Chapter 18
Colleen
The Cupids were losing.
This wasn’t unusual, but it was always depressing.
Cheering for the underdog came as second nature to Colleen. It had to. When you were a die-hard Love You Cupids fan, the local AAA baseball league team, you got used to generating an endless supply of manufactured hope.
Which was not unlike being ‘just friends’ with Moore.
Luke was sitting a few rows away and shoved his fingers into his mouth, the piercing whistle cutting through her thoughts. Normally, he’d sit with her, but a gaggle of eight-year-olds surrounded him, all girls. They all wore their adorable Girl Scout uniforms and sat in a giggly, ragtag row.
The score was 0-1, and the Cupids were down.
“Hey.”
Jordy stood next to her, holding a soda the size of his head and a popcorn the size of Colleen’s ample butt.
“Hey, yourself,” she said, taking the popcorn tub out of his hand. “When did they start making this size?”
He shrugged. His long hair covered his eyebrows and slanted over his left eye, giving his face the appearance of a cave in the shadows, the entrance in the sun but the rest of it a mystery. As he sat next to her, his head dipped down but his eyes darted up, scanning the area.
What was he looking for? People he recognized? Old friends from the years of coming to visit?
Baseball and video games were their shared passions, and as the announcer did his required sponsorship commercials, she let herself relax a little.
This was home.
The benches were painted white with red accents at the ends of each row.
Players donned pink uniform shirts with red and white lettering, their white baseball pants allowed to conform to normal standards.
Pink baseball caps with the Cupids logo on them adorned every player’s head, and two-thirds of the crowd as well.
The opposing team was the Lawrence Panthers. The crowd was thin today, maybe a hundred people on the home side and another forty or so in the stands to cheer on the opposing team. It wasn’t the size of the crowd that mattered, it was the amount of heart they brought to support their team.
And Love You, Maine, had heart in spades.
“Where’s Moore?” she asked Jordy, ignoring the flutter of her heart at the mention of the man.
All she got for an answer was a shrug, Jordy’s mouth full of popcorn. He mumbled something close to I don’t know, and Colleen had to be satisfied with that answer.
Moore’s attendance at baseball games was hit or miss.
They never knew when he’d have a business issue that would pop up and prevent him from attending.
Jordy had made it clear to her one night that he was actually happier when Moore didn’t attend, because it was, in Jordy’s words, “more fun that way.”
Colleen had kept this detail from Moore to spare his feelings.
A few years ago, Moore had confessed to her that he was jealous of her relationship with Jordy.
Unable to conjure an answer that would simultaneously make him feel better and honor Jordy’s privacy, she had realized that there was no good answer.
Platitudes had come out of her mouth and Moore had accepted them, the two awkwardly moving on from the topic.
Navigating an emotional landscape where she wasn’t Jordy's mom and yet she wasn’t just an acquaintance meant taking on the role of an auntie.
Aunties were good. Aunties were solid.
She adored her biological niece, and Harriet adored her right back. If it weren’t for the Girl Scouts meeting, Colleen would’ve invited her along, giving Jordy an extra dose of fun. He was the closest thing Harriet had to a sibling, although that would change soon.
She knew Luke and Kylie planned to have more kids.
With Cammie pregnant and soon to marry Locke, there were major changes going on in both kids’ lives. Being an auntie to both, whether symbolic or real, meant that she had to ride the transitions, too.
Kylie joined Luke and the girls. She stood looking around, catching Colleen’s eye, a big, friendly wave following her recognition. Colleen waved back and nudged Jordy.
“There’s Kylie,” she said.
He grunted. “Okay.”
“Wave back.”
“Why? She’s waving at you, not me.”
“Because you’re in Love You, and this is what we do. Just lift your hand three inches and pretend you care.”
He rolled his eyes, but he did it.
"Good to see your arm isn't broken."
"Feels like it. That was an epic League game last night."
As Jordy waved to Kylie, the crowd began chanting. Instantly, Colleen knew what was going on. She looked at the jumbotron and saw her brother and Kylie in the frame.
"KISS! KISS! KISS!" the crowd chanted.
Jordy rolled his eyes, and Colleen stuffed her mouth with popcorn. Obliging the crowd, her brother and Kylie kissed, leading to cheers that lasted for ten seconds before the camera cut to the next victims.
