we can get Fiery back,” he replies in a mutter that I swear has the Fireballs’ owners turning to look at him from all the way across the room.

  “Did they hear you?” I whisper.

  “No way. And even if they did, they have to know something’s coming. Mackenzie hasn’t given them a single week of peace all season without something going wrong with their mascot contest.”

  “Mm.”

  He eyes me.

  I smile brightly.

  “You know something.”

  “Merely a fraction. I am a Lady Fireball. We talk. But we all have secrets too, and I’m almost certain Mackenzie’s keeping the most from all of us.”

  He cracks up, and then we spend the rest of the reception dancing and laughing and talking, and in a weird way, I’m glad that I’ve had five failed engagements.

  They’ve made me appreciate this wedding, and my date to it, all the more.

  I’m already planning to stay in Copper Valley when the season ends. Maybe I’ll move into an apartment over near the aquarium, and Luca and I can stay friends.

  It would be horrible to not be friends when we’ve come this far.

  And maybe we can be friends who have sex a few nights a week.

  Or…every night.

  That’s normal, right?

  The reception ends early, because the team’s first game is tomorrow evening at Duggan Field, and we head home to change Dogzilla into Fireballs pajamas and tumble into bed like horny teenagers.

  But the Fireballs lose the first game in their five-game division championship round, and the next week is a whirl of tension, baseball, and nerves.

  “Explain it to me one more time?” I ask Mackenzie as we camp out at her apartment with Tillie Jean and Marisol and Mackenzie’s dads and Beck Ryder and his wife, watching the fourth game. Baltimore is up, two games to one, and I know if they win tonight, the Fireballs are done.

  But if the Fireballs tie the series, we’re heading to…somewhere?

  “If we win tonight and tomorrow and clinch the division, we play whoever wins the se
ries between Seattle and Boston. That would be a seven-game league championship series. And if we win that…” She pauses and fans her shiny eyeballs. “Then we’d go to the World Series for the first time in Fireballs history.”

  Now I’m getting wet in the eyeballs too. “That would be so amazing.”

  “I wasn’t even alive the last time they made it this far. So I won’t complain about anything this post-season. It’s one day at a time. One moment at a time. Just soaking it all in. And I really, really, really wish I was in Baltimore right now.”

  Same.

  Same.

  It’s a nail-biter, but the Fireballs eke out the win.

  Luca gets home in the middle of the night. He has a day off before the final game of the series, and he’s keyed up, so we head out to the mountains and spend the day hiking. I tell him stories about some things I think my characters have probably done after their happily ever afters, and we end up falling into a creek and laughing until we’re both crying.

  And then kissing.

  And making love on the side of a mountain.

  Yes.

  Making love.

  This crazy, talented, smart, wounded, funny man has completely captured my heart.

  And it’s not like the last times I’ve fallen in love, because I didn’t want this.

  He wasn’t supposed to be attractive.

  I had to dig to find it, because he stood for everything I could’ve never believed in, or so I thought. I had to put the worst parts of me on display and not hide my feelings, not hold back saying what I wanted to say for fear that it would be the thing that would make him leave me.

  And yet, he’s still here.

  Not talking about how our agreement could formally be over tomorrow night, or, best case, in another three weeks. Not talking about Nonna and her Eye.

  But instead, talking about a new restaurant we should try when the season’s over.

  I tell myself it’s because we’ve become friends. I can’t go to that place where I start to believe in the dreams of the fluffy white dress and the dashing man in a tux and the mascots dancing at our reception, because that’s not our future.

  And for the first time in my life, I’m okay with a future without that milestone.

  I was chasing the trappings, when what I need is the bone-deep love.

  The next night, we’re all gathered together in the Fireballs’ Family and VIP suite.

  The family, I mean.

  Clearly, Luca’s on the field with the team.

  Max is warming up on the mound. Luca’s playing catch with a kid in the outfield. The mascots are reveling in having another home game to audition for their role as final official mascot for the Fireballs, and they’re in party clothes today, which looks totally weird on the meatball, but Glow—dude.

  Luca’s right.

  It’s not normal to see a large ball of yellow flame sticking out from behind him in normal times, but today, when he’s dressed like he’s going to an eighties party?

  No. Just no.

  The only person not with us is Mackenzie, because she insisted on sitting in her normal season ticket seats on the third base line where that bird attacked me and my sequin hat.

  Marisol’s pacing the carpet.

  Tanesha and the baby are both fretting.

  Lila and Tripp, the Fireballs’ owners, who have been incredibly kind every time I’ve met them, pop in a few times before the game to check on us.

  Cooper’s whole family is here, and Francisco’s grandmother, and some of the other guys’ parents or siblings.

  Nonna’s here. Luca’s mom is here too, and the two of them have been acting like long-lost sisters, which is the weirdest thing ever.

  So is Luca’s mom taking the seat next to me in the first inning and asking if we can trade phone numbers so she can do the awkward thing where she texts me to ask questions about Jerry, because he’s been calling her, and she might be considering agreeing to pursue something serious with him, because it’s been a long time since a man’s been this persistent when she’s done nothing but show her ass to him.

  It’s literally the only thing all night that makes me laugh, but it feels so damn good to realize I’ve moved on from Jerry.

  He was a step in my climb, not the end goal.

