A dimple pops out in her cheek as she takes my hand. “Sarah Dempsey. Lovely to meet you. This is Beck. That’s Davis. And we’re not spying on you.”
“Much.” Davis jolts in his seat, turns a glare on Sarah, who apparently just kicked him under the table, and then drops his brown eyes contritely when she frowns right back at him. “Fine. Wiping my memory of anything I heard,” he mutters.
“I didn’t spy at all,” Beck promises as he grabs a handful of fried pickles. “Sarah said I couldn’t eat if I did.”
“Are you around Friday night?” she asks.
Suspicion kicks my pulse up a notch, but I’m so freaking tired of being suspicious of everyone and everything, which is also Tripp’s fault.
If he would’ve just told me his real name at the club, I wouldn’t have called Uncle Guido. But now that I’ve called Uncle Guido, he’s texting me with conspiracy theories, because he no longer has wife number two to rein him in.
It’s exhausting to keep smiling when what I really want to do is crawl into bed with a good book and a mug of tea and drift off to sleep in a world where bad things don’t happen.
“My friends and I haven’t discussed plans yet,” I tell her.
“Bring them along,” a familiar voice behind me says. It’s accompanied by a high-pitched squeal of Sawah!, and Tripp deposits his daughter in Sarah’s lap before straightening to look me dead in the eye. “Cookout at Beck’s folks’ place. You’re all welcome.”
“In costumes?” Halloween’s this weekend.
He smiles. “If you want. The whole gang will be there.” His gaze drifts back to my table, where Parker is attempting to discreetly snap a picture with her phone.
She drops it to the table, tugs on her strawberry blonde ponytail, and pretends she’s looking at the posters of hockey players all over the walls.
She’s so freaking adorable.
I slide a don’t mock my friend look at Tripp.
And he smiles that kindly smile at me while he grabs Emma’s hand and squirts hand sanitizer on it. “Can’t blame her. Davis is hot.”
“Hard fact of life,” Davis agrees.
“It’s the man bun.” Beck nods while he shoves a loaded nacho into his mouth.
Sarah smiles at all of them and takes an extra hug from Emma before glancing back to me. “I’ve spent way too many Fridays being one of the few women in this group. Please don’t make me do it again.”
“You don’t really look like it’s a hardship.”
“It’s not,” she whispers with a wink. Emma’s climbing her like a monkey, jabbering about pony-yales and fucks. “Beck, can you give Lila my number?
“You bet.”
Her smile is back at me. “Just in case you can’t make it and you get over-testosteroned after your friends leave. I doubt there are many more women at Fireballs headquarters than there are at Bro Code gatherings.”
“Over-testosteroned is not a word,” Davis says. He’s eating a hamburger without the bun and has a fruit cup.
“It’s a word if she says it’s a word,” Beck replies. “Here. Lila. Hand over the phone, and I’ll get you hooked up. I know these digits by heart, just in case I ever get my phone stolen and aliens kidnap me and brainwash me. True story—aliens won’t heart-wash you. Only brainwash. So the number’s safe.”
“Yes, he really is like that all the time,” Tripp murmurs. He’s entirely too close to my ear, and I don’t like how my breasts are angling toward him while the rest of me is trying to not look like I want to scoot away. “Ryder. Save a cow for the rest of us. And just tell Lila the number, please.”
I’m still gripping my own phone. Apparently I’m not all that subtle when it comes to not wanting to hand over something with so much personal data.
Or possibly I’m just dealing with people who are equally as paranoid.
And with good reason.
Parker isn’t the only person snapping photos in the room now.
Beck leans closer to me and rattles off the digits quietly while I add Sarah’s number to my phone. Then he flashes one of those smiles that’s probably caused panties to drop the world over. “Food’s on at seven. Don’t be late, or it’ll be gone.”
“We don’t know if—”
“I’ll check her calendar and get back to you,” Knox suddenly says beside me. Parker doesn’t seem to be breathing beside him. “We need to go find a paper bag.”
Parker takes one last look at Davis, goes pinker, and I nod my agreement. “Time to go.”
“Text or call,” Sarah says while my friends drag me away. “For real. It sucks being the only woman.”
“Oh my god, Lila, do you know who she was?” Parker breathes out on a whoosh when we’re out on the street. The fall weather is settling in, and there’s a chill in the air that makes me wonder how good of an idea a cookout is.
“Beck’s girlfriend?”
“She’s Sunny Darling’s daughter. The actress? She ran away from it all and was living here totally incognito until Beck came into her life.”
I glance back at the bar. It’s oddly comforting, and definitely hair-raising, to get that reminder that I’m not the only person with secrets.
Paranoid Lila would wonder if Sarah knows I have secrets too.
But we all do. Of course they’re wondering what my secrets are.
“What do you think about going to the cookout?” Parker’s question is slow and halting, like she’s afraid of influencing me one way or the other.
“You want to go?”
“Oh, it’s all up to you. You’re the person who has to live with them. I mean, if you keep the team.”
If isn’t really the question.
How long is the question.
Because sooner or later, this challenge won’t be a challenge anymore, and once again, I’ll need to move on.
It’s what I’ve always done.
Maybe it’ll be harder to leave behind a piece of my family history, but my mom’s been gone for twenty years. She wouldn’t want me to stay and keep the team if it’s not what makes me happy.
But I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever find something that’ll make me happy forever.
13
Tripp
The rest of the week is a whirlwind of nanny interviews at home and pass-the-duck-picture at work.
Plus the emails.
So many emails.
They’re preferable to face-to-face meetings, because every time I pass Lila, I get a whiff of whatever that delicate shampoo is that she uses, and I want to bury my nose in her hair until I can identify it. Which is ridiculous, because I can’t smell the difference between an orchid and a rose, and I don’t actually know anyone—male or female—who can.
Nor am I convinced it’s a flowery scent. It’s probably called Eating Morning Caramel Biscotti While Sipping Tea in A Dew-Covered Field of Cotton Just Before Daybreak, or something ridiculous like that.
Or possibly it’s just called The Scent of Chaos and Heartburn.
It would fit, because when I’m not trying to sniff her, I’m trying to not throttle her.