13. Brynn
brYNN
Later that evening, I brought home a burger to mom like I promised.
Double-crisped fries, extra napkins, the works. Mom was still at the kitchen table when I got back, laptop open, reading glasses on, doing the thing she did on Monday evenings where she pretended she wasn’t lonely by staying very busy. I set the bag down in front of her and pulled out a chair.
“Tell me something good,” she said without looking up.
“Jett almost choked on a hot dog bun in the parking lot and Colton caught him.”
She smiled at her screen. “Lord.”
“He didn’t even yell. Just gave him this look.” I stole a fry from the bag before she could claim them. “He’s good with them, Mom. The team. He knows exactly how much rope to give before he reels it back.”
“Mhm.”
“He thinks like you do, mom. About the long game. About what this team could be. Not just the season in front of him.”
She glanced up at that. Mom had a specific look for when something impressed her that she didn’t want to admit impressed her. I’d grown up cataloguing it.
“What kind of ideas?” she asked.
“Partial home viewing tickets. Season passes for people who want to watch from home. He brought it up like it was obvious, like he couldn’t believe no one had done it yet.”
She was quiet for a moment, turning that over. “Smart.”
“Very.” I took another fry. “He’s also — I don’t know. He’s different than I expected. He listens. When you talk to him it’s like—” I stopped. Redirected. “I think you two would have a lot to talk about. Business-wise.”
Mom looked at me over the top of her glasses. Just looked.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.” She went back to her screen.
“I’m serious. You have the same approach to things. You both think about the long game. You both run tight ships. You’d—”
“Brynn.”
“I’m just saying.”
“I know what you’re just saying.” She took off her glasses and set them on the table, which meant she was about to actually talk to me. “He’s an attractive man. He’s clearly competent. And I’m sure the two of you have a wonderful time when you’re together.”
The fry I was holding stopped halfway to my mouth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She gave me the patient look. The one she reserved for when she thought I was being deliberately obtuse. “It means I see you, princess. I always have.”
“You’re not even giving him a chance. You haven’t spent more than ten minutes with the man.”
“I don’t need to.” She picked her glasses back up. “And neither do you, if you’re doing it for my sake.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
“Eat your burger,” she said.
I ate my burger. We watched half an episode of something neither of us was paying attention to, and when Mom finally closed her laptop and said goodnight, I stayed at the kitchen table with the last of the fries going cold in front of me.
The thing was, she wasn’t wrong. That was the part I couldn’t shake.
I’d been sitting there talking about the way he listened, the way he thought, the way he’d looked at me in that office with his hand at my face like he was deciding something important — and I’d been pitching it to my mother like a sales call.
Like if I handed her the good parts carefully enough, I could stop keeping them for myself.
I pulled out my phone. Opened his contact. Stared at it.
I hadn’t saved him as anything yet. Just Colton, the name he’d told me to use. I thought about changing it to something stupid — Coach, or Off Limits, or Mom’s Future Husband — the kind of thing Dani would’ve done to make a point. But I didn’t.
I just looked at his name until the screen went dark.
The plan was still the plan. He was here to coach the team.
He was fourteen years older than me with a blown-up career and a drinking habit he was only just starting to look at honestly.
He was my mother’s employee, technically.
He was the most obvious bad idea I’d encountered in twenty-six years of finding ways to put myself last.
And he’d said I want to do this right like it cost him something to wait. Like I was worth the cost.
I put my phone face-down on the table.
I picked up the last fry, cold and a little soggy, and ate it anyway.
I just needed to figure out what came next. Not for Mom. For me.