by Pippa Grant
Tell me to fall in love, and I’ll fight you all day.
Give me unconditional love that fits, that’s worth the effort, and I’m still the idiot who doesn’t know what he had until it was gone.
We take the first game in Seattle, which leaves the series tied.
One more win, and we’ll be league champions, headed to the World Series for the first time in Fireballs history.
We all wear our Fireballs capes and our Fiery thongs over our pants onto the field for warm-ups. It’s a joke from earlier in the season, and we’re feeling like gods when we start the game with three runs in the first inning.
Without the thongs and capes, for the record. Those were just for warm-ups.
But things start sliding downhill in the fourth, because we’re getting too cocky.
By the seventh, we’re tied at five.
At the top of the ninth, Brooks takes a pitch to the arm. He shakes it off and heads to first, but I follow him and roll us into a double-play on a ball I shouldn’t have swung at.
Darren strikes out.
And on Stafford’s first pitch in the bottom of the ninth, Seattle’s catcher slams it out of the park so high up that neither Darren, nor Robinson, nor I could’ve leapt high enough to rob him.
Not even with springs in our cleats.
The three of us stand there in the outfield, staring dumbfounded at the scoreboard sixty feet up as the ball pummels the screen and Seattle knocks us out of the running while their fans cheer and scream so loudly, the ground is probably shaking all the way out to the San Juan Islands.
“Fuck,” Robinson whispers as he and Darren converge on me.
“Rookie,” Darren replies like a man who’s earned a hell of a lot more than standing here, watching another team’s fans celebrate the win we so desperately wanted.
He salutes the bleachers. “If you’re gonna beat us, go win the whole damn thing,” he murmurs.
He slaps my ass, then Robinson’s. “Let’s go home. We fought hard. Got farther than we had any right. And next year? Next year, this is ours.”
We’re all silent on the flight home.
None of us call each other out for any tears that are shed.
Stafford sits by himself. I don’t have to ask if we’re setting up a rotation to check on him. Just have to sign up for a time when Cooper plops into the seat next to me and shoves a calendar at me.
He nods when I hand it back. “Winter training. My place.”
He’s taking the loss best of all of us. Don’t have to know Cooper long to understand why.
Of course he wants to win the whole damn thing. But being part of the Fireballs this year, when the team went from the worst team in baseball to one of the top four?
It’s nearly all his boyhood dreams come true, and he’s too much of a Fireball at heart to ever consider that he won’t have another chance next year.
We land back in Copper Valley so late, it’s almost morning.
But the airport isn’t empty as you’d expect for four am.
The minute we step through security, a mob of people greet us.
“Dude…we fuckin’ lost,” Emilio mutters.
Cooper shoves him. “Idiot. We won. We won their hearts.”
Shit.
We did.
There are young people. Old people. Black, white, and brown people. People using walkers, and people in wheelchairs, and able-bodied people, and people so young they’re barely able to walk. People in old school Fireballs shirts with Fiery the Dragon. People in Firequacker the Duck shirts, in Meaty the Meatball shirts, in Spike the Echidna shirts, and in Glow the Firefly shirts.
And they’re cheering. Cheering and waving signs.
We love the Fireballs.
Next year is OUR YEAR.
Fireballs Forever.
Cooper for Mayor.
Jimmy Santiago, Will You Marry Me?
Coach goes red in the face when someone points that one out.
Cooper’s having trouble with his eyeballs getting leaky. I move in to clap him on the shoulder, but six other guys beat me to it.
Because I’m the one who’s always a minute behind when it comes to taking care of people.
Shit.
Security clears a path for us, but we all take our time, signing balls and jerseys and bats, talking to the fans who are here despite the loss, who believed so hard that they carried us to the playoffs when baseball’s commissioner nearly disbanded the team a year ago.
Henri would love this.
And I’m going to find her.
I’ll find her, and I’ll show her what she missed, and promise her that we’ll do it all over again next year.
I catch sight of Lila Valentine heading to the exit, so I duck away and trot after her. “Hey!”
She turns and smiles like she slept well on the plane, and yeah, she probably did. Her goal this year was to make us be not-losers, and she more than achieved that, even if we didn’t go all the way. “I’ll say this again later, but I’m very, very proud of all of you. Great season, Luca. Thank you for taking a chance on us.”
“Don’t trade me.”
One brow lifts, and Tripp Wilson, her co-owner and fiancé, joins us. “Why would we trade you?”
Shit. Now I feel like an eight-year-old asking my mom’s boyfriend not to leave. “Everybody does.”
“Their loss is our gain. Fireballs are family. Don’t ever forget it. And don’t do anything stupid this winter.”
They both say goodnight and slip away after reminding me to check my messages whenever I wake up, since the season isn’t officially over until the new mascot is revealed, leaving me standing there with more Fireballs fans approaching and my eyes getting hot, because this is what it feels like to belong.
And I can’t celebrate it with the one person who’d understand.
I’m still signing balls when Brooks and Mackenzie try to slip out a side door to hop into a car. I say my apologies to the fans, and once again, I’m darting after someone. “Mackenzie.”
