Chapter 16
Amir
With the game over, it was impossible to keep my focus on anything but the disaster that waited for me. I paced while Shawn said some bullshit about our loss. Sure, it sucked, but I wasn’t going to dwell on the scores too much. Once the season started, we’d all think about it night and day.
I couldn’t bring myself to shower when we were finally given the go-ahead to leave.
After grabbing my bag, I rushed out of the building, looking in every direction to make sure there were no sleazy reporters lurking around.
Clara would’ve no doubt noticed my family since she was committed to stalking me for the foreseeable future.
Remi had sent me a text telling me where to meet them—some restaurant not too far from the hotel. Ever since then, though, he hadn’t responded to me. He read the damn messages, so I was fuming internally over the whole thing. Being surprised, then left in the dark, was enough to drive a man crazy.
The place I pulled up to wasn’t something I would have chosen. It was rundown and the parking lot was bumpier than a rural backroad. I had no idea what kind of cuisine they served, but I assumed it would give me food poisoning.
Maybe it’d be nice to have an excuse to take tomorrow off.
When I got out of the car, I locked it twice, just to be sure. Since I hadn’t showered, it was probably a good thing he’d chosen this hole in the wall. Once I stepped inside and was hit with the incredible smell, I decided food poisoning could actually be worth it.
The three of them were at a table in the corner.
Avery seemed somewhat out of place, but she didn’t look miserable while Remi talked, using his hands for emphasis.
As Mal wrote in her notebook, I tried to identify how she felt.
I knew my daughter well enough to assume that I’d have to pry a bit to figure it out.
Remi spotted me and said something to Avery before he got up. I started toward them, but he shook his head once. When he reached me, I noticed that he wasn’t quite as easygoing as he’d appeared back at the table. He smiled, but there was a pinch to his brows and his walk seemed forced.
“What’s stuck up your ass?” I asked.
He gave me a mocking laugh. “Don’t look so disgusted by me. There are eyes on us.”
I didn’t bother to check behind him. Avery would no doubt be assessing the situation.
It was only natural, and I’d probably do the same whenever she started dating.
Maybe she already was, although we’d agreed to be open with each other about it, out of respect and because of Mal.
Yet, as far as she was aware, I’d broken that promise on my end, so she didn’t really have a reason to keep it.
“Why’d you bring them here?”
“Because it’s the best spot around.”
I glanced at the old walls and tacky décor. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Ask Reddit, not Google, you clueless bat fucker.”
“Yeah, let’s not add that to our vocabulary.”
“It sounded better in my head. Anyway, I don’t want to keep them waiting, so let me run everything by you.
Avery and I are getting along just fine, even though there’s an assload of awkwardness floating around between us.
Your spawn is shy as hell and didn’t crack a smile when I made a poem for her. Also, she knows about us.”
“What?” My stomach flipped as I glanced at her. She was watching me already, and when I smiled, she returned it before she went back to her notebook. “Why would you tell her?”
He scoffed. “Me? My lips were sealed. How she found out is a question for you and your family.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. It was your fault that guy in the eighth inning got to home, Mal thinks I’m a gold digger, and they’re both staying at the apartment tonight.” He clapped his hands together. “And that’s it.”
“Wait, go back.”
“No, I don’t think we need to.”
“We absolutely need to. What do you mean they’re staying with us?”
His lips twisted to the side. “You don’t want to revisit the gold digger bit?”
“Not nearly as much as the other thing.”
“Okay, you’re right. I shouldn’t have blamed you. Baseball is a multifaceted game, and to be honest, I still don’t fully understand it.”
“Remi.”
“Fine, I don’t understand it one bit except for throw ball, hit ball, run for your life.”
“Remi.”
“By Odin’s one good eye.” He sighed. “Avery was clearly struggling with the boundaries of this whole thing, so I offered them our spare room.”
“Oh, that’s how we solve a boundaries issue, huh? We don’t have a spare room.”
