He rears back, horrified, while Annika snorts in laughter. “She’s got you there, Cooper. Don’t have double-standards. Dick move.”

He growls and stomps out of the house.

“Maybe don’t tell us if you go on a thirty-city dick tour?” Dad says. “I won’t tell you how to live your life, but…”

“Jesus.” Grady leaps to his feet and leaves too.

Mom clears her throat and goes back to the refrigerator, where she pulls out the leftover cheesecake and dives in without cutting herself a slice. “Mmph?” she asks Annika, holding out the fork.

“No, thank you, Libby.” Her eyes are dancing in amusement. “I think you need it more than I do.”

The dishes are done. Food’s put away. Except for Mom’s half of a cheesecake, of course.

I could stay and play Mom and Dad in Scrabble or Clue or Yahtzee, but instead, I reach for my coat on the back of my chair too. “I’m in the middle of painting something, so…”

“Sure,” Dad says quickly.

Mom mumbles something around her cheesecake again.

“Oh my god, I’m serious. I’m going home to paint. And I don’t want the trouble of finding worthy dick in thirty different cities, okay? It’s hard enough to find it in one. Mom, I’ll see you at aerobics tomorrow morning. Dad, I’ll see you after. Annika—”

“I’ll walk with you.” She hugs my parents. “Thank you for lunch and the entertainment.”

“Be honest,” I say when the two of us slip out the front door. “Am I being ridiculous, or are they?”

She glances at her phone, which I’m nearly certain has a text from Grady saying he’s chasing after Cooper to commiserate about the fact that their baby sister has a sex life. “Oh, they are. Completely. But if you are planning on sleeping with Max—”

“Team dynamics, blah blah blah,” I mutter.

“Actually, I was going to say, my phone’s always open if you need to talk or if you need someone to run interference with Cooper. Grady and I are both in. I’d offer my door being open, but—”

“But you’re still a honeymooner and I wouldn’t touch that offer with a ten-foot pole.”

She laughs.

And I smile.

But only for a minute. “It would be a short-term fling,” I say quietly. “He has his own issues, but he’s hot, and he’s next door, and he’s leaving in another month. You can put an end date on a fling, right? That’s a thing?”

Yes, I am asking as someone who’s only had one serious relationship in her life.

“Some people can. Some people can’t. Only way to know if you’re one of them is to try.”

“What if I really do fuck up his game?” I whisper.

“Then that’s on him,” she replies firmly. “You can’t manage other people’s feelings and you can’t be responsible for them lying to themselves. You can be responsible for being upfront and honest with him about expecting things to end when he leaves for spring training, and you’ll probably want to consider how much you want to stay involved with the Lady Fireballs if it’s awkward afterwards, but he has to decide for himself if you’re worth the risk to his game.”

I’m twenty-six.

I love my life, even on days when I fight with my brothers and have the hangover from hell.

But I also know sometimes you have to leap. You have to pay attention to the signs.

Even if you leap wrong, you learn something from it.

And I don’t want to leap with a one-night thing in the city with a guy I found on a hook-up app.

I want to see where things go with Max.

I think I’ve wanted to see where things could go with Max since the minute he showed up at the ballpark after I chased him out of Chance Schwartz’s apartment.

There’s always been something about him that screams I’m a good time, but I’m more if you can get past my barriers.

And I very, very much want to get past his barriers.

Not to win. Not because it’s a contest.

More because over the past four years, he’s snuck past mine.

He doesn’t know it.

But he has.

Sometime during that season when we met, I wrinkled my nose in passing when someone suggested Thai food for dinner before a club after a game, and Max gave me this look—no, this sneer, the one that said, whatever, small-town princess, and I’ve been on a mission to try new foods ever since in a way I’d never considered before.

When the team had their parents’ weekends last year and Henri went out of her way to find Max’s old T-ball coach, I tracked her down and asked her what she knew.

He told me he started arranging his own rides to baseball practice after his first coach realized he wouldn’t show up without help and picked him up the first two years he played ball.

She’d added he also said if she told anyone he’d kill her in her sleep, which she didn’t believe. Henri is the best kind of optimist.

But it was one more little poke.

Your parents made sure you wanted for nothing important, Tillie Jean. Get out there and help some other kids.

So now we have D&D afternoon at the restaurant for a bunch of kids who’d otherwise go home to empty houses, and I organized a sign-up to match retirees with kids whose families need a little extra help so they can get to extracurricular stuff like ball games and play practice and dance lessons.

I joined the Lady Fireballs because of him.

I volunteered to run senior aerobics because of him.

I tried sushi for the first time because of him.

Just the idea of Max has been pushing me to do better, without me actively acknowledging that’s what he was doing to me.

What happens if I let him in all the way?

What happens if I embrace all the little ways he steers me on a path to expand my horizon and look beyond my own little world?

His SUV is in his driveway when we hit my street, but I don’t go straight to his house.

Instead, I do something I’ve been dying to do since the last time I saw Henri.

I draw a bath and drop in one of the bath bombs she brought me. Luca stars in all the commercials for Kangapoo, and they apparently send him product samples all the time.

And after a citation, a hangover, a date with Max—oh my god, a date with Max, where we talked about real things and he flirted with me and my grandmother—and then Cooper turning into Cooper, I want some me time.

But not five minutes after I crack my bathroom window for steam control and climb into the tub, someone’s knocking on my door.

I roll my eyes, reach for my phone, and text my brother.

I’m in the bath.

He replies with a side eye emoji.

Fine, I type back. Come on in and see for yourself.

There’s a muffled click beyond my bathroom, and then I hear two voices.

“You’re on your own if you walk back to her bedroom,” Grady says.

“Chicken,” Cooper shoots back.

“Whoa. Tillie Jean. Holy shit, your kitchen cabinets are awesome. When did you do that?”

Grady’s still yelling from the front of my house. Good thing it’s small. “Six months ago,” I yell back. “Maybe you should come visit more often.”

“I don’t visit single people. They might be naked.”