Chapter 31 – Grace
I brought Piper over to greet her dad after the game. His button-down shirt today featured a jungle print with parrots and palm trees.
“Great job, kiddo.” He gave her a squeeze. “The award for best effort goes to you. You’re all sweaty and everything.”
“Thanks!” She turned and waved to another kid leaving the gym before giving Rob double high fives. “I got a cupcake.”
“Oh yeah? Where is it?”
“I already ate it.”
The frosting evidence was all over the front of her jersey where she’d used it as a napkin, but he pretended to be shocked. “And you didn’t save a bite for me?”
“It was really good.” She sat down on the bench next to him and took a big swig from her pink water bottle. “Are we going out to eat now?”
Rob looked to me. “I’m good with it. Let me talk to your mom for a minute. Go say goodbye to that kid who kicked his water bottle full of Kool-Aid all over the floor while he warmed the bench.”
“Toby? ”
“Yeah, that stinker. He definitely looks like a Toby, that’s for sure.”
After she ran off, Rob asked, “If we go out for lunch, are you bringing the assistant coach along? He’s obviously loitering for your sake.” We both glanced at Dean, who was watching us from across the gym floor. He worried about me almost as much as I worried about what I was doing to him. If anyone needed an award for effort, it was Dean. I didn’t know how to tell him he didn’t need to prove anything to me. Maybe I’d once thought that. I should have known Dean would always give his all when it came to things he wanted. I just couldn’t believe what he wanted was me. I was the luckiest woman in the whole world, and I couldn’t even enjoy it. Thinking about it made my head hurt.
“Are you okay if he comes?” I asked.
“I guess. You’d be daydreaming about him if he wasn’t there. What’s the difference?”
I glanced back at Piper. She and Toby were running in circles in the middle of the gym floor. “Dean and I are not officially together, so don’t make jokes about it in front of Piper.”
“You don’t think she’s figured it out? Let me guess. He’s your good, good friend.” At my responding frown, he held his hands up. “Okay, too far. Now that you show emotion again, I can tell when I’m upsetting you.”
“You’re not upsetting me. So, the three of us will see you at Chili’s in a few?” We were single-handedly keeping that place in business.
“Yes, bring your guy. Your good, good friend. I promise to be nice.”
“Thanks.” I smiled big, which made Rob look at me funny. He couldn’t quite figure me out these days, which made perfect sense, because I couldn’t quite figure me out either.
After calling for Piper, she and I walked over to Dean to tell him the plan for lunch .
“How dumb?” he whispered in my ear, reiterating his question from earlier.
“You just keep these guns put away,” I said, resting my hands on his biceps. I’d meant it as a joke, but our eyes met, and I had to remind my fingers to remove themselves from his fine, fine arms.
“Like I’d get into a fight with your ex in a Chili’s. That would be super classy.” He knelt down to Piper’s level. “I’ll see you two in a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay. I’m gonna steal your fries.”
“Thanks for letting me know in advance, you little munchkin.”
He gave me a wink as he walked off, and it took me a few seconds to realize I was staring after him. Like, a lot staring. Enough that the mom of one of my players gave me a knowing grin, because just like Rob guessed, I’d introduced Dean as my good friend who would be helping us out this season. It seemed like every minute I was at war with what I wanted and what I thought was good for him. Dean needed the space to be able to back away from this if he needed to. The last thing I wanted to do was cling to him.
Piper conked out almost immediately in the car on the way to Chili’s. We’d started the day bright and early at Beautiful Blooms to prep bouquet orders before her game. I was stifling a yawn or two myself.
Next Saturday, Dean would be coaching alone. For Mother’s Day weekend I’d need to be selling as many flower bouquets as humanly possible to everyone I could coax into my shop. Plus, we’d be ramping up for graduation flowers and end-of-the-year school performances. Yay for May.
I didn’t feel like I drove like a grandma, even though I’d been accused of it a time or two, but Rob and Dean were both already inside standing awkwardly next to each other when Piper and I walked in. I was relieved when she ran at Rob and not Dean, putting her arms up for him to scoop her up. It would have been awkward, had she made a beeline for Dean. Maybe someday , a little hopeful part of me whispered.
She was almost too big for Rob to hold, but not quite. Did he see that? Did he see time moving like I did?
She yawned and put her head on his shoulder. “I’m so tired, Dad. Can I have all your fries?”
“Order your own fries, kid.”
Chili’s was decked out for a NASCAR race in town, and together they admired the décor and the car hood signed by a driver with terrible handwriting.
“You a NASCAR fan, Dean?” Rob asked.
“Not at all. I could name maybe one driver. Dale Earnhardt. I guess that’s two, because there’s Dale Earnhardt Junior. What about you?”
“Same. I’m a hockey fan.”
Dean shrugged. “I know even less about that.”
