Since We’ve No Place to Go (Sweet as Sugar Maple)

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

LIESEL

I look at my boarding pass as if the power of my glare alone will make this airplane leave on time.

“Attention, all passengers. Blue Horizon Airlines flight 211 to Phoenix has been delayed. Blue Horizon Airlines flight 211 from Chicago to Phoenix has been delayed. The new departure time is 9 a.m.”

Cool. It’s cool. I’ve only been here since 5 a.m., and everything.

What good is arriving at the airport two hours before a flight if they can go and delay you an extra hour? Again?

I sigh and walk to the seating area to wait. The airport is decorated for Christmas. The terminal’s main atrium is decked in huge garland, beautiful red bows, and white lights in the shape of flying birds so iconic, they belong in a movie (Home Alone 2, anyone?).

I’m glad I’m not in the main atrium.

But even this boarding area is too festive for my taste, and the passengers are wearing far too much red and green. Blech.

I glance around the seating area. It’s completely full, but I spot a couple getting up to leave, and I wait with the determination of a predator. The couple smiles as they pass me at the end of the aisle, and I swoop in.

At the same time, a tall, athletic guy in a red Christmas cowboy hat—complete with a buckle and white fur trim—comes from the other end of the aisle. He drops to one of the two empty seats, and I walk toward the other. Not ideal, but it’s the only other seat in the entire terminal.

I’m about to take the remaining seat when he sets his carry-on in the open chair.

Who does that? The airport is packed!

“Whew,” he says to the passenger next to him. “That was lucky. I thought I’d missed my flight. Good thing it was delayed!”

Good thing it was delayed? This is the second delay!

I stand in front of the extra seat. He pulls up his phone. All I can see is the top of his stupid Santa-inspired Stetson.

The man doesn’t look up.

I tap my foot and clear my throat.

Nothing.

“Excuse me,” I say. I touch his strong shoulder, because his attention is fixed on whatever article he’s reading.

“Yes?” His face flits up too fast for me to catch more than a glimpse of a beard and a face tat.

You heard me: he has a tattoo on his face.

A Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer face tattoo.

I look at the chair, because the colorful Rudolph covering every remaining inch of his left cheek above his beard and beneath his hat is too distracting.

“You set your bag down in the last open seat in the boarding area. Can I sit here?”

“Oh, sure.” He moves his bag underneath his chair, and I sit next to him.

And because I’m annoyed, I call my best friend. She answers on the second ring.

“Hey, I’m almost at the hospital, so I only have five minutes before work,” she says. “What’s up?”

“Jules, why am I like this?”

“You mean smart and gorgeous?”

“Not that smart. I’ve been at the airport for hours. And I’m still here.”

“Flight delayed?” she asks.

“Delayed again.”

“Fortune favors the prepared, sweetie.”

“Not my fortune. Fortune hates me.”

“It’ll catch up eventually. I’m sorry about the delay. I know how much you’ve been looking forward to your big retreat.”

“Thanks.”

“What do you need from me right now? Commiseration? A pep talk?”

“A proverbial slap will do just fine,” I say. The guy next to me shifts, but I physically can’t care what a guy in a Santa Stetson with a Christmas face tattoo thinks.

“Okay, proverbial slap it is,” she says. “Pull yourself together! Your flight was delayed. So what? Would you rather have paced around the apartment worrying about whether or not you’d be late? No. You’re fine. You can wait a couple more hours to wow the entire baseball world.”

“I’m not going to wow anyone.”

“Not with that attitude, you’re not. Now go splash some cold water on your face, find a Coconut Cream Dr. Pepper, and snap out of it.”

“You want me to wash my makeup off? Are you insane?”

Juliet laughs. “I gotta go. See you when you get back. Oh, and Nate and I sent a couple of surprises to the resort to cheer you on.”

“Please tell me they’re small.”

“I can confidently say both are smaller than a breadbox.”

“Phew,” I say. “Now go nurse your face off!”

“That does not sound how you think it sounds,” Juliet says.

“It really doesn’t,” I agree, cringing. “Have a great day at work, Nurse Jules!”

“Better. Love you!”

“Byeeee.”

I feel better after talking to my friend. She’s getting married in a couple of months, so our time as roommates is coming to an end. And I hate it.

