My neighbor, that was who.
Dallas’s face was tipped to the side when I peeked through the peephole. Letting out a long breath through my nose, I thought about not answering but then changed my mind. I was going to have to see him again soon anyway. Why the hell not get it over with? Maybe he’d forgotten what I said, and if he hadn’t… too fucking bad, I guessed. I couldn’t take it back now.
“Hi,” I said, opening the door wide. He was still dressed in the clothing I’d seen him in during practice, except he wasn’t wearing a baseball cap. I still had his in my car.
“You got a second to talk?” he went right out and asked, his hands loose at his sides.
Was he going to tell me we couldn’t be friends anymore? I knew I was bossy and hardheaded. I was well aware I wasn’t the easiest person to get along with sometimes either. But he wouldn’t be telling me to fuck off now, would he?
Dallas took a step forward, the tips of his worn tennis shoes crossing over into the doorframe, pretty much stopping me from closing the door in his face. His hand went to the back of his neck. He looked tired and tanner than he had before I’d left. “I called you.”
Where was he going with this? “I know. I was just… busy. I’m sorry. I was going to call you back, but every time I remembered, it was already late here.”
The deep, slow breath he let out seemed to hit my chest. “You didn’t come to any of the practices in two weeks. You never answered the door any time I knocked.” He paused, his eyes zeroing in on my face. “You left the game that day. I was going to give you some space, but I didn’t see you after that and I was worried.”
He’d knocked on my door too? “I was out of town, that’s all.” I blinked, making sure to keep my facial expression even. “We’re fine. You didn’t do anything to me.” It was me who had made an idiot out of myself. “I’m sorry for making you worry.”
The relief seemed to punch through the lines of his shoulders. “We’re fine?”
If he wasn’t going to make this weird, neither was I. “Yeah.” Then I said the words that made my throat itch like hell. “Of course we’re all right. We’re friends. Want to come in? I have beer.”
Chapter Seventeen
Josh had just walked up to the mound to pitch when my mom decided to lean into me. “He’s hitting better?” she asked like he hadn’t already been hitting awesome before.
I nodded, keeping my eyes on the eleven-year-old on base. Almost two weeks had passed since I’d gotten home from visiting Vanessa in California. I’d been busier than hell. This was supposed to be my weekend off with the boys, but I’d needed to catch up on appointments I’d had to cancel while I was gone, and the Larsens had offered to pick up Josh and Louie that morning so they could take him to his tournament, leaving me to work. When my last client of the day called and cancelled at the last minute, Sean and I made the executive decision to close the salon an hour early. The tournament Josh’s team was playing that weekend was luckily only a half hour drive, and I’d gotten back fast enough so that they had only played—and won—against two teams after their pool games. This was the first time since I’d gotten back that I’d been able to make it to anything baseball related; I’d been having to stay late to catch up with all the clients I’d had to reschedule.
The Larsens had stayed through the first four games before heading out when I’d shown up, with my parents showing up immediately afterward. This was also the first time I’d gotten to spend more than ten minutes with my parents in over a month, too. Things were still weird between my mom and I. She would never admit she had taken something too far, and I wasn’t going to back down from my feelings. I didn’t regret or feel bad about going to visit my best friend and her baby, no matter what she said or thought.
“Yeah. His batting coach is great and the coaches have been working with him a lot during practice, too.”
The coaches. I couldn’t help but kind of glance over at a specific coach standing by third base with his arms over his chest. I hadn’t seen much of him since that night he’d come over when I got back. He’d come inside with me and drank the last beer in the fridge while I’d told him about visiting my best friend. He hadn’t been able to believe whom she was married to. While I checked on Josh first, Louie had come out of his room and invited Dallas to sit with him while I told him his daily Rodrigo story.
“Who are the coaches again?” my mom asked, dragging me back to the present and away from the mental image of my neighbor sitting on one side of Louie’s bed while I’d been on the other as I told him about the time my brother had thought he’d lost his phone but had left it inside the refrigerator on accident.
I side-eyed her and somehow managed not to shake my head. My parents didn’t come to as many of Josh’s games like the Larsens and I did, but they had gone to enough so that she should know more. The thing was, when Josh had first started talking about playing sports, both my parents had complained. Why not soccer? So I’d said, “Because he doesn’t want to play soccer.” After so many years, you would figure they’d get over it and accept that he was a natural at baseball, but these stubborn-asses I’d been born to hadn’t.
I pointed at Trip first, who was standing by first base and then slowly, more than a little resigned, at the big man standing closest to us.
“Why does he look familiar?”
I eyed her again, not fooled by her question. “You met him at the party.” This woman had the memory of an elephant; she didn’t forget shit. She still brought up things I’d done when I was a kid that, for some reason or another, still made her mad from time to time.
“Oh.”
I didn’t like the way she said “oh.” So I waited.
“The one with all the tattoos?” she asked in Spanish.
All the tattoos? They only went to his elbow. “Si.”
She said it again, “Oh.”
If I didn’t know my mom the way I knew her, I’d assume she was indifferent about Dallas. But I did know her. And for some reason, her “oh” while referring to him didn’t sit well with me.
In front of us, Josh got into position on the base and hit the ball straight between third and second, jetting way into the outfield so far I jumped up to my feet to cheer him on. Vaguely, I noticed my mom raise her hands in the air and start clapping. But it wasn’t until I sat down as Josh’s feet hit the third base that she finally said what I should have known she would say.
“I don’t think all those tattoos are good to have around kids, no?”
I groaned. “Tattoos don’t jump out and attack people, Mamá.”