Wrigley
I walked into Target, Micah asleep in my arms, and wondered if I’d made the wrong decision.
Again.
Seeing George on the TV always made me want to cry.
But, since Micah wanted to see his daddy play, I couldn’t deny him.
Hence the reason why I always cried my eyes out on game days.
Which happened to be the reason I was walking into Target at nearly ten at night.
I needed wine.
Stat.
And with Target being the closest thing to the apartment, Target it was.
I pulled out a cart and came to a conclusion as I laid Micah down, making sure his little jacket was tucked close to him so it shielded his eyes from the harsh store lights.
My conclusion? At least this game wasn’t a home game. At least he was seven hundred miles away from me.
Because after the look I saw on his face after the game? Yeah, I would’ve totally gone to him.
I would’ve made a stupid mistake.
I would’ve caved.
And I couldn’t cave…could I?
I came to a sudden, bone-jarring halt next to the last end cap that signaled the beginning of the registers and stared.
“Christmas trees,” I breathed.
My living hell was now complete.
As I contemplated places to go, I hadn’t taken into consideration why I was avoiding Target in the first place.
Exhibit A was the Christmas Tree Little Debbies that filled the entire shelf from about chest high all the way down to my feet.
God. Fucking. Dammit.
They were here an entire month earlier than they’d arrived last year.
I pushed the little seat thingymajig where you placed your children in, and then grabbed three boxes.
I stared at them, knowing that once I started, it wouldn’t be enough.
So I got three more.
Then I realized that now that I knew that they were there, I had to send some home with George the next time he came to get Micah.
I grabbed three more and then tucked them close to Micah’s side.
I pursed my lips, thinking that Micah would probably want some, too.
Which also happened to be why, once I finally walked away from the end cap, I had not nine, not twelve, but eighteen boxes.
That was only thirty-six dollars.
Not too bad.
I could’ve done worse.
Then again, had Micah not been taking up the entire bottom of the buggy, I would’ve slid the buggy right up to the end cap and done a dramatic sweep of the contents of the shelf straight into my cart.
Angry with myself for getting them, I stomped to the aisle that held what I most desired—wine—and found the perfect bottle: the cheapest.
No, I didn’t have to worry about money. Not now…and not ever, thanks to George, but I also tried to not live too lavishly.
That money wasn’t mine.
It was George’s.
And George’s money did not buy happiness.
At least not for me.
I sighed and picked up another bottle—an emergency bottle—that I would use if I got too desperate—and turned the cart around.
Then I had to stop at the cooking utensils section because a cute little tumbler caught my eye. Then an avocado cutter, followed shortly by the Hearth and Home collection by Chip and Joanna Gaines.
By the time I was heading back toward the checkout, I had way more than I ever intended in my cart, and no way to carry it home.
I would have to steal the cart.
There was no other way around it.
I’d walked from the apartments since it was such a beautiful night, and in doing so took the only real way I had of carrying stuff away due to the fact that Micah wouldn’t be waking up to walk himself.
Not that I would let him.
It was dark here, and people drove like crap.
Something that George had lectured me on multiple times before.
The apartment complex I was in wasn’t one that had many children.
Not many could afford it.
Then again, I couldn’t. Not really.
But, with the divorce, George had found an apartment and informed me that he’d paid up for a full two years, giving me more than enough time to figure out whether I wanted to move back home or not.
Something in which I most certainly did not want to do. Not when my brother was there, still more than capable of ruining my life if he felt so inclined.
Something he had done.
I quickly shook off those thoughts.
No, I couldn’t do it.
I wouldn’t think about how it had all gone bad.
I wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
“Are you ready, ma’am?”
I looked up into the eyes of the teen checker that was standing there, looking at me like I was working on her last nerve.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” I apologized, starting to stack the boxes onto the belt.
“I think there’s a limit of ten on these.”
I looked at her and frowned.
“Since when?” I questioned.
“Today,” she answered. “It was in the store meeting with the managers.”
I frowned. “What’s to stop me from buying ten, checking out, then getting another ten?”
The teen looked dumbfounded at that.
“Well, I guess nothing,” she admitted.
“Then why would it matter if I bought over ten?” I pushed.
The teen reached over and flipped on her help light.
“I’ll ask for you,” she replied snappishly.
I gritted my teeth.
I needed them not to argue with me.
Mostly because if they argued with me, and refused to give me all that was in my cart, I might very well lose my shit.
I was having a really, really bad day.
I most certainly didn’t want to end it with this chick telling me I couldn’t have eighteen boxes of Christmas Tree Little Debbies.
Something in which I think she saw in my eyes as she waited warily for her manager to slowly meander her way to us.
“Can I help you, Candy?” the manager asked, looking tired.
“You said today they were only allowed ten of these, and this lady has EIGHTEEN.”
