23. Milo
TWENTY-THREE
MILO
Here’s a fact nobody wants to acknowledge: the Balls of Fury is the worst bowls team in the history of organized recreation.
Zero wins. One loss. Six forfeits. And a little note next to our name that says inactive, which is the league’s polite way of calling us cowards.
“We’re not cowards,” I’d muttered to myself two nights ago, thinking I was alone at the kitchen island in the dark. “We’re a team in crisis.”
“You’re a team that’s forfeited six weeks running,” Sage said from behind me, scaring the living daylights out of me.
“You haven’t been in weeks. Because you’re all too busy babysitting me.
” She’d crossed her arms. “I hate it. I hate that you’re putting your lives on hold to sit around watching me not die. ”
“Oh, kitten. We sit around watching you because we love you—and because we’re patiently waiting to have sex with you. It’s not a hardship.”
She rolled her eyes. “Says the man who was muttering in the dark because a bunch of retirees are beating you at lawn bowls.” Her hands moved to her hips. “So I think we should go. All of us. When’s the next game?”
“Ah . . . Saturday.”
She grinned at that. “Okay. You get me a set of those balls for it—preferably pink because sometimes a girl likes to be fancy—and I’ll join your team.”
“Okay.” I looked at her, knowing the guys were going to hate this idea but loving it for Sage and me. “Your wish is my command, kitten.”
“Excellent.” She pulled her shirt up over her head. “You can take me upstairs and fuck me now.”
I’ve never closed the lid on my laptop so fast.
And that’s how five of us ended up squished in my car on the way to Glenview Lawn Bowls on Saturday afternoon. The air is a little tense since no one wanted to do this besides Sage and me. But I’m singing “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang at the top of my lungs to boost morale.
No one joins in.
“Stop singing,” Holden says from the passenger seat, his hands on his ears. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“No,” I say cheerfully, drumming the steering wheel. “This day is far too special and requires us to ce-le-brate—”
“What’s so special about today?” Eli shouts over the top of me. When I glance at him in the rearview mirror, it seems like he’s wincing in pain. Hope he’s feeling okay.
“What’s special,” I say, “is that for the first time since the Obama administration, neither Knox nor Micah is working tonight. Knox is off. Micah swapped his shift. The planets have aligned, the stars have wept, and we’re spending this cosmic miracle”—I spread my arms, clipping Holden in the face and making him grab for the steering wheel—“at lawn bowls. Dinner after.”
“We could’ve spent it anywhere,” Holden says.
“We could’ve. Kitten and I chose greatness.”
Micah’s already there when we pull in, leaning against the hood of his car with a coffee, arriving early and looking good doing it. Knox climbs out of the car first, then Sage is out in a flash, bounding over to Micah.
He catches her by the waist, sets the coffee on the roof of the car, and kisses her—slow, unhurried, his thumb at the corner of her jaw. I watch, because I am shameless and they are stupidly beautiful.
Sign me up for that sandwich.
“Hi,” she says when he lets her go.
“Hey, baby girl.” He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then frowns at the bag over my shoulder. “Is that—”
“A bag of bright pink lawn bowls?” I adjust it on my shoulder.
“Why yes, Micah. They are. I bought them for kitten because she deserves sexy things. And I’m carrying them for her because I’m a gentleman.
Plus, the pink looks really great next to my teal.
” I hold both bags up side by side to demonstrate.
Knox scoops the pink bag out of my hand and ambles toward the entrance.
“Traitor,” I call after him.
Knox doesn’t look back. “You were struggling.”
“I was flourishing under pressure.”
Sage snorts and falls into step beside him, bumping her shoulder against his arm and smiling up at him. The late afternoon sun turns the edges of her hair gold. She looks lighter today. Not careless—Sage is never careless—but uncoiled.
I don’t think Glenview Lawn Bowls Club has been renovated since before the Cold War, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.
It’s a low brick clubhouse with a green so flat and so aggressively manicured it looks like someone ironed it.
There’s a wooden honor board inside listing club champions back to 1962.
And the bar has a super limited menu that is mostly just beer.
There’s also a framed photo of a man named Reg who, according to the plaque, “loved this club very much” and is presumably now fertilizing the rose bed by the parking lot.
I love it here. In a world of self-checkouts, algorithmic playlists, and fridges that judge your eating habits, Glenview is a brick-and-lawn middle finger aimed at progress.
No app. No Wi-Fi. Just a green, a clubhouse, and a roster of people who have been quietly destroying each other over a small white ball since before I was born.
We get our rink assignment from a man at a folding table who looks at our group—Knox alone is a lot to take in at close range—and visibly decides not to ask questions.