Her shoulders bunch, and she turns to me with a fake straight face.
You can always tell she’s faking it because she usually chews on her bottom lip at the same time. “Luca! Hey! I was hoping to say goodnight to you. Or good morning.”
“Where’s Henri?”
She winces.
“Swear to fuck, don’t tell me she’s engaged. Please don’t tell me she’s engaged.”
“Do you think so little of me as a friend that you could possibly believe I’d let that happen?”
“Stop talking,” Brooks adds to me in an undertone. “If you want to live, stop talking now.”
“I don’t do love, okay? Not with the big public displays and the I heart you forever schmoopsie-poos and the poetry. I never even told Henri I’d hit a home run for her. But she’s the best part of me. And I told her wrong. I want one chance to do it right. Just one. If she hates me and never wants to see me again after that, then I’ll never bother her again. Swear on getting Eyed by Nonna every day for the rest of my life.”
Mackenzie’s eyes narrow. “You used her to make your nonna think her curse worked.”
I hang my head. “Yes.”
“How do I know you’re not using her now?”
My eyes are getting hot again. “You don’t.”
“Hm. I’ll consider your request. Go home. Get some sleep. I might text you later.”
I bite my tongue to keep the are you kidding me? inside while she slips into the waiting car.
Brooks nudges my shoulder. “It wasn’t a no. And she’s right. You don’t want to fuck up your last chance because you’re tired and dumb.”
“You think I can sleep like this?”
He grins. “I’m sure she’ll keep that in mind.”
35
Henri
For all the emotions that keep leaking out of my eyeballs, you’d think I was the one who pushed two babies out of my vagina after leaving my husband and flying all the way across the cou
ntry with three other children under the age of five, and also her pets.
And yes.
Elsa did deliver her twins naturally.
Here in Copper Valley.
Right on their actual due date.
Because that’s what she does.
“No, Rosa, you tell Roberto that if he ever wants to see me and our children ever again, he’ll learn how to mop a damn floor until it shines, and he’ll learn that I hate pancakes, and he’ll learn that the way to this woman’s heart is through changing fucking diapers.”
Tatiana stares wide-eyed at me, like I’m supposed to explain to her that her mommy is having a breakdown and it’ll pass before she starts kindergarten in a year.
Probably.
Titus whips out his penis, announces, “Potty,” and then pees on the floor next to Elsa’s hospital bed.
And Talia, who’s barely eighteen months, bursts into tears.
“Oh, sweetie, it’s okay.” I try to beckon her to my lap, but I’m balancing Jake and Ruby, the newborn twins, in both arms too, and so far Talia isn’t a fan of being a big sister.
So she drops her diaper and pees on the floor too.
While screaming.
I’d leave with the older three, except Elsa has basically begged me to not ever, ever leave her side, and she’s also forbidden me from calling Mom for help, because I don’t want her to know I’m a failure.
That would sting if I hadn’t realized in the week since Elsa crashed my new and unexpectedly tiny apartment with her whole perfect life imploding around her, that the only reason Elsa looks like she has everything all put together is because she’s been burning herself out making it seem perfect when she’s completely and totally miserable.
And basically alone, since Roberto works like sixteen hours a day and doesn’t give her any orgasms.
I lied, she sobbed that first night after all three of her kids had gotten up for their seventh drink of water or trip to the potty or, in Titus’s case, to dash around my small living room on all fours while shouting that he was a leopard. Roberto never gave me any orgasms. He didn’t even care. He just wanted a hole to stick his dick in for two pumps, and that was it.
I’m never thinking of my brother-in-law the same again.
Though I did have to stifle tears of my own every time she said orgasm, since I’ll probably never have any of those in my life ever again.
But it’s for the best.
If Elsa can’t make her marriage work, who can?
Not me.
I left a man who never said he loved me, but showed me in all the little things that I was important, that he paid attention, and taught me that I deserved better than someone who’d give me lip service and leave me.
I freaked out and ran away from the one man who finally got it better than all the men who could say the words, but didn’t know how to actually show them.
I don’t deserve a happily ever after either, do I?
Luca Rossi, the man who hates love, whose family broke it for him, who’s been abandoned by father figures and baseball teams for years and has no reason to believe in love, loves me.
I know he does, but I don’t think he knows he does.
Not if he’d propose merely because us being married would be comfortable and convenient.
Which means our future would be full of me trying to convince him of something that his entire childhood taught him was a lie. I can’t not believe in love, even if I can believe I’m not meant to have it.
So instead, I’m concentrating on what my life is today, and probably for the foreseeable future, and that’s my sister and her kids.
Maybe, between the two of us, we can do something right so they’re not just as ducked up as we are.
So they know they deserve flowers on release day, and being cared for when they’re sick or having an allergic reaction to alcohol, and that they owe it to that person to tuck a card into their luggage before they leave so they’ll get a smile when they find it, and to stand up to the people who hurt him when he’s too tired of fighting that fight for himself.
