I shrugged. At least he knew he should feel dumb. “She said your son is on the team too. Which one is he?” I’d been trying to figure out which of the boys on the team was his son, but I hadn’t put it together yet. Both coaches were always surrounded by at least two boys, and maybe I hadn’t paid enough attention, but I hadn’t caught him singling one out more than the others.

“Dean. Yellow hair. Hyper. Never stops talking.”

There was a dark blond boy on the team who had been a giant goofball even during tryouts. At practice the day before, he’d been singing theme songs each time a different boy went up to bat during practice. “And you have another one, don’t you?”

Trip made a sound in his throat. “He’s two. I don’t get to see him much,” he admitted so easily I wasn’t sure how to take it. His tone hadn’t changed, but… well, I didn’t know him well enough to be sure if there was something else hidden under there, but there easily could have been. Trip didn’t know I knew he had kids with different people, and I wasn’t positive how much he would like Ginny telling me things like that, even if it hadn’t been with bad intentions or a lack of affection on her part. She was just watching out for me.

The line behind me moved until I was next.

“You only got your two boys?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “They’re actually my—”

His phone started ringing, and he winked at me as he reached into his pocket. “Gimme a sec,” he said, bringing it up to his face and answering.

I turned around to give him some privacy, promising myself I’d tell him about the boys some other time.

* * *

“Who is it that we don’t like?”

I almost snorted out the water I’d been in the middle of drinking.

“Cat got your tongue, Di?” the older man chuckled, slapping me on the back as I coughed for breath after his question.

Louie, who was sitting on the other side of his grandpa on the same bleachers as us leaned over, his face all worried and soft. “Tia, you okay?”

I coughed and then coughed some more, the hand I’d slapped over my mouth to keep from spitting on the people in front of us, coming off more than a little wet from what I hadn’t been able to catch. I looked at Mr. Larsen out of the corner of my eye, trying so hard not to laugh, and nodded at Lou. “I think a bug flew into my mouth, Goo. I’m all right.”

He winced. “I hate it when they do that. They don’t taste like chicken.”

What the hell?

Before I could ask him why he would assume bugs tasted like chicken, Mr. Larsen shot me a horrified expression that we shared for a moment. He raised his shoulders and I raised them right back. I was going to blame his side of the family for that. Then I whispered to the older man, “She isn’t here. They aren’t letting her come to two practices. It was only me that got suspended from one.”

He had “oohed” and “ahhed,” a total sport after I’d had to admit to him why I couldn’t take Josh to practice. Without missing a beat, he asked afterward, “What time does he need to be there?” My love for the Larsens didn’t know an end or a beginning. I had a big family, but sometimes you met people who fit so perfectly into your life, you couldn’t imagine them ever not being a part of it. And these two people went above and beyond. Their ability to love knew no bounds.

The next hour flew by with us running commentary on Josh’s practice and how much he was improving since he’d started getting help from additional coaches a year ago. I’d gotten off work and headed straight to the facility, despite knowing the Larsens were going to keep the boys tonight and take them to school the next morning. When Trip and Dallas called the boys into a circle to dismiss them, we all got up and headed toward the gap in the fence by the field to wait.

Josh kind of grinned when he spotted us afterward but didn’t run screaming or anything. I liked to tell myself he was excited to see us, but he was just growing up. The days of him screaming “Diana!” at the top of his lungs every time he saw me were over. He let us pat him on the back before immediately saying, “I’m hungry.”

I had already waved at Trip earlier when he’d tipped his chin up at me through the other side of the fence, our conversation still fresh in my mind. It had bothered me a little when he had made the comment about Dallas feeling off around women who flirted with him. Was it just because he was technically still married or whatever the hell the situation was? That didn’t offend me at all—honestly, it was probably the exact opposite now that I knew the truth—we were going to see each other pretty often. I didn’t like drama and awkwardness, and definitely didn’t want to face it a minimum of twice a week for who knows how long all because he’d gotten the wrong impression of me.

So I found him a little attractive—he had a great body, anyone with eyes could see that—but I found a lot of men attractive, and I hadn’t flirted with him to begin with.

It wasn’t like I had a way of knowing he would be inside of his house when I helped his brother. After that, I had left cookies with most of the neighbors who lived close to me, not just him. But the second time we’d met, he had come over. I hadn’t gone to him.

Everything after that… I could see why he might think I’d been flirting. Maybe if he was an idiot. Coming up to him at a bar, calling him and walking up to his house, even though it had all been baseball-related and only baseball-related…. I could cut him a little bit of slack. Just a little.

But I still wanted to kick this white elephant out of the neighborhood.

So as I hung around the parking lot as the Larsens and the boys took off in their minivan, I kept an eye out on the adults still hanging around the perimeter of the facility, trying to find the specific person I was looking for so that I didn’t have to show up unexpectedly at his house and make him more uncomfortable. I had just decided that he might have left without me noticing when I spotted him standing by the bed of a black truck with Trip right next to him.

“Diana,” Trip called out to me over his cousin’s shoulder when he noticed me walking toward them.

“Long time no see.” I slid my gaze over to Dallas, pasting a funky, tight smile on my face. “Hi, Dallas.”

Before my neighbor said a greeting in return, Trip threw his hands in the air. “I’m gonna get goin’. Dean’s waitin’ in the truck. Dallas Texas, I’ll see you tomorrow. Honey, I hope I’ll see you tomorrow.” Trip winked as he walked away. He was something else, and that something else had my not-so-smile turning into a real one.

It was just as awkward as I figured it would be as Trip got into his truck, making us back away from the bed as he pulled out of the lot. I spotted a head in the back cab. There weren’t a lot of parents left hanging around, but there were enough, and I couldn’t help but feel the weight of their stares on us. I wasn’t a fan of being gawked at, but it was inevitable, wasn’t it?

Just as Dallas opened his mouth to say whatever was on his mind, I beat him to it. “Hey, I just want to clear the air between us. If I’ve done something to make you feel uncomfortable”—coming up to you at a bar or being really aggressive about getting the schedule changed were both options I accepted freely—“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Sometimes I try to be helpful, but maybe I should mind my own business instead, but really, I don’t mean anything by it that isn’t professional or friendly.”