So I refuse to think about it.

Refusing to think about things that cause me pain is my go-to coping tactic. I manage this with distraction, avoidance, and by always, always taking extra work home with me.

Like right now, for instance. Some people would take out a book and make their airport time their self-care time, but I don’t believe in self-care, because self-care leaves time for thinking, and thinking leaves time for grieving, and I don’t have time for that.

So instead, I take out my laptop and pull up a color-coded spreadsheet I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into over the last eleven months. Less the blood.

“What’s that?” Face Tattoo says.

I angle it away from him. “It’s something for work, but it’s proprietary. Sorry.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Stats,” I say vaguely.

“You do stats? For what company?”

“Just some company.” I shut my laptop. I try to look him in the eye, but his weird Rudolph tattoo stares back at me, and I have to avert my gaze.

“Oh, wow, are you like a spy, or something? Is that why you can’t talk about it?”

“I’d be a pretty terrible spy if I opened a secret document in a crowded airport.”

“But only a slightly less terrible statistician for opening a secret document in one?”

He has a point, and I already hate him a bit for it. I put my laptop away.

“Maybe you don’t travel much for work, but in general, there’s an unspoken traveler’s code where people don’t look at other people’s computer screens,” I say.

“You must travel a lot more than I do, because in my experience, almost everyone is paying attention to what other people are doing.”

“No one cares about other people. They care about themselves, just like you do.”

“Like me?”

“I mean in general,” I say. “Everyone’s too busy worrying about themselves to worry about other people.”

“I can think of a few exceptions,” he says darkly.

Okay, then.

Two TV screens hang near enough that I can turn my attention to either of them and away from Face Tattoo. One is showing a Hallmark Christmas movie, and the other is showing sports. I angle my face to the one showing sports.

Yes, it might be Christmas season, but more importantly, it’s “Hot Stove Season”—the time when no baseball is played, but every team is busy making trades and getting their roster ready for the upcoming season. The sportscasters are offering predictions about what different teams will do. My team— the Chicago Firebirds—is on everyone’s minds, because at the beginning of last season, we acquired the cockiest jerk in all of baseball for a monster contract. And he got injured during the last game of the league championship series.

I’m glad I don’t work directly with players, because I’d have given him so many pieces of my mind, I’d be brain-dead.

“You a fan?” he asks.

I keep looking at the TV. “I live in Chicago. Everyone’s a baseball fan.”

“No, I mean of Coop.”

“Cooper Kellogg? Not remotely. The guy is a classless, overpaid punk.”

“How do you really feel, though?”

I scoff. “He signed a ten year, five hundred million dollar contract! No way is he worth fifty million a year.”

“You know half of that’s deferred,” Face Tattoo says. “He won’t get the other half until he’s well into retirement.”

“Are you mansplaining baseball contracts to me?”

“I’m pointing out what most fans don’t realize.”

“I’m not most fans.”

“Ah, okay. Good for you.”

I’m so tired of men thinking they know baseball better than I do. I would look at him, but between the low hat and the beard, there’s nothing but Rudolph. “I know you probably think because you have an XY chromosome that a little ol’ girl could never know more than you, but I work in the sport. I grew up around it. I’ve forgotten more about baseball than you’ll ever know.”

“Sounds like you have a bad memory.”

THIS GUY.

“You want to talk about your boy Cooper Kellogg? There are probably a half dozen players in the league who aren’t half as pretty who deserve twice the pay, deferred or not,” I say.

“You think he’s that good looking? It’s the jaw, right? He has a great jaw.”

If I were a cartoon character, steam would come off me. “Are you even a Firebirds fan?”

“You could say that.”

“We should have moved Cahill to third, called up a Minor League player, and waited a year to trade for Hideo Suzuki, instead.”

“Suzuki? You gotta be kidding me. Coop hit fifty-two homers last season, ten more than Suzuki!”

“Yet Suzuki batted in almost as many runs.”

“So now Coop is to be blamed for other players not being able to get on base?”

I wheel on him, staring Rudolph right in the face. Face Tattoo is a lot taller than me, and he’s still looking at the screen, the brat. The least he can do is look at me looking at his tattoo while I put him in his place. “Coop blew a kiss to an opposing pitcher after he hit a homer off him.”