I gritted my teeth as the teen, Candy, announced it to not just her manager, but the entire goddamn store.
Oh, look at this fat ass in checkout eighteen! she might as well have said. She’s probably going to have diabetes when she’s done here.
“Is she using coupons?” the manager asked Candy.
“No,” Candy replied. “Does that matter?”
“Yes, Candy,” the manager replied. “She’s allowed to get however much she wants, as long as she’s not using a coupon to get them for free. That was the only reason that we made the rule.”
I crossed my arms and waited for Candy to let that sink in, and at first, I got a little worried that comprehension wasn’t her best skill.
But then she nodded. “I think I remember that.”
I think I remember that, I mocked inwardly. Stupid heifer.
“May I see your ID?” the manager asked when Candy reached for the bottle of wine.
I would’ve rolled my eyes had I had the energy.
Instead of arguing, I reached into my purse, extracted my wallet, and then pulled out my identification. Handing it to her, I waited for whatever she was going to do with it before taking it back.
“I knew you looked familiar.”
I yanked the receipt out of the woman’s hands and prayed that she wouldn’t announce to the world who I was.
That was how it’d gone bad the last time, thanks to my brother.
The moment that George and I had gotten together, Dodger had this bee under his bonnet when it came to us. H
e wanted exclusive stories, and interviews that George never offered to anybody.
I hadn’t realized just how bad it had gotten until the day of Diamond’s accident.
George had met me at the hospital as we sat and waited for news on Diamond’s condition. Then my brother, showing up not because of Diamond, but because of George being there and unable to leave, had chosen to ask him questions.
George had answered them, and me not realizing what had been going on, just let the questions go.
I hadn’t realized until much later that the questions had been super invasive.
And things that he didn’t even talk about in general—not even with me.
It’d been reading the article that Dodger had put out that had clued me in.
At least, later.
During Diamond’s ordeal, and the next five months, I hadn’t cared much about George. I’d treated him like crap while I tried to get my sister fixed up.
Which had been the biggest mistake of my life.
I’d been emotional, and I loved my sister.
But Diamond had been in the wrong. She’d nearly shot my husband all because she thought he was an intruder.
She’d been protecting our son. Why she’d been doing it like that, I didn’t know.
But now I could see that I’d overreacted, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
I was literally clueless.
I’d thrown a lot of words at George that night.
I’d told him how he’d fast-forwarded through my life. How he’d married me and knocked me up so I’d stay with him, unable to leave. How he’d ruined my life.
I’d said such awful things that I wish I could carve those awful memories out of my brain so I’d quit repeating them every single night in my dreams—waking and asleep.
I fucking hated how I handled that.
I’d always been hot-headed. Always.
But, George and I had been together for such a short amount of time that he’d never experienced my zero-to-one-eighty mood swings.
My sister used to call me—and maybe still did behind my back—Whacko Wrigley. My brother used to say that I was a bitch—which I had to admit that sometimes I was.
George had never experienced that, and honestly, at this point, I thought I was doing him a favor by not crawling back. Even though I desperately wanted to.
George had been perfect. He’d been kind. He’d been understanding, and careful with me.
Then I’d gone and ruined all of that by a few nasty comments, and I’d left.
The next day, when he’d tried to come talk to me again, I’d been completely and utterly embarrassed with myself.
I’d been awful. Stupid. And honestly? A moron.
Who left a man like George Hoffman?
That’s right. This moron. Me!
Hurrying toward the door, I stopped right beside all the other terribly returned carts and caught my son up in my arms.
Once he was placed comfortably, I juggled the bags all into one hand.
Today was just bad enough that it’d be my luck that young Candy would likely call the cops on me for taking the freakin’ cart, and I wouldn’t be doing anything else stupid tonight.
Moments later, I walked out of the store, my son asleep in my arms, and headed back to my apartment.
All the while I berated myself for being a dumbass.
Chapter 10
Say ‘no’ to drugs has always made me laugh. If you’re talking to drugs, it’s likely already too late for you.
-Wrigley’s secret thoughts
Wrigley
I gritted my teeth as I read the article in the Hot Spot Magazine—the world’s top celebrity gossip column.
The column that I found myself starring in over the last eight months, and the downfall of my marriage to star outfielder Furious George Hoffman—the man that everyone loved.
I was the woman who’d left him. I was the woman who’d gotten fat, and George could do a whole lot better than. I was the woman that was a homewrecker, slut, and dried up old hag—all rolled into one.
I was the woman that everyone loved to hate.
Thinking my morning couldn’t get any worse than reading about my slut self in a magazine everyone devoured, I walked into the living room.
Then I saw the destruction.
I gasped in despair at the state of Teeny, the Elf on the Shelf, and panicked.
My automatic panic mode enacted, and I called the only man that I wanted to talk to.
