His laugh reminded me so much of Ginny, in that moment, it seemed like I’d known Trip half my life. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.”
“You’re a damn liar.” I snorted at him, smiling seriously.
The more he laughed, the more the edges of us not knowing each other chiseled away and made me feel like we were friends already. “Gin already told me to pretend you were married and had warts all over your face.” His hands went up to pat the stained white T-shirt he had on. Something told me she wasn’t the first person in his life to make that distinction clear to him. “She said her scissors would slip or some shit like that if I tried anything.”
Oh, Ginny. I wasn’t sure how I got so lucky to not just have one great friend, but to have two just seemed like a blessing not many people got in their lives. “You don’t mess with a girl and her shears.” I raised my hand and made snipping motions with my index and middle finger, eyebrows raised.
“I know how to behave.”
I eyed him. “I don’t believe you.”
The smirk on his handsome face, all five o’clock shadow and yellow-gray hair, confirmed just how full of shit he was. At least he wasn’t going to bother continuing. And now that the ground rules between us had been set into place, it made me feel even more at ease with him.
“How’s Josh likin’ the team?” he asked, as if sensing that our lines had been drawn.
I told him the truth. “Good. He’s ready to start competing.” I had already started mentally preparing myself for sitting through game after game, hour after hour, for the next chunk of my life. Competitive baseball was probably one of the hardest things I’d had to adapt to when I first got Josh.
“How long has he been playing?”
“Since… tee-ball when he was three.” That was almost eight years ago. I’d been almost twenty-two when he’d started. If that didn’t have the ability to make me feel like life had flown by, I didn’t know what could.
“Your boy’s got that look in his eye. I kinda feel like a dumbass now that I never paid much attention to Gin when she’d bring up her coworker’s boy that played.”
I shrugged. At least he knew he should feel dumb. “She said your son is on the team too. Which one is he?” I’d been trying to figure out which of the boys on the team was his son, but I hadn’t put it together yet. Both coaches were always surrounded by at least two boys, and maybe I hadn’t paid enough attention, but I hadn’t caught him singling one out more than the others.
“Dean. Yellow hair. Hyper. Never stops talking.”
There was a dark blond boy on the team who had been a giant goofball even during tryouts. At practice the day before, he’d been singing theme songs each time a different boy went up to bat during practice. “And you have another one, don’t you?”
Trip made a sound in his throat. “He’s two. I don’t get to see him much,” he admitted so easily I wasn’t sure how to take it. His tone hadn’t changed, but… well, I didn’t know him well enough to be sure if there was something else hidden under there, but there easily could have been. Trip didn’t know I knew he had kids with different people, and I wasn’t positive how much he would like Ginny telling me things like that, even if it hadn’t been with bad intentions or a lack of affection on her part. She was just watching out for me.
The line behind me moved until I was next.
“You only got your two boys?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “They’re actually my—”
His phone started ringing, and he winked at me as he reached into his pocket. “Gimme a sec,” he said, bringing it up to his face and answering.
I turned around to give him some privacy, promising myself I’d tell him about the boys some other time.
*
“Who is it that we don’t like?”
I almost snorted out the water I’d been in the middle of drinking.
“Cat got your tongue, Di?” the older man chuckled, slapping me on the back as I coughed for breath after his question.
Louie, who was sitting on the other side of his grandpa on the same bleachers as us leaned over, his face all worried and soft. “Tia, you okay?”
I coughed and then coughed some more, the hand I’d slapped over my mouth to keep from spitting on the people in front of us, coming off more than a little wet from what I hadn’t been able to catch. I looked at Mr. Larsen out of the corner of my eye, trying so hard not to laugh, and nodded at Lou. “I think a bug flew into my mouth, Goo. I’m all right.”
He winced. “I hate it when they do that. They don’t taste like chicken.”
What the hell?
Before I could ask him why he would assume bugs tasted like chicken, Mr. Larsen shot me a horrified expression that we shared for a moment. He raised his shoulders and I raised them right back. I was going to blame his side of the family for that. Then I whispered to the older man, “She isn’t here. They aren’t letting her come to two practices. It was only me that got suspended from one.”
He had “oohed” and “ahhed,” a total sport after I’d had to admit to him why I couldn’t take Josh to practice. Without missing a beat, he asked afterward, “What time does he need to be there?” My love for the Larsens didn’t know an end or a beginning. I had a big family, but sometimes you met people who fit so perfectly into your life, you couldn’t imagine them ever not being a part of it. And these two people went above and beyond. Their ability to love knew no bounds.
The next hour flew by with us running commentary on Josh’s practice and how much he was improving since he’d started getting help from additional coaches a year ago. I’d gotten off work and headed straight to the facility, despite knowing the Larsens were going to keep the boys tonight and take them to school the next morning. When Trip and Dallas called the boys into a circle to dismiss them, we all got up and headed toward the gap in the fence by the field to wait.
Josh kind of grinned when he spotted us afterward but didn’t run screaming or anything. I liked to tell myself he was excited to see us, but he was just growing up. The days of him screaming “Diana!” at the top of his lungs every time he saw me were over. He let us pat him on the back before immediately saying, “I’m hungry.”
I had already waved at Trip earlier when he’d tipped his chin up at me through the other side of the fence, our conversation still fresh in my mind. It had bothered me a little when he had made the comment about Dallas feeling off around women who flirted with him. Was it just because he was technically still married or whatever the hell the situation was? That didn’t offend me at all—honestly, it was probably the exact opposite now that I knew the truth—we were going to see each other pretty often. I didn’t like drama and awkwardness, and definitely didn’t want to face it a minimum of twice a week for who knows how long all because he’d gotten the wrong impression of me.