They each hugged me and I hugged them back, happy I wasn’t going to be the only one in this big box all by myself.
“What are you guys doing here?” I looked at them, trying to figure out if I’d missed a message about them coming.
“A last-minute thing. Keyton mentioned to LJ about you coming to the game, and of course, he told me. We didn’t want you to have to sit through the game all by yourself, so here we are.” Marisa did a showcase hand sweep. Her smile faltered a bit. “I hope that’s okay.” She glanced around the room like they might be intruding.
“It’s perfect. I was wondering how I’d eat all this food myself. Keyton didn’t have to spring for the twenty-person package.”
“If we’d had more warning, we could’ve invited Elle and Seph, you didn’t get to meet them yet, but they’re awesome.”
“He probably didn’t want to spread the word around too much.” I picked at the hem of my sweater until I realized how it might sound. Lurching forward, I waved my hands in front of me. “Not that he thought any of you would talk about it or anything. Just the more people who know…the more there’s a chance…” I dropped my head. Frustration simmered in my chest that I couldn’t be invited to a game like anyone else.
Jules rubbed my shoulder. “It’s okay, Bay. We get it. Well, not ‘get it’ as in know what you’re going through, but we understand. Especially after what happened earlier this week. Are you okay?" She offered a reassuring squeeze.
“I’m okay.” My knee-jerk interview response.
“You’re stronger than me.” Marisa added. “A guy attacked me during senior year. Keyton came to my rescue there too. He knows how to handle himself.”
“He does.” I looked between the two of them. This was a conversation friends had, not someone looking for a juicy tweet or sound clip. They were concerned about me. Worried for Bay, their kind-of friend, not Bay, the singer.
“But he took the guy out and LJ got me home. I had to sleep in his bed that night, I was still so freaked out.” She shuddered.
“When I’m with Keyton it helps with the nightmares. They’re not so scary now. More like waking up from a dream where you feel like you’re falling and less like a guy is coming after me with a knife. But I’ll get there.”
“If you ever need to talk, you have my number. Or you can get my number from Keyton.” She laughed.
Jules hugged me again. “We’re all just glad you’re okay. I can’t imagine. We thought Marisa’s cooking was dangerous.” Pulling back, her eyes were filled with glittery giggles.
“Hey!” Marisa piped up from behind me. “Under LJ’s tutelage I’ve learned how to cook. I even made him dinner last night.”
Jules leaned in. “Brave man.”
Marisa glared. “I can hear you. We can’t all be baking virtuosos. If LJ and I ever get divorced, I’m marrying one of your chocolate chunk brownies.”
“You bake?” I turned to Jules.
She ducked her head and tucked her hair behind her ear. “A little.”
Marisa slung her arm around my shoulder. “She’s being infuriatingly humble. Her cooking web series has racked up over fifty million views.”
“Marisa…” Jules’s warning chiding was smile-inducing. This was the kind of bragging only a person who loved someone else could do, the kind they’d never do for themselves.
“That’s freaking amazing, Jules. Can I try some of your stuff?” I grabbed one of the buckets of popcorn. The salty-sweet caramel had been singing to me from across the room.
“You don’t have to. It’s not a big deal.”
Marisa’s arm blocked Jules’s attempt at backing away. “It’s a huge deal.”
Jules’s gaze shot to the ceiling. “Marisa. We’re talking to Bay here. She’s got fifty million views on one video. I’ve racked up fifty million over six years.”
Here came the part I hated, the part where other people shied away from talking to me about their lives because they didn’t live up to mine.
“Don’t downplay what you’ve accomplished. People have a nose for talent. Do I get to try some of what you’ve made?”
“You don’t have to. It’s not a big deal.”
“Her brown butter and toffee chocolate chip cookies are mind-blowing. Her salted caramel chocolate chunk cookies with the espresso chips are life-changing. Her caramel crunch cookies are soul-exploding.”
“Please excuse her, the food poisoning over the years has poisoned her mind.”
“You think I can’t appreciate soul-exploding caramel crunch cookies?”
“No, but I’m sure people are always asking you for things or trying to get you to try them. I know you’re busy.”
“And you know who I love to do things for? People who never think to ask. Do you have a store?”
“No, I bake at home and donate it to local food banks. Once the online show took off, the volume of orders had me up almost 18 hours a day trying to fulfill them. Now I only bake for special events.”
Marisa bit into a buffalo wing. “She charges through the nose for them too.”
I laughed. “I’d gladly pay through the nose for some.”
“You don’t have to. Friends always eat free.” Her last word was punctuated by a hip bump.
A heartwarming hip bump made me like the two of them even more.
Once Marisa discovered the full bar set up, she set our hot apple cider aside and moved straight to cranberry mimosas and snowflake martinis.
With our plates loaded up, we sat at the bar facing out over the stadium in the leather barstools.
“Do you two come to all the home games?” I inhaled a mini-cheeseburger slider.
“I try to.” Jules pointed a mozzarella stick at herself. “Marisa likes to antagonize LJ and pretend she won’t show, but she usually does.”
Marisa crunched on some nachos. “I’ve got to keep him on his toes. Have you been to a game before?”
I shook my head. “Only the final one at training camp back when Keyton first started, but it wasn’t a game like this.” My hand swept out in front of me across the windows toward the stadium teeming with people.
Kick off began and the crowd was on their feet for most of the first quarter. It ended with a 16-14 score and no game play for Keyton.
“He’s going to be upset he’s not out there.” I stress-munched the caramel corn.
“I know it upsets him, but man, what I wouldn’t give for Berk to have a rest. I swear he spends more time in the ice bath than he does the actual bath.”
“You should hear LJ walking down stairs. A skeleton on a xylophone would make less noise.”
“How do you deal with all that?” I looked between them both. The slice on his hand had sent me into a panic, but watching him get hurt on a weekly basis would be so hard—even harder because I knew it was what he wanted. He’d dreamed of doing this his whole life. How could I keep myself sane and still watch him put his body on the line?
Marisa set down her drink with a wistful look out the massive window. “They love it. One-hundred-percent, no-regrets love it. Whatever happens after this season or the next, they only have a short window for their dream. I could never tell him not to wring every last ounce he can out of it.”