He answered in three rings.
“Wrigley? Is Micah okay?” George asked worriedly.
I realized rather quickly that he was in the middle of practice by the sound of bats cracking against balls. Yet I still didn’t control myself. Still didn’t stop to think that this could be done at a better time.
“The dog ate Teeny!”
He was quiet for a long moment at the sound of despair in my voice, but eventually, he was able to compose himself.
“Teeny the Elf?” he clarified.
I didn’t need to guess what he was thinking: maybe if you hadn’t have put him out two months early—or at all—this wouldn’t have happened.
But seriously, Micah loved finding the Elf. I did it for the last four months of the year…so what?
“Yes,” I hissed. “What do I do? Micah will wake up in less than an hour, and I don’t have an Elf to replace him with! Half of Teeny’s face is eaten off!”
George started to make a sound in his throat that clearly made him sound like he was choking. On his own goddamn laughter.
Shit.
This was stupid.
I know I shouldn’t be freaking out, but I couldn’t help it.
Teeny’s face was missing!
How was I going to explain that to my child?
“I’ll be done at practice in twenty minutes. I’ll run by Target and get a new one.”
Forty-nine minutes later, I could hear my son stirring, and there was still no George.
I calculated the length of time, tops, it would take him to get here, and knew that he wasn’t going to make it.
Twenty minutes, plus the eighteen it took him to get to Target from the practice field, added in however long it took to get into the store and buy it—if the damn store even had the elf at all—meant that he should’ve been here by now.
And he wasn’t.
“Mama!”
I walked with heavy steps toward the door of my son’s room, my feet nearly dragging the entire way when I heard the knock.
I stopped what I was doing and practically ran to the door.
Throwing it open, I nearly cried in relief.
“I only found the girl Elf,” my savior apologized. “The boy Elf wasn’t there. Or at the other stores I went to seeing as the Christmas stuff is only barely getting out on shelves. You can explain this, right?”
I could.
Micah was an impressionable little boy. He wasn’t going to question me about a new Elf being there, or his gender all of a sudden changing. So, I chose to make use of what I had.
“Thank God.” I snatched the bag. “Go into his room and distract him while I put the Elf up.”
George winked and moved toward the mouth of the hallway, leaving me unable to breathe.
He was in baseball pants today, and they were tight.
He had on slip-on sandals over his socks, and the tight Under Armour shirt that was clinging to every single muscle on his chest was making me want to hyperventilate.
The man could literally pose for Under Armour with the way he filled out his shirts.
God.
And he had his hat on, too.
The full shebang.
The man that I fell in love with was in my house, sweaty, and looking beautiful.
I looked down at myself and winced.
I was most assuredly not.
Fuck.
***
George
Thirty minutes earlier
“Who was that that put such a huge fuckin’ smile on your face?” Hancock asked.
I shoved the phone back into my back pocket and resituated my batting gloves.
“My wife.”
“You mean your ex-wife, correct?” Gentry confirmed. “Or did you go get married in Vegas again and we just didn’t know?”
“Ex-wife,” I gritted through my teeth, nowhere near as happy as I’d been moments earlier when Wrigley had called in a panic.
Hearing that Wrigley was no longer my wife was one of those things that still stung, even six months later.
“Sorry, man,” Gentry winced, understanding exactly what I was going through.
With an ex and children of his own, he didn’t much talk about his problems, either.
“No problem,” I lied.
“What’d she want?” Hancock wondered.
“She wanted me to run to Target and get another one of those Elf on the Shelf things because the dog ate it,” I answered.
“I’m never going to get those,” Hancock grumbled. “They’re so fucking stupid.”
“They are,” I agreed. “But Micah seems to love it, and even at his young age, he looks for it.”
Wrigley sent me videos of Micah looking for it every day, and I had to admit, despite my original reluctance of the elf, it was a super cute idea.
Whoever came up with those dumb fuckers were now billionaires.
“When did she get a dog?” Gentry asked.
“When I bought her one,” I answered. “It’s a protection dog. One of those dogs that’ll protect the owners with his life.”
“How much did that set you back?” Gentry followed up. “I’ve always wanted one.”
“Twenty K,” I answered. “But it was worth it.”
Gentry grunted. “I think I’ll stick with a shelter dog.”
I was about to reply when Hancock interrupted my thoughts.
“Well, why don’t you just go and take care of that? The rest of practice is just us hitting, and since you’ve already hit, there’s no reason to be here,” Hancock, our team captain, suggested.
I gave him a mock salute. “Sounds good.”
Then I was off to Target to find a stupid elf.
Only, after a thorough search, I realized that there wasn’t an Elf. There was an elfette. That was it.
Then, for expedience, I called every store in a ten-mile radius and realized rather quickly that they didn’t have any either.
Quit Your Pitchin' Page 7