  The end goal—you know what?

  I don’t know what the end goal is.

  But I know I’d rather get there with my best friend by my side than bend who I am to try to squeeze into one more wedding gown.

  It’s a good thing the suite is big, though most of us are gathered on the porch outside, all of us biting our nails through every single pitch.

  “Are you crying?” Marisol asks Tillie Jean.

  “No,” Cooper’s sister lies as she swipes at her eyeballs.

  “Hell, I’m gonna cry if they win,” Cooper’s brother tells Marisol. “Cooper’s been dreaming of this day since before he was old enough to talk, and none of us ever thought we’d see—”

  “Rawk! Shut your pie-hole, motherfucker!” his grandfather’s parrot interrupts. Yes, parrot. Pop Rock—the patriarch of Cooper’s family—is dressed like a pirate and has a parrot. It’s a long story.

  “You tell him, Long Beak Silver.” Tillie Jean fist-bumps the parrot, and that simple act relieves the tension that’s been building for three more innings now.

  Definitely a good thing I didn’t bring Dogzilla.

  Not that my cat would attack the parrot.

  Most likely the other way around.

  “It’s okay to cry,” Tanesha tells us all. “Being this close to your dreams is emotional. Darren’s played for the Fireballs for four years, and we never thought we’d see the day. Never. Neither one of us can make it two hours without tearing up right now, and that’s not just the sleep deprivation.”

  Marisol leans around Tillie Jean to peer at her. “Why’d he stay?”

  “Old owner couldn’t get enough for him in a trade.” She rolls her eyes. “Wasn’t our choice, but our hands were tied, and there was nothing his agent could do. So we waited. And hoped. And now…”

  She cuts herself off as her voice gets thick, and Tillie Jean bursts into tears again.

  “Aww, group hug!” I reach for all of them—all of my new friends—and we squeeze in tight as the Fireballs take the field at the top of the fourth inning.

  Luca and Darren are trotting to the outfield together, chatting about who knows what. I asked Luca what they talk about on the field, and he told me sometimes Mario Kart, sometimes what they each thought of last week’s episode of Stacey & Lacey: Twins on a Mission, and sometimes if their pants make their butts look big.

  When we have our “The Fireballs are Going to the League Championship Party” after we win this game today, I’m totally asking Darren what they talk about to see if he tells me the same thing.

  Considering the outfielders mostly stand around until they have to make a diving catch or leap up to keep a ball from going over the wall to steal a home run from someone, I can believe they’re not talking serious strategy or baseball.

  Below us, chants of Bring Back Fiery! roar to life, and we all smile, because there’s no doubt where it started.

  But all smiles cease as the game resumes.

  It’s up.

  It’s down.

  The Fireballs give up a run.

  The Fireballs get a run.

  It’s down to the ninth inning, with our boys all tied up at three, when Cooper steps up to the plate to start us off.

  “Go to the bathroom!” Marisol and I shriek together.

  We look at each other, then down to Mackenzie’s seats, which we can’t see completely clearly, but we do see a dark-haired woman bolting up the stairs.

  Mackenzie’s best friend.

  She’s being sent to the bathroom.

  Marisol and I share a look.

  “What are you waiting for? Both of you!” Tanesha hands the baby to Darren’s mom and grabs us each by an arm. “We’re all going to
the bathroom!”

  It’s a thing.

  Mackenzie swears Cooper hits better when her best friend is in the bathroom, and when I sat with her, she made me go to the bathroom when Cooper was up to bat too.

  It’s one hundred percent a thing, and I swear it works more often than it doesn’t.

  I grab Tanesha’s hand in my right and Marisol’s hand in my left, and we make a baseball prayer circle over the toilet, and not three seconds later, the entire family suite erupts in screams of joy.

  We trip over each other getting out. “What? What happened? Did he do it?”

  The baby’s crying, but everyone else is jumping up and down.

  Seriously.

  Jumping.

  Even Pop Rock and his parrot.

  Tillie Jean’s sobbing and hugging her mom. Francisco’s abuela is crying and hugging everyone. Someone I don’t know well grabs me and hugs me. Marisol and Tanesha both shriek at the same time and hug each other, jumping up and down as they do.

  The Fireballs did it.

  They won.

  They won their first division championship in I don’t know how long. According to Mackenzie, it’s been fifty years since they last got this far.

  The guys are all circled up at home plate, hugging and leaping for joy. Security escorts Mackenzie onto the field, because she’s been their good luck charm all year. She high-fives every one of the mascots as she dashes to join the players, who swallow her up into their group.

  “Our baby girl did it,” her dad says beside me.

  Her papa nods. “She believed. She believed for all of the whole damn city.”

  Am I crying?

  Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes, I’m crying too.

  We’re hustled down to the locker room via a set of private elevators that staff use to get around, and soon the entire place is one mass of joy.

  Emilio and Marisol are laughing and hugging. Francisco gets mauled by his grandmother, and Cooper’s proudly wearing his grandfather’s parrot while we all pull Fireballs, Division Champions T-shirts over our heads and someone pops the champagne.

  “Nuh-uh, not you.” Luca grabs me and plops safety glasses onto my eyes, an umbrella hat on my head, and ties a Fireballs bandana around my head to shield my nose and mouth.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” I tell him with a laugh.