The bleacher seats made a thumping sound one stack above them, and then the surface beneath Colleen's butt began to shake. Moore popped down next to her, holding a paper tray filled with nachos, bright yellow cheese sauce dripping over the edge. Colleen swiped it with her thumb.
"Mmm," she said.
"Yay," Jordy muttered, "Plastic cheese."
She elbowed him in the ribs. "Your fake cynicism doesn't fool me."
"The cheese is fake. My cynicism is real." Jordy smiled as he said it, leaning across her to grab a perilous stack of nachos coated in cheesy goodness. Somehow the kid managed to move it over to his own lap without dripping, using his left hand as a makeshift plate.
While he chomped, Moore handed Colleen a lemonade and leaned over to ask both of them, "Do you have a heart on?"
"Dad!" Jordy screeched.
"What?" Moore tapped his chest, where an enormous red heart was pinned to his shirt, part of a promotion to show patrons had donated to the team’s special charity. "Your heart. Do you have a heart on?"
This time, he emphasized the T.
Jordy was a furious shade of red. Colleen just shook her head. The joke was ancient here in Love You, Maine, and just as juvenile and puerile as it had been when she was Jordy's age.
Baseball games were a study in empty space. Where else could you sit and watch men in uniforms take the longest possible amount of time to complete a sequence of steps that added up to a win or a loss?
Golf might be a rival, but baseball was significantly more fun.
Colleen loved every minute of every game she had ever attended.
The smell of popcorn and hot dogs, the roar of the crowd, the shakiness of the bleachers, the goofy mascot (Marty Martinez, Selena’s younger brother, in a Cupid costume), and the sight of familiar faces trickling in around her.
Every bit of it made her attend every single game she possibly could.
No, the Love You Cupids were not the best team in their league. Not even close. But they were her team, and they did what they did for love of the game, and that mattered more than anything else.
Seated between Jordy and Moore, Colleen passed nachos and popcorn back and forth, smiling on the inside as she watched Jordy thaw, minute by minute, play by play.
Every year for the last six years, Jordy had come back and gone to this very same game with her.
Every year, he began his trip with a visceral disgust for Moore that lessened with time.
The baseball game seemed to short circuit it, blending its own form of magic with the companionship that Colleen added to the outing.
Moore had taken Jordy to plenty of games, and both of them always told her that the ones when she was there with them were the best. It was a source of quiet pride for Colleen to know that she could enhance their relationship.
A bridge, of sorts. She helped the two navigate an awkward relationship that deserved to be stronger than it was allowed to be.
In a way, the relationship between Jordy and Moore was a wound that Colleen was tasked with nursing through recovery and healing.
They were just on a very, very long timeline.
Suddenly, the crowd got loud.
“OH, NO!” Jordy bellowed, then folded in half with laughter. Colleen and Moore looked up.
They were featured on the kiss cam.
Twisted in his seat like a pretzel, Luke was glaring at her as if he could wield some obsessive control over her by telepathy. The crowd began to chant “KISS! KISS! KISS!” as Jordy turned a delightful shade of Love You Red.
Colleen froze.
“What do we do?” she asked Moore, leaning in as her gaze pinged between him and the giant screen.
“I want to kiss you,” he said softly, making all the hairs on her neck stand up, body flushing. The cacophony of the ballpark receded, fading into nothing.
There was only her, Moore, and the question of a kiss.
That’s all she wanted the world to be.
“EWWW! Don’t you dare!” Jordy finally choked out. “It would violate the laws of physics or something!”
The crowd grew louder and more frenzied, denied the emotional payoff they so desperately demanded.
Sheer anxiety made her turn toward Moore and kiss his cheek just as he turned toward her, their lips brushing for a brief, frustrating moment.
Then the jumbotron flashed to another couple.
“That was hilarious! As if you two would ever be together,” Jordy screamed, his gut practically busting wide open and spilling onto the seat. “I can’t believe that happened!”
“Same here, kid,” Moore muttered.
Colleen was too stunned to say a word, a vortex of emotion taking over. All the reasons why they weren’t going public with their relationship made sense, even if “all the reasons” were really just one giggling teen boy.
A very important boy.
Jordy’s reaction was completely normal, but it hurt.
It hurt a lot.
Between Luke’s bizarre reaction to the condom incident three days ago and now Jordy laughing at the idea that Moore and Colleen could be together romantically, a funk descended like a dark mist, enveloping her.
Sitting in her happy place while her cells changed mood was not how she envisioned this day.