“Yay, Daddy!” Jax, the youngest of the wild bunch, sounds all sweet and innocent.
They cheer for a few more seconds before Jett accidentally trips into Jagger and Jagger pushes Jett into Jax and Jax starts crying as Jett punches Jagger.
Seriously, in like two point six seconds, it went from a cute father-son scene to WrestleMania.
But it isn’t just the boys, because as soon as Jett falls down and Jax jumps on him, Clara and Ruth yell out, “Dog pile!” and join right in.
Never. Having. Kids.
“Clara! Ruth!” Lucy yells, shoving Oliver into my arms. “Get off of them right now or you lose technology privileges for a week.”
“Jett, Jagger, Jax!” Vonnie magically climbs over the table and into the seat in front of us in a single motion like she’s not wearing five-inch heels. “Didn’t I warn you before we picked up Brynn that you better not act out and embarrass me in front of all the nosy people looking in here? You couldn’t even wait until the game started?”
I know both Lucy and Vonnie are low-key mortified right now, so I bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from laughing at them.
While they are busy disassembling the pile of limbs and screaming kids, I lean back into my seat, looking down at Oliver and reconsidering my never-having-kids stance as he does a baby stretch and yawns, shifting the noise-canceling baby headphones that are smashing his chubby little cheeks together.
Oh my god. My uterus.
Of course, because my luck is only the bad kind, when I look up, it’s Maxwell’s picture staring back at me. And while Justin’s made me laugh, Maxwell’s makes me melt because, damn, that man knows how to do a smolder.
I stand, clinging on to sweet little Oliver—knowing I don’t have the multitasking skills that are only granted to those who have held a baby for more than two minutes—trying to get a good look at Maxwell as he makes his grand entrance.
Fire shoots out of the end of the tunnel, probably a welcome blast of heat compared to the cold Colorado air that has finally arrived, something we are thankfully immune to in our glass box. Maxwell jogs onto the field, pointing to the crowd before breaking into a sprint and jumping up into the air doing an impressive chest bump with Justin.
It’s like Cinderella at the ball.
Except, instead of a woman in glass slippers, it’s a man in spandex and cleats.
He stands at the front of the group of players, bouncing back and forth to an imaginary beat and chest bumping with the final players that the announcer calls to the field.
“Sorry about that.” Lucy shakes her head and tucks the pieces of hair that fell out of her ponytail behind her ears. “You’d think I’d actually have some upper-body strength considering how often I have to pick up deadweight children, but I’m still as flabby and weak as ever. Thanks for holding Olly, I can take him back now.”
“I’m fine.” I look down at Oliver, who has somehow managed to fall back asleep despite the chaos raging around us. “Go have a drink and something to eat.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Positive.”
“Oh my god, thank you!” Her shoulders sag in relief. “I dropped my eggs all over his head trying to eat breakfast this morning and I’m starving.”
Before I can say anything, she’s up through the door and scooping food onto her plate.
“Look at you.” Vonnie scoots past me, back to her seat. “You’re a natural.”
“It’s easy because I can give him back if he cries,” I joke.
After the hubbub dies down and both teams make their way to their benches, I don’t even have to try to find Maxwell this time. He’s standing next to the bench, bouncing up and down as the captains stand on the field for the coin toss. He turns, but instead of looking to his seats, his gaze cuts straight to the box. And I swear, even from hundreds of feet away, I can feel his eyes on me.
I carefully extract one hand from beneath Oliver and offer a lame wave, but when Maxwell waves back, it doesn’t feel lame anymore. It feels like I’ve won the jackpot. Seventy thousand people around us, cheering and dying to be acknowledged by him, and he finds me.
After the auction, I was inundated with phone calls, emails, and meetings.
Maxwell came by Tuesday night to see if I wanted to watch some Parks and Rec, but I was so busy, I didn’t even leave my office until well after close. When I made it to my dad’s house, I couldn’t even climb the stairs to my bed and passed out on the couch.
We texted each other a few times, but it always ended with me thinking I sent a text, but actually getting interrupted and not sending the text until hours later.
Add on the producers of Love the Player blowing up my phone and showing up uninvited to my office trying to convince me to sign on as an official cast member, and I was an overwhelmed disaster.
When I was climbing into Vonnie’s industrial-sized Escalade to come to the game this afternoon, she was busy sending a text to Justin.
“I always send him a good luck text before the game so he can get it in the locker room before he takes the field,” she said.
I thought it sounded like a good idea, like a good morning text, except sportier. So I sent one to Maxwell as well. But when Justin texted her back thirty minutes later and I never heard from Maxwell, I began to think he might be annoyed with me for blowing him off.
But now, with his attention focused on me right before he goes into battle, my worries evaporate into thin air and electric excitement fills me instead.
Maxwell lifts his helmet off his head so I can get an unobstructed view of his smile as he mimics my baby-holding position. I shrug, carefully pointing to Ethan, who is standing nearby. His smile grows a notch and he gives me a glove-covered thumbs-up before putting his helmet back on and jogging to a coach with a clipboard in his hand.
“Damn, girl. It took Justin and me a few seasons to do the silent conversations you and Maxwell just had.” Vonnie looks at me from over her sunglasses, even though we are still technically inside. “Still going with the ‘just friends’ story?”
“It’s not a story.” I roll my eyes, trying to hide the smile threatening to break free and the way my stomach is being overrun with oversized wings fluttering all around. “He’s my friend.”
I nearly break down and tell her about the art museum, but I hold it in. It’s hard, because I love having him as a friend, but I know there is chemistry between us and a part of me really—and I mean really—wants to explore it. However, Maxwell is a literal genius, he’s smart enough to know that ruining things with me could cause mass damage, and I think we’re both treading with extra caution.
Also, he might have a million other girls hooked, but we’re not going to talk about that.