“And now we can’t be friends.” Rob said it jokingly, but the words had them both sizing each other up, like they’d known that was never gonna happen anyway.
“I’m ordering a salad,” I announced, needing to fill the conversation with something.
“Good for you, Grace.” Rob put his forehead against Piper’s. “Your mom thinks the salads here are healthy. Are you going to steal her salad?”
Piper shook her head. “I don’t like tomatoes.”
“That’s my girl.” He put her down and let her tug on his hand while she towed him around the waiting area.
Dean came to my side, and his fingers laced with mine. I squeezed his hand, letting him know I approved. This didn’t need to be stressful. I repeated the phrase in my head, hoping my body would believe it. It sort of worked. Until Rob glanced over at our joined hands, and then quickly looked away, his mouth pursing with dislike.
“Rob, party of four? ”
Rob held up his hand, letting the hostess see us, and we followed her to a booth. Dean and I took one side, with Rob and Piper on the other.
Our waitress came over moments later. “Hi, guys. I’m Amy. Anyone interested in a margarita today?”
“Little early for that, Amy.” Rob winked. “You don’t want to see me after a few of those. I’ll have a Coke.”
“Same,” Dean and I said.
“And what would you like?” Amy asked Piper.
She looked up from her kid’s menu. “Chocolate milk.”
“Oh, good choice. I’ll be right back, guys.”
After she left, Rob leaned over to talk to Dean. “Grace is the reason I started drinking and the reason I stopped. She told me we couldn’t afford my habit, and she was right. She ran a tight ship, back in the day.” He said it like he was giving advice to a rookie.
Dean stared back at him, opened his mouth, closed it, and then turned to Piper. “What are you coloring there?”
“A chili pepper.” She handed him a red crayon. “You can color his sunglasses if you want.”
“Thanks.” With his eyes on her paper, he said, “Grace is the reason I smile when I wake up in the morning. And she’s the reason I smile when I’m falling asleep.”
Rob snorted. “Now that’s a line, if I ever heard one.”
“Maybe.” Dean’s gaze moved back to Rob. “I’m a morning person, so I smile a lot. I guess a better way to say it is she’s what I’m smiling about these days.”
Rob’s eyes met mine, a look of, “can you believe this guy?”
I couldn’t believe either of them. But this was my fault. I was the one who broke the everything-is-fine truce with Rob. And then smashed it by bringing along Dean in his assistant coach shirt. He was the literal embodiment of everything Rob was not doing and hadn’t been doing for a long time. And as despicable as Rob could be sometimes, I felt for him .
This was why I’d told Dean to stand down. He didn’t need to defend me with words. He’d already done it just by showing up with us and being himself.
“Can you believe this heat already? It reached ninety-three in my car yesterday.” I gave Dean’s arm a gentle tug until he looked at me. Easy, tiger.
He sighed, getting the message. “Yeah, it’s getting hot.”
“It was so hot yesterday, I broke wind just for the extra breeze.” Rob folded his arms, a small smile on his face. “It was so hot, I saw a squirrel handling nuts with a pair of tongs.”
I groaned. He was just winding up. I could tell. It didn’t help that Dean laughed at both jokes.
“It was so hot, they asked the Statue of Liberty to lower her arm.”
Amy came back with our drinks on a tray in time to catch his next one. “You have any more?”
“Oh yeah.” Rob smiled across the booth at me. He remembered every joke he’d ever heard, always waiting for the perfect moment to pull it out. What a gift. “This one’s for you, honey. It was so hot, I offended my wife just to get the cold shoulder.”
Amy looked over at me and Dean sitting close together with our matching coaching shirts, and her laugh turned into a look of confusion.
“That’s her good, good friend,” Rob explained. “And I have one more joke, just for the occasion. A husband and wife are fast asleep when the phone rings. After listening a few seconds, the husband shouts, ‘Who do you think I am, the weather man?’ and slams down the receiver. ‘Who was that?’ the wife asks. ‘I don't know,’ he says. ‘Some guy wanting to know if the coast is clear.’”
“Wow.” Amy gave an uncomfortable laugh and started handing out our drinks. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere but at our table.
Dean took the first Coke from her and reached out to hand it across to Rob. “They’re divorced. Nice joke, Rob.” Somewhere in the handoff, the cup slipped and knocked over, splashing a large Coke straight into Rob’s lap and onto Piper.
Piper gasped, more worried about the drops on her coloring page than the deluge soaking into the bench.
“I’m sorry. I’ll get something to—” Dean jumped up from his seat and knocked right into Amy’s tray, sending the rest of our drinks and the drinks for the table next to us crashing to the floor.
All conversation around us went dead silent.
Rob started to laugh. He laughed until he was wiping tears out of his eyes. “Best day ever.” He pounded the table. “Best. Day. Ever.”