1. Cal #2
I checked the weather app on my phone. Okay, maybe I was overreacting a smidge because it wasn’t supposed to drop below the high sixties today. But October could be unpredictable, so wearing a sweater never hurt.
Was I a helicopter parent? Textbook, baby. But she was all I had, so sue me for being a little protective.
Whisking the milk into the powdered pancake mix, I slipped a spoonful of cottage cheese in for extra protein. Khia had yet to tell the difference, so I was calling that a parenting win.
Last week, I'd experimented with adding pureed spinach, and that was a no go. Baby steps.
I scooped the first batch of batter onto the griddle, the fragrant smell of browning butter filling the kitchen. I took that first life-changing sip of coffee and hummed in appreciation as the caffeine hit my bloodstream.
My phone vibrated with a text on the counter, and I sighed. The moment of quiet was nice while it lasted.
MYLES:
You good to carpool?
Myles Delavan was my second best friend (after Grey, of course), fellow teammate with the Chargers, and my brother-in-law since he’d married my baby sister, Juliet, almost two years ago.
ME:
you driving or jules
MYLES:
Me. Jules’s car is in Grey’s shop getting the fan belt fixed.
ME:
pancakes
MYLES:
Was that a question? I couldn’t tell with the flagrant lack of punctuation.
ME:
obviously
and aren’t we fancy using big words
MYLES:
*eye roll emoji*
Chocolate chip.
ME:
you wound me
MYLES:
I have no idea what you’re talking about. *smirk emoji*
Jules says blueberry.
ME:
at least my sister loves me
MYLES:
She loves me more.
ME:
im not having this convo with you this early in the morning
MYLES:
So dramatic.
Pick you up at 7:30.
The pancakes started to bubble around the edges, and I sprinkled a handful of chocolate chips on a few, adding blueberries to the rest before flipping them. Breakfast of champions. I scrambled a few eggs on the side then started on my protein shake.
Khia’s singing wafted down the stairs, and I smiled to myself. She’d inherited my easygoing temperament but had inherently better singing skills. I wasn’t a bad singer per se, but the words “sounds like a dying moose” had definitely been lobbed my way in the past.
Unlike Troy Bolton, I couldn’t be both musically gifted and an athlete.
Hockey had been my life up to this point.
I’d been drafted to Seattle’s NHL team just after I turned nineteen but came down to the minor league four and a half years ago.
Partly to play closer to home while navigating life as a single dad with a newborn, but also because I was a young hothead with an attitude problem and a habit of picking fights.
All the pressure and publicity around Izzy’s death had messed with my head, and I’d paid for it.
Even if I didn’t realize it was the best thing that could have happened to me at the time.
Now my contract was up for renegotiation. The team had been generous in letting me play in Caldwell this long, thanks to waiver exemptions, but now I had to choose between giving it up or signing into the major league again and face getting traded.
This would be so much easier with a wife. It wasn’t the first time I’d indulged that fantasy. Having someone else to partner with, do life with, come home to. For years, I’d witnessed my parents’ forty-one year marriage stand strong and watched all five of my siblings find love.
Also not for the first time, I envied them. Particularly Greyson and Juliet, who both got second chances with the loves of their lives. Why couldn’t I?
Because you never moved on from Noelle. Not really.
But if I did get a second chance with Noelle, would I really take it?
She’d broken me in ways I’d never fully healed from, even thirteen years and an abundance of therapy sessions later.
She was the only woman who’d seen the real me.
The one beneath the goofy-younger-brother facade. She believed in me. She was my person.
So why did she run?
Maybe it was the never knowing why that ate at me. The women I got involved with had a tendency to leave me behind. Noelle had. And Izzy, too, in her own way.
You’re no fun anymore, Cal. If I wanted a bore, you aren’t what I’d have chosen.
Izzy’s complaints about my mellowing out from “life of the party” to “responsible girl dad” still stung.
Unlike Noelle who ran without telling me, Izzy spared no time in sharing exactly what I did wrong in our relationship.
Although relationship might be stretching it.
Our marriage hadn’t been a happy one. I’d only proposed because it felt like the right thing to do once I found out Khia was on the way, and Izzy had jumped at the chance to be a “hotshot athlete’s wife”—her words, not mine.
I flipped the pancakes onto a plate.
Lord, I’m open to dating again. But you’re gonna have to make it super clear.
And . . . I know we’ve had this conversation before.
A lot, actually. But well, about Noelle, I don’t know where she is but .
. . bless her. That feels weird to ask for, but .
. . yeah. And anytime You want to take these feelings for her away is okay with me.
Oh, and about the contract . . . I need help with that, too.
I needed a lot of help these days.
“Breakfast!” I hollered to Khia.
Elephant footsteps clattered down the stairs accompanied by the jingle of Mrs. Pickles’s collar. Yup, she was definitely my daughter.
No more what-ifs and jaunts down memory lane. For now, I had to focus on what was in front of me.
A little girl and her cat and playing the best I could in the second game of the season tonight. Beyond that, the future was out of my hands.
“Thanks for the ride,” I grunted, slipping into the back seat of Myles’s truck after dropping my gear in the box.
“Anytime.” Myles glanced at me in the rearview, probably analyzing my less-than-chipper mood. Grumpiness was more Greyson’s wheelhouse, but I was off-kilter this morning.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Couldn’t a guy have an off day once in a while? Greyson spoke in monosyllables half the time, and no one bothered him about it.
Myles huffed but let it go. Once we hit the gym for training, no doubt he’d corner me and drag it out.
He had an uncanny way of getting information.
Usually it involved a game of Super Mario Kart where he tricked you into spilling your guts.
But if he was desperate enough, he had been known to resort to underhanded methods.
Like spotting you on the weight machine where you couldn’t run away from him because you were lifting the equivalent of two full-grown giant Pacific octopuses over your head.
Ask me how I knew.
Juliet pivoted in the passenger seat, her hand resting on her rounded stomach. I’d have another nephew by Christmas. “We need to talk.”
This morning just kept getting better and better.
“Whatever you think I did, I didn’t do it. Or whatever I didn’t do, I did.” I slid the plate of pancakes onto the console. “Have some carbs.”
She smacked my shoulder but grabbed one of the forks I’d brought. “Bribery is a federal offense.”
“So is accepting the bribe,” I retorted.
“You gonna close the door?” Myles groused, but his lips twitched under his dark beard.
He’d been around the craziness of the Satterfield siblings for over twenty years.
Actually, it was mostly the Cal and Juliet Show he had to referee.
Jules and I got along fine, but we were the biggest squabblers of the clan.
Probably because we were the youngest. But also, I was a self-proclaimed pest, and she .
. . could kill a man seven different ways with a fork.
Figuratively. She was stabby but not that stabby.
Still, it was a good thing Myles was my best friend and her husband.
He could keep both of us alive and out of jail.
Juliet leaned across the console and kissed his cheek, her smile soft. “You know arguing is how we show affection, right?”
I closed my door and groaned. “Is it too late to retract my acceptance of a ride? I’m not in the mood for mushiness.”