Knox posts himself at the gate end with his back to the fence and the whole parking lot in his eyeline. He’s been doing some version of that since the day she came home. None of us mention it anymore.
I set down my bag and take out my woods. Knox hands Sage her pink set, fresh out of the box, and she turns one over in her hands like it’s made of magic and stardust.
We should probably let her out more.
“You hold it in the cradle of your fingers,” I tell her. “And there’s a bias—it curves. So you don’t aim straight at the jack—that’s the little ball in the middle—you aim wide and let it bend back in.”
She nods very seriously, tilts the bowl from side to side to test the weight, and rolls her first bowl directly into the ditch.
There is a beat of silence.
Then I do what any supportive, mature partner would do.
I laugh so hard I have to brace a hand on my knee.
Sage turns slowly to look at me. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” I wheeze. “You love me. I’m delightful.”
“I can’t fault you there,” she says. “But that was just a practice ball. The ditch needed humbling.”
“The ditch is a state of mind,” I say.
“That’s what I’m telling myself.”
She’s about to try another practice throw when six women in matching shirts step onto the rink and start going through a stretching routine with some serious focus. One’s rolling her shoulders. One’s taping a wrist. One is in a downward dog on the clubhouse lawn.
Their shirts are hot pink. Across the back, in white:
THE PERIMENO-BOWLS
Hot flushes. Cold kills.
“Kitten.” I grab her arm. “Look.”
She reads the shirts and dissolves. “Oh my God. I love them.”
I do not. I know a superior species when I see one.
The tallest peels off from the group—silver ponytail, swimmer’s shoulders, the dead-eyed calm of a woman who has buried husbands and won finals and would not lose sleep over either. She walks over and sizes up Knox.
“You the Balls of Fury?”
“We are,” I say, drawing myself up and getting in between them. “You must be the competition.”
“Nancy. Captain.” She nods down the line. “Lori, Pat, Maeve, Connie. The one upside down is Beverley.”
Connie—short brown bob, radiating energy of a woman who has packed a thousand lunchboxes—bustles over and seizes Sage’s hand. “Aren’t you just the loveliest thing. Are these your boys?”
“Most days,” Sage says.
“Bev!” Connie hollers over her shoulder. “Bev, come look at the big one!”
Beverley unfolds from her downward dog, slides her reading glasses up onto her head, and takes one long look at Knox.
“Good Lord. What do they feed you?”
Knox shrugs.
“Strong and silent. My favorite kind.” She turns to Sage. “Does he lift you, love? Physically pick you up?”
Sage goes pink. “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes. Nancy, I have to sit down.”
Nancy ignores her. “I’ll be straight with you,” she says to me. “I checked the standings. You’re dead last. You’ve forfeited six weeks running.”
“We’ve had scheduling conflicts.”
“You’ve had a losing streak with a costume change.” She grins, and there’s a shark somewhere in her ancestry. “Tell you what. You actually showed up today. That counts. We’ll do a friendly match. Losers buy the drinks.”
I look at my team. Knox, expressionless. Holden, already running the odds behind his eyes. Sage, holding her pink bowl to her chest. Eli, a half-step back, hands in his pockets, present but unsure he’s allowed to be. Micah, easy and warm, nods.
“No,” I say. “Winner takes all.”
Nancy blinks. “Takes what, exactly?”
I spread my arms to indicate the sacred grounds, the weathered clubhouse, the green, the sky, the fate of nations.
“Pride. Glory. Naming rights. Psychological dominance. Also maybe the onion rings, depending on how flush everyone’s feeling.”
Nancy stares at me for a long, flat second.
Then, to my immense delight, one corner of her mouth twitches.
“Right,” she says. “He’s yours to manage, is he?” That last part is directed at Sage, but I’m the one who answers.
“No one’s ever managed me, I’m untamable.”
Nancy’s brow lifts. “That’s obvious.”
Connie pats Sage’s arm like they’re already old friends. “He’s funny.”
“He’s exhausting,” Holden says.
“Thank you, Holden,” I say warmly. “Support from the bench means everything.”
Nancy plants her bowl carrier at her feet. “Fine. Winner takes all. Drinks, snacks, and the spiritual collapse of the losing side.”
“Accepted,” I say at once, then turn to my people. “You hear that? We’re now fighting for honor.”
“We weren’t before?” Sage asks dryly.
“No, kitten.” I place my hands on her shoulders. “Before this, we were merely participating in a community pastime. Now we’re gladiators.”
Nancy gives me a look that says she has absolutely murdered better men than me with a smile and a steady hand. “Cocky little thing, aren’t you?”
I grin. “You have no idea.”
“You know how to play properly?”
“Define properly.”