And he’s usually much further along in his fixer-upper projects at this point in a season, but he likes Copper Valley, and he’s stalling on the project for fear that when it’s done, the universe will know it’s time to trade him again.
So the baseball player who doesn’t seem to have any superstitions on the field has them after all.
They’re in his home life instead of at the ballpark.
Considering it doesn’t feel like he’s even started, I’m guessing Luca’s hoping he’ll get to retire in Copper Valley. Not just stay another season, but fully retire.
Nonna’s still staying with us, and she’s filled in a few blanks. I get the feeling she likes me more since I told her off.
And I’m sad that that’s what it takes to get accepted by part of his family. I don’t want to take sides. I want everyone to get along for Luca’s sake.
But I still appreciate knowing that his dad didn’t pay the child support he was supposed to after the divorce, and that by the time Nonna realized it, Morgan was so pissed with all of them that she told Nonna to take a flying leap.
Naturally, Nonna didn’t listen, or she wouldn’t be here, but things are still tense between them.
She also told me people worth having in your life are worth fighting for.
Wisdom from Nonna.
Maybe one day I’ll ask her how I managed to get engaged five times to men who couldn’t go through with marrying me.
She’d probably tell me because I’m a ducked-up basket case.
Yep.
Ducked-up.
I’m back on the struggle bus with using my big girl words.
Luca leaves for a week-long away trip, and after two days of staying in Copper Valley with me, Nonna heads out to Vegas for a thing with one of her new TikTok sponsors.
The Fireballs clinch a spot in the playoffs on their first away game after Boston, so everyone in all of Copper Valley is riding this amazing high. Mackenzie randomly bursts into tears during Lady Fireballs meetings.
So does Tanesha.
And Marisol.
I cry the happy tears with them, because how can I not?
This is a big deal. Luca told me the Fireballs only won something like thirty-nine games out of over a hundred and fifty last year, so to make the playoffs is such a drastic turnaround that even my dad texts about seeing it on the news.
My family knows I’m taking a time-out from life in Copper Valley. I don’t think they follow small-time gossip pages enough to have picked up on the fact that I’m fake-dating a baseball player, which is fine.
Really.
It’s better this way, because I don’t have to answer the questions about if Luca makes enough money to pay for this wedding, when there won’t be a wedding, which is the whole point of me getting to know him in the first place.
I take myself out of Copper Valley and drive an hour or so to reach the Blue Ridge Mountains and go hiking for an afternoon after that, because I need the break from my break.
It feels like both seventeen years and also like a blink of an eye by the day Luca’s supposed to be home again.
Kids are back in school. The weather’s getting comfortably chilly at night, and the kitchen is the perfect spot to sit and write with the windows open now that we’re well into September.
And that’s exactly where I am when my phone rings near dusk.
It’s Elsa, and her due date is approaching, so of course, I drop everything and answer.
And I immediately wish I hadn’t.
She’s not in labor. No one’s hurt. Nothing like that. No one’s dying, no children were stung by bees or fell down a well.
It’s just…
Well, it might be Elsa being Elsa, and this time, she’s completely broken me.
I manage to hold myself together until I can get her off the phone over an hour later, and as soon as I’ve hung up, I wish Nonna was here, because I need a hug.
I need a hug so bad that I’d ask Nonna to be my Nonna for five minutes and hug me.
Okay, confession: Nonna’s not my first choice of who I’m wishing was here.
But I’m pretending like she is, because I can’t handle wishing for Luca on top of handling the bomb that Elsa dropped.
I could call Mackenzie, or Marisol, or Tanesha, except they wouldn’t get it.
Not the way my writer besties will. So I log onto my computer and send an SOS to a couple close professional friends.
In ten minutes, I’m huddled at Luca’s kitchen table, a fan blowing on me because I’m so upset I’m sweating despite the cooler temperatures, my favorite glittery Addicted to Love Stories coffee mug filled to the brim with hot chocolate, and my laptop open while my three friends log onto our video chat.
Dorothea is first, and yes, that Dorothea. The one that Luca nicknamed Granny Romance, the one whose blow job paragraph I accidentally sent to him, and the woman who’s responsible for half the hot flashes around the world.
Katharine James-Taylor follows almost immediately. She’s British, in her mid-forties, married with two kids, living in Montana—don’t ask—and writes dark romantic suspense that makes me worry about her sometimes.
Last to join us, though only by like four seconds, is Jen Persimmon, pen name Jack M. Hughes, and yes, I mean that Jack M. Hughes who writes legal thrillers, and if you tell anyone he’s actually a woman, I’ll never speak to you again. Jen and her wife, Lin, just adopted their third baby, so I didn’t expect her to hop on so quick, but here we are.
“Henri, I love you, but if you’re telling us you’re engaged again—” Jen starts.
“Wait, that’s my line,” Dorothea interrupts.
“Elsa’s writing romance novels,” I say, and then I burst into tears.
It’s ugly.
I’m embarrassed.
I know I’m overreacting, but all three of my friends gasp and stare at me in horror through the computer screen, and maybe I’m not overreacting.
“No.” Katharine leans closer to her camera. “Why—when?”
“Right?” I sob.
Jen leans back and crosses her arms, tapping her fingers slowly over her biceps. “I’ve met a hacker or two. Want me to take care of her computer?”
“Not necessary.” Katharine smiles, and she manages to smile in a way that’s both deviously terrifying and also as soothing as her voice, which I could listen to basically all day, with or without the accent. “She’ll find out soon enough that writing a book is harder than it appears.”
“Romance novels,” I repeat. “She could’ve written self-help. Or a yoga book. Or a memoir. Or a new kind of planner. But no. She says she has to write romance novels. But none of that silly paranormal stuff. She’s writing a modern-day romance where the heroine dies.”
Katharine drops her teacup, mutters what the fuck in that lovely British accent that makes it sound like she’s asked if you’d like to take a stroll through the park, and disappears from view.
“Isn’t the whole point of a romance novel that they all live happily ever after?” Jen asks.
I’m hiccupping now. I’m crying so hard I’m hiccupping. “She’s going to be—hic!—famous and—and everyone—hic!—will think she writes b—bet—better romances than me when—hic!—she doesn’t write romance at all.”