He scrunched up his nose, and if I wasn’t on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I might have found it cute.
“Not to worry,” he said, sounding incredibly confident. “Our mutual friend is taking care of it as we speak, making a little switcheroo with my things.”
“Our mutual friend?”
“Tall, beautiful complexion, the strength of a boar, the hand of da Vinci, more agreeable than you or I.”
“Roman, agreeable?” I snorted. “His boyfriend would both kill and die for him, but even he calls him an asshole.”
“I happen to find him lovely. Maybe you and Trav are the real monsters.”
I swiped a hand down my face. Somewhere in the midst of all this, there was a silver lining. Looking over at Mal, I decided it was right there.
“Kiss me, darling,” Remi said in a posh accent. “We’ve got a crowd to please.”
“I should tell Avery.”
He frowned. “Why haven’t you, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sure she wouldn’t rat you out?”
I blinked a few times. “Of course she wouldn’t. We may be divorced, but we never stopped being a team.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“If you believe it, I believe it.”
He leaned closer, and somewhat reluctantly, I met him halfway. After a quick peck for appearances, I made sure to keep my expression clear so nobody would think I was angry. Even though I was.
“Maybe you could, uh, clear up that gold digger thing when you get a chance,” he suggested as he ran his fingers through his hair.
“What’s the point? None of this is real anyway.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”
After clearing his throat, he turned around. When I reached the table, I leaned down to kiss Avery on the cheek. Mal jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around me so suddenly that I laughed.
“Hey, you really managed to surprise me,” I said.
“Are you mad?”
“Of course not. Just . . . surprised.” I sat beside Remi, across from Mal, then opened my menu. “Interesting place, huh?”
Avery gave me a knowing look. “The man who owns it seems very sweet.”
“It smells fabulous,” Remi said with his nose buried in his menu. “That’s good enough for me.”
“We’ll see how my gut feels tonight,” I muttered.
“I got food poisoning at an Applebee’s. I trust Federico far more than all those places where everyone hates their job.”
“Fair enough, I guess.”
A middle-aged man with greying hair rushed over to our table wearing a bright smile. “Everyone’s here now?” When we nodded, he clicked his pen. “What are we having?”
Everyone ordered except for Mal. When he came to her, she glanced at him only briefly, then blinked down at her notebook.
“Do you have anything simple?” I asked. “She’s . . . picky.” I wrinkled my nose, hating the word but knowing it was the best explanation at the moment.
“Cheese quesadilla,” Federico replied. “Empanaditas with chicken or cheese. I can do grilled chicken strips with rice.”
I tapped my finger on the edge of Mal’s notebook. “What do you think?”
Trailing her pinky across her lower lip, her gaze moved around the table. “Quesadilla.” She looked at Federico without meeting his eyes. “Please.”
“Coming up.”
Once he was gone, I nudged Mal’s foot with mine. When she gave me her attention, I offered her a smile. “How’d I play today?”
Her head tipped left, then right as she thought about it. “Good. But you messed up twice.”
“The third inning, huh? I should’ve caught that ball.”
She nodded once. “And the eighth.”
Remi snickered beside me. He had an ‘I told you so’ look on his face that made my lips twitch.
“Some of those guys are slippery,” I said. “Can’t catch them all.”
“You can.”
“I’ll get them in the next one. Just because you believe in me.”
She grunted and started writing again. “Cringey.”
With a chuckle, I turned my attention to Avery. She was staring out the window, but after a second, she looked at me.
“You did great,” she said. “As you always do.”
“Thanks.”
With that, the table fell into silence. I shifted my attention at intervals, unsure what part of this was the most awkward. There were a dozen things I needed to bring up between the three of them, and I dreaded each one in its own way.
Truthfully, I had no idea what things looked like going forward, nor did I know what they should look like. As I’d told Remi, under the surface this whole thing was fake. But there was more than one layer beneath this facade, and I didn’t know which ones were closest to collapsing.
