“Can we go for dinner?” Buzz throws his head back on the cushion behind him. “I’m starving.”
Beside me, quietly, Miranda makes an eh sound. “I could eat, actually.”
Jesus Christ, these two are going to be the death of me. “The last thing I want to do is spend more time with you.” I cannot escape this dude. “Work, meetings—now you’re busting into my house.”
“I know, isn’t it great?”
It’s not great. I wonder for a second if I’ll ever get used to having a best friend who’s so…goddamn needy. None of my friends from home act like this. How the hell did I get stuck with the biggest playboy on the team? We’re polar opposites!
Buzz turns his attention to Miranda. “You look pretty cozy—you’re not going to move in here, are you?”
“NO!” Miranda practically shouts. “I mean…no. We just started seeing each other, my gosh.”
Buzz isn’t deterred. “Because if you did, you’d bring the rest of that baseball card collection, wouldn’t you?”
Goddamn him!
Miranda’s mouth drops open. Dips her head a bit lower, shielding herself. “We haven’t…we…”
Wallace repositions his feet on my ottoman, the bottoms of his white socks dirty. “Well since I’m here, maybe I can broker the deal between the two of you for those remaining cards, yeah? It’s the least I can do.”
Oh for fuck’s sake.
“Jesus, Wallace—now is not the time!”
A finger pokes me in the thigh from under the covers. “He’s right though—we do need to talk about the rest of those cards.”
She is not helping.
Even though they’re both right—I still want those cards and she still has to sell them—we’re not fucking discussing it right here, naked, in front of Dipshit over there.
“Get out, so we can get dressed.”
“I want tacos,” he announces, standing.
After he’s gone, Miranda and I speak at the same time.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“He’s five.”
With a laugh, we climb out of bed and get dressed.
Epilogue
Two months later
Noah
“I can’t believe there are two of them.” Miranda hands me a bowl of pasta salad and I carry it to the table she has set up at the front of her office space. “They could be twins.”
I follow her gaze. Buzz and his brother Tripp are arguing over near the makeshift bar, set up for the official opening of Miranda’s design business.
“If Wallace were a twin, I’d punch myself in the nuts.”
My girlfriend rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic—he’s not so terrible. And his brother seems nice.”
Nice? Not a word I’d use to describe either of them, especially not Tripp Wallace, but Miranda is delusional and, much to my irritation, has grown to love Buzz like a brother. As such, she’s using words like nice, and cute, and adorable to describe them both.
Vomit.
A professional football player for Chicago, Tripp is as big an asshole as his brother, if not worse. Taller. Bulkier. Cruder. The day they were handing out god complexes, Tripp was first in line to receive one.
Prick.
At the moment, he’s trying to steal a wine bottle out of my friend’s hands and I watch as he gets elbowed in the gut. Jeez, they fight like kids.
Someone needs to take him down a peg or two.
And someone needs to stop those idiots from arguing before they knock the entire bar over. It took me two hours to hammer that fucking thing together and longer to paint it.
Miranda hands me a plate of sushi and kisses my cheek. “Thanks for all your help arranging this, baby.”
Baby.
She loves using endearments when she’s talking to me, hardly ever calls me by my name anymore. It’s always babe this, honey that, oh hey sweetie.
I fucking love it.
I love her.
All our friends have come out to support her. Claire, Emily, Gretchen and her boyfriend, whatshisface whose name I can’t be bothered to remember. A few people she’s met networking. Friends of mine, mostly all teammates and their wives or girlfriends. It was an act of God getting them all here because our season just started and everyone is tired and strapped for free time, but I managed it. Also packed into the room? The two new hires she found as support staff: Tanner, a woman in her late twenties whose job will be new building design, and a dude named Kyle who does residential, but will act as her intern, too.
It’s a full house, seemingly packed with giants, especially considering her office space is pretty tiny.
I stand back and watch as Sophie Blackmore approaches Miranda and leans in for a hug, the glamorous WAG the wife of another Steam player.
“Oh my gosh, it’s so nice to finally meet you,” Sophie gushes. “I started following you on Instagram a couple months ago and I love your stuff.”
We all know what happened a couple months ago and I shift uncomfortably, waiting for Sophie to keep talking.
“Bam and I just bought a new little lake cottage and I would love for you to come take a look at it—he said if it will keep me quiet, I can redo the entire thing.” She giggles, sipping from the champagne flute in her hand, a submerged raspberry kicking up bubbles.
“I would love that!” Miranda enthuses. “I’m actually really busy the next couple days, but I can make time for you next week?”
Damn right she’s busy—after the whole mess online with the tabloids, her business page blew up. Some people called her out of sheer curiosity, others just trolls to hassle her, but quite a few were legitimate clients who wanted to hire her for design work. She was off and running, never slowing down since. It won’t be long before her two employees turn into four, or six—maybe more?
My girlfriend is the fucking shit.
“Here is my number.” Sophie hands Miranda a business card. I can’t imagine what the hell is on it, because as far as I know, Bam Blackmore’s wife does not work outside the home.
“I’ll shoot you an email Monday morning,” Miranda promises, tucking the card away as Sophie saunters off to join her husband. She turns to me. “Oh my god, Noah, it’s happening. People want to hire me—I’m freaking out!” She squeals a little. Kisses me again on the cheek, eyes bright. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“Yes you could have.”
But I know what she means: the remaining $50,000, I paid to buy out her entire baseball collection, that money enabled her to hire Kyle and Tanner. To pay her utilities and buy an actual desk—the one she really wanted, not the cheap one she had in her Amazon cart.
Stars shine in her eyes when she looks at me now, but I know it’s not from the money. “I love you.”
It’s because of that. Her arms wrap around my waist and she kisses the tip of my chin.
My lips part. “I…” A lump catches in my throat. I’ve never said the word love to anyone other than my parents. This will be the first time and I mean every fucking word of it. “I love you too.”