She takes it with eager hands, reads the back jacket, then glances up at me with inquisitive eyes. “Will you ever have a girl athlete on your team?”
“There have been some female kickers. You never know. We might have one in the NFL someday. But you want to hear something cool?”
“I do.”
I lower my voice to a whisper. “I think I might hire a female general manager.”
“You’re so cool, Aunt Nadia.” She spins on her heel and rushes off to find her father in the travel section, thrusting the books at him.
An elbow nudges my side. “Did I just hear you say you’re hiring a female GM?”
I turn to my sister, Brooke, who’s joined me in the kids’ section, some new thrillers tucked under her arm. “It’s looking that way. She’s the leading candidate.”
“Dad worked hard to create equal opportunities and build a diverse workforce. He’d be proud of you for carrying that on.”
“Thanks,” I say, a lump sticking in my throat. Emotions are riding me like I’m a surfboard today.
Breaking up with a guy you weren’t technically dating is the worst.
Especially when you’re falling hard for him.
Brooke studies my face. “You don’t seem as happy about that as I’d expect. What’s going on?”
That’s my sister, seeing right through me.
“Nothing is going on,” I say with fake cheer.
Cheer she bludgeons with one sharp snort. “Right. I don’t buy that. What’s the story with the man?”
I sigh heavily, slumping against the Jenny Hans. “I wish there were a story.” My voice is tight, my chest heavy. But I’m not one to dwell, to go all “woe is me” over a man. Then again, I’ve never experienced a man like Crosby.
Brooke sets her hand on my arm, squeezing gently. “What happened?”
I’m not sure I want to open the wound again. This morning’s adulting session at the café felt necessary, but in the way a dental exam is. You need it, even if it hurts like hell when the hygienist gets that tooth scalpel thingie out and scrapes off any plaque, all while chatting cheerily about her day. “Nothing happened,” I say, though, really, a tooth scalpel thingie isn’t nothing.
She grabs my arm. “Oh no, you don’t.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to dismiss all these feelings I didn’t want to face when I returned to town. I simply wanted to be Take Charge Nadia. Boss Nadia. Nadia with her Leatherman that can open any door. My father’s daughter. I didn’t want to be Nadia with a soft, squishy heart that could be stepped on, smooshed, and stomped into a pulpy mess.
“Is this about Crosby?” Brooke asks, a little too insightful. I shake my head, and she rolls her eyes. “You can’t fool me, buttercup. You two are in love. What’s going on?”
Those words are a burst of sunlight in my chest. In love. She’s not wrong. But the timing is. It’s utterly and completely wrong.
“Timing is a tooth scalpel,” I say.
She arches a what the hell brow.
“It can hurt like a son of a banshee, but sometimes the timing doesn’t work out.”
“That’s just an excuse, Nadia.”
My shoulders sag, and a kernel of sadness expands in my chest, the roots extending throughout my body.
Am I upset with Crosby?
Maybe I am.
But maybe I shouldn’t be.
He might have dealt the fatal blow to our benefits, but I agreed with him from the beginning to the middle to the end.
His choice was smart.
Logical.
Right.
I would have made the same one.
I think.
“Look, I tried the whole dating thing in Vegas.” I square my shoulders, digging into my metaphorical purse for my ovaries of steel. “It didn’t pan out. But that’s okay. The universe clearly wants me to be single and to focus on the team right now.”
Brooke clears her throat, her eyes drifting pointedly to the front of the store. David is laughing with Audrey as they reach the counter and she plops down the three titles. He ruffles her black hair. She tosses her head back and laughs.
“I’m in love, and I can focus on work,” Brooke points out.
My heart lurches at her words then squeezes as David tosses Brooke an I love you grin.
From all the way across the store.
She throws one right back at him.
It’s everything.
Everything I’ve ever wanted.
That kind of love. That kind of trust. A relationship that’s born from talking, falling, caring.
Like my parents had.
But I bet they didn’t start as friends with benefits.
Relationships should start the right way, in a proper sequence and specific order. They shouldn’t begin with a request for a dick pic, then turn into an accidental kiss in a doorway, then morph into a virgin rule book for defining friends-with-benefits behavior.
Ugh. I did everything upside down and backward.
I should have known better.
“But you and David met through a friend when you were working in China. You went on dates all over Beijing. You romanced each other. He proposed to you before you moved back to California. That’s how it should be,” I point out.
Brooke shakes her head. “There is no rule for how good relationships start.”
“There should be,” I say in a dead voice.
“Do you truly believe that?”
“I do.” But I don’t really know what I believe. All I know is that I miss Crosby, and I have a mountain of work to climb tonight.
I join Brooke and her family for lunch, try to be decent company, then head for the office, where I blast my friend Stone’s latest single and get to work.
This is why I’m here after all.
Nothing more.
29
Crosby
Holden tosses up the ball at home plate, swings, and connects with it, sending it down the third baseline.
Jacob fields it perfectly for the hundredth time in a row.
I clap his shoulder. “Dude, keep that up. You’ve got this.”
The kid grins at me. “Can we go a few more times?”
I