Remi wasn’t supposed to meet Avery, and especially not Mallory, yet here we were.
We weren’t supposed to be intimate behind closed doors, but that ship had capsized.
I wasn’t supposed to be interested in the stranger behind the bar who listened to odd music and had deceptively keen eyes, and here I was letting him have dinner with my family while I wondered what else he’d written in that notebook of his.
Where did those words come from? How many layers existed between what lived on the outside and what he kept in his heart? What about the things that lived all the way down in his soul?
Wonderful. I was becoming pathetic. If I wasn’t careful, I’d start speaking in unsolicited verse.
It wasn’t until after our food came that I managed to shake off the burst of melancholy.
“I heard you’re staying with us,” I said.
Mal smiled a little. “Is there room for my cars?”
“Of course there is. It’s the same place we stayed a couple years ago. Remember?”
She nodded once. “How high?”
“Eleventh.”
Her nose wrinkled, but she didn’t comment on it.
“Is something wrong with the eleventh?” Remi asked, trying to sound cheerful. “Don’t tell me it’s haunted.”
When she didn’t look at him, I thought about what he’d said when I first got here.
Now that I’d had a chance to calm down, the gold digger comment made me frown.
If it had been anyone else, maybe even Avery, I might not have paid much attention to it.
People tended to make assumptions when you had a job like mine—money like mine.
But this was Mal. She wasn’t cruel or judgmental.
I didn’t know how she’d figured out who Remi was. She must’ve seen it online, or she could’ve heard about it. From whom?
Glancing at Avery, I took in the neutral expression she had on her face as she listened to Remi tell a story about a house he’d lived in that had a tire swing. It used to move on its own, but he insisted it wasn’t the wind.
She and I had been together since we were too young to know what love was about. We learned together. I just hadn’t figured out what I was about back then.
Did she hold onto resentment? Were we more at odds than I’d originally thought?
The idea sat uncomfortably in my stomach, and the food in front of me no longer felt appetizing. When I set my fork down, Remi’s hand settled on my leg beneath the table. Only a second later, he started to draw it back, but I grabbed it and held it in place.
I couldn’t rightly say why or how, but I found it easier to focus on what was in front of me.
“Can I see?” I asked, tapping Mal’s notebook.
She hesitated for a moment before she turned it around and folded her hands on the table.
I started to read, and a smile slid onto my face as I turned to the picture she’d drawn on the next page.
The handful of times she’d hung out with Roman had done a lot for her art.
I’d have to send him a gift or something.
When I’d finished all of the pages she’d written since I last saw her, I shut the notebook. She didn’t meet my eyes, but I knew that she was paying attention.
“It’s amazing, Mal. I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
She smiled and took it back, but she left it closed while she finished her food.
When Federico came over with the check, I pulled out my wallet. Remi tutted at me and snatched the little tray.
“My treat.”
“You’re paying?” I looked at him incredulously.
“Don’t be so surprised.”
It was probably rude, but I was surprised. Even more so when he whipped out a familiar metallic blue card and set it on the tray.
“Really?” I murmured.
“My treat,” he repeated with a wink.
I shook my head, but then the laughter set in. His fingers dug into my leg, and I didn’t know if it was to shut me up or because he knew how ridiculous he was.
“Make sure you tip well,” I said.
“I’m a service worker. Of course I’ll tip well.”
Feeling eyes on me, I lifted my gaze to meet Avery’s.
Instead of shying away from her appraisal, I remained exactly as I was.
I let my fingers slide over Remi’s thigh, which brought me a comfort that was less unexpected than it should have been.
She was the first one to look away, and I didn’t know if that was a win or a loss.
I didn’t want anything here to be a battle, but I’d seen these situations play out enough times with other people that I knew it was a possibility.
Whether it was with Remi or someone else down the line, this had to happen eventually. One way or another, we’d make it out the other side. I just had to pray my family wouldn’t be battered and bruised when we did.