So they know that love has nothing to do with the size of a person’s bank account, and everything to do with the size of their hearts.
And so they know that when their significant other loses the most important game of his life, they should be there for him, and not making excuses about how they can’t go anywhere because they need to stay in a hospital holding someone else’s hand.
Luca.
My Luca.
Is he alone? Is he afraid the Fireballs will trade him? Is Nonna scouring dating sites for him? Is his mother the type who’ll find his favorite cannoli to console him, or will she even be here with him?
And what if they wouldn’t have lost last night if I’d just said yes and sorted everything else out later, after the season was over, instead of running away like a panicked woman who thought that being left by five fiancés meant she’d also be left by the sixth, when it’s the sixth who’s settled deeper into her heart than she thought a man could ever get?
“Aunt ’Enni, you cwying?” Tatiana asks.
“No,” I sob.
Talia cries harder with me. Titus starts crying. The babies both erupt in baby wails, which are soft and scratchy and so, so perfect, and I’ll never have babies of my own, and then Elsa’s sobbing, which makes Tatiana sob again too.
“That woman was so right.” Elsa flings her phone across the room, where it bounces gracefully off the wall and tumbles to rest against the Boppy on the floor, never in danger of hitting anyone, because despite her marriage crumbling, she is still Elsa. “It’s never right to pretend things are okay when they’re not, and it’s never okay to fill your love well with hobbies and causes that won’t love you back.”
“What woman?” Crap. Dang it. Now I’m going to start hiccupping.
“TikTok Nonna,” Elsa wails.
I freeze.
My eyes go wide, and I choke on a hiccup. “You met TikTok Nonna?”
“I didn’t want to tell you because you hate when I talk about meeting celebrities.”
We’re both bawling, yelling over her children crying, and a nurse pops her head in. “Oh, gosh, we need to take the babies to get their bloodwork. And then we have a special surprise!” She squats down to Titus’s level. “Do you like baseballs?”
Baseballs.
I sob harder.
Not baseballs.
Two more nurses rush in and relieve me of the babies. “We’ll send up someone from the new mom support program,” she whispers. “It’s always nice to talk to someone when all those post-partum hormones hit. Completely normal and natural, sweetie.”
“I didn’t have a baby.”
“I know, honey, but family needs support too.”
We are such a disaster.
“Baw?” Titus asks.
The first nurse beams at him. “Yes, you handsome little devil. We’ll get you a ball. But you all have to put your privates back in your diapers, okay?”
“She means put your penis away, Titus,” Tatiana says through sniffles. “Can I have a ball too?”
“Oh, yes, of course!” The nurse points to Titus’s shirt. “I only asked him first because he’s wearing one.”
The nurses all depart, and we try to pull ourselves together. “You met TikTok Nonna?” I say again to Elsa.
“She was filming outside my mommy-to-be yoga class, and she stopped and looked at me and said, Do what you need to do for your own happiness, not what everyone else is doing for theirs, and it was like, oh my god, I have to leave Roberto.”
Oh my god.
Oh my god, Luca sent his Nonna to ambush my sister. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because I meet all the cool people and you just have this virtual life where you don’t do anything, except you seem so happy with it.”
He sent Nonna.
He sent Nonna to make Elsa not write romance novels.
“Oh, god, Henri, don’t do that. Don’t
start crying again. I take it back. You have the coolest life ever because you don’t have to fit into anyone’s mold and you’ve been jilted five freaking times and you still have this unstoppable optimism and I kinda hate you for it, but I also want to be you so badly because you don’t apologize for being who you are even when Mom and Dad shit on your dreams—don’t say shit, Tatiana and Thalius and Tittia—and oh, fuck, I can’t even say your names right.”
“Fuck,” Talia yells.
The door opens, and a large man in a baseball uniform with perfect hair and worried green eyes cautiously pokes his head in.
I gasp.
Elsa sits up straighter, then winces and adjusts her donut.
Luca’s gaze connects with mine, and god, do I ever not look like I’m having a breakdown when he’s around?
Check that.
Am I ever not having a breakdown?
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
He visibly swallows. “Heard there are some future sluggers in here.”
I blink, spot Francisco out in the hallway with Darren too, and I realize this isn’t Luca coming to find me and forgive me and tell me he loves me and can’t live without me.
It’s horrible, terrible, very bad timing for a public relations visit to the hospital by the home team. He pulls out three baseball stress balls adorned with various mascot contenders from a drawstring bag and goes down on a knee entirely too close to me to hold them out to Titus.
How do I always forget how much room this man takes up? And how good he smells? And how fabulous his ass looks in—and out—of his uniform?
And how much I want to touch him and apologize for running out of the biggest celebration of his life, and how sorry I am that I wasn’t there for him in Seattle last night, and how much I cried when they lost, and how hard it was to hold Elsa’s hand through her contractions and pretend I was crying for her pain, and not my own?
“You wanna pick one, little buddy?” he asks.
Titus points to the one with Glow and screams in terror.
It should be funny, but seeing him react the way I know Luca wants to react to the firefly makes my eyes leak more.