The guy snorts, eyes fixed on the TV. “That was funny.”

“Then he did a backflip at home plate.”

“Funny and agile. Who knew Coop could do a backflip?”

“Everyone! Because he pulls that kind of crap constantly!”

“Crap? The fans love it.”

“The opposing teams don’t. It puts a target on the entire Firebirds lineup.”

“They were playing their biggest rivals. The pitcher was mouthing off all week to the press about how Coop wouldn’t get a hit off him. So when Coop launched a bomb, he played it up for the fans. Besides, you’re missing the point: he hit the home run.” He shifts, tipping his head to the side so I get even more of Rudolph. “And if you’re so worried about budget, keep in mind that following Coop’s little stunt, he sold more jerseys than any player in the league and attendance spiked for the rest of the season. Guess who pocketed the lion’s share of that money? The team.”

I narrow my eyes and turn back to the TV. I never thought of it that way. The sportscasters have turned this into a piece about Cooper Kellogg’s historic rise. On the cover of Sports Illustrated at seventeen, hailed as baseball’s next big thing. The guy was famous before he even graduated high school. “It was disrespectful.”

“Ah. You’re a baseball purist.”

“So?”

“So you think the game should never change, even as the world does.”

“I don’t mind changes,” I say. “I mind hotshots.”

“Coop gets people talking about baseball.”

“No, he gets people talking about him.” I point to the screen. “Heaven forbid a week pass where Cooper Kellogg isn’t a bigger story than his team.”

“People love him.”

“People don’t know him like I know him,” I say, a jagged edge to my words.

A laugh jumps from his lips. “You know Cooper Kellogg?”

I glower, hating his line of questioning as much as his stupid tattoo. “Let’s just say I have personal experience with him.”

“Why does that sound like code for you hit on him, and he turned you down?”

My pulse hammers in my ears loud enough to block out all background noise. “It’s. Not.”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

I could scream. “I’m so sick of you Cooper apologists! Like he isn’t in everyone’s face enough!”

“At least no one forgets about him.”

The finality in his tone … the jagged edge to his words …

I look him fully in the eye, and this time, he looks at me.

And.

I.

Want.

To.

Die.

The hot ire in my chest becomes oily and weighted, pulling from my neck and ears and sinking me deep into the ground.

Bright brown eyes pierce me beneath the hat, above the beard, and past the festive face tattoo, which I can now see is fake.

“You’re Cooper Kellogg,” I croak.

He gives me a wry smile. “Finally caught on, did you?”

My pulse thumps so hard in my chest, it saps all the strength from my voice. “You’re wearing a surprisingly effective disguise.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Not that effective.”

“You have a face tattoo,” I say, trying to laugh. “Believe me: it’s that effective.”

He taps it with his finger. “Good to know. I bought a ten pack hoping they’d do the trick. Kind of odd for a dude who ‘has to make sure people are talking about him,’ isn’t it?”

I fiddle with an earring, twisting the diamonds. I know I hate him, and all, and I work in baseball, so this shouldn’t be a big deal, but … he’s still COOPER KELLOGG.

Be cool, Liesel.

I wrinkle my nose. “I’m sorry for what I said?—”

“No you’re not,” he says, though he’s not glaring at me, which is generous of him. “You’re sorry you said the quiet part out loud. People love to hate Cooper Kellogg. But no one cares why he does what he does. No one cares how he feels.”

The oily guilt in my veins spreads into my limbs and cheeks. How often does stuff like this happen to him? He was sitting in an airport, having a casual conversation, and a fan started bashing him without even realizing he was right there. He did nothing to deserve that. “I’m sorry. This is your life, not just a story on the news. How do you feel?”

“Thanks for asking,” he says. Then he grins, showing his teeth. “Really good. I’m so freaking rich.”

I pop like a Christmas cracker.

“You are unbelievable!” I say, jumping to my feet.

He grins and takes off his hat. “That’s what Sports Center tells me.”

“Holy crap, you’re Cooper Kellogg!” The guy across from us says. And suddenly, everyone is spotting him.

I grab my bag and storm off, unwilling to spend another second around the man.

When I turn back with my most withering glare, he’s surrounded by fans and waving at me.

Oh, and he’s put his carry-on back on my seat.