“Ready then?”
“Yeah,” he replied easily. “Can I call Grandpa on the way home and tell him how it went?”
Mr. Larsen had called that morning before school, stating he had come down with a bug and wouldn’t be able to make it to tryouts. Under normal circumstances, he would have had a front row seat to it. “Yeah, just grab my phone when we’re in the car.”
We had just gotten on the sidewalk to cross the parking lot when Josh lifted a hand, his head tilted to the right past me and Louie, who was still holding my hand, and waved. “Bye, Mr. Dallas!” he yelled.
Sure enough, standing on the sidewalk surrounded by two kids and four adults, one of whom was wearing a vest just like the ones I had seen at the bar, our neighbor nodded and waved briefly, his eyes flashing to me for a brief second before returning back to the people he was talking to.
Okay. If that didn’t make it obvious we weren’t going to be besties, I don’t know what other clue I would have needed. All right.
* * *
None of us were surprised when a week later, we checked the roster online and found Josh’s name near the top of the list for the baseball team. It had been in alphabetical order; otherwise, I didn’t have a doubt his name would have been first. Of course he’d made the team. I had probably been more excited than he was.
It was another new beginning for us.
Going to the first day of baseball practice with a new team was a lot like starting a new school year. There were e-mails and schedules, and expensive uniforms to be bought and eventually lost. Fun stuff like that. For the boys already on the team, the season never ended. Select baseball players for the most part did it year round; they didn’t have seasons. They always had games, only some months were slower than others because of the holidays and weather. So, for an established team to pick up a few new players, it seemed like making a kid start school halfway into the year. The people who were old news were sitting around inspecting the new blood. Measuring, judging, watching.
Parents and kids alike considered every new person competition, which was fair enough. They were. One new kid could take another boy’s position. I couldn’t blame them for being paranoid.
So on the first day of baseball practice with the Tornado—as Josh’s new team was called—I put an extra watchful eye out on the parents and the kids. Josh could handle himself, but he was still my little guy at the end of the day, regardless of whether he was only inches away from being as tall as me. And as my little guy—as my guy, my Josh—there wasn’t an ass I wouldn’t whoop if I had to. For my kids, I would do anything.
When we got to the new facility and Josh left me to go with the rest of the kids on the field behind the building, I took a spot on the bottom row of the bleachers and prepared myself mentally.
Make friends.
Be nice.
When a few parents came up to me to shake my hand and introduce themselves, it relaxed me. The parents were all ages. Some older—maybe they were grandparents—and there were a few who looked younger than me, too, but most of them seemed like they were over my nearly thirty. I spotted the two moms that I’d been eavesdropping on at the tryout but didn’t get a chance to officially meet them.
Somehow, by the end of the practice, I’d ended up with two dads sitting on the same bench I was on. It was only my big canvas bag between us that I felt kept them from scooting closer. The one sitting the closest to me had mentioned no less than four times how he was divorced. The guy sitting beside him, who had blatantly ogled my boobs every single time he talked to me, wore a wedding band. My best guess was that his wife had missed practice and he hadn’t wanted to get busted sitting on my other side. Schmuck. I knew the difference between flirting with someone I wanted to flirt with and accidentally flirting, and I made sure to keep the conversation easygoing and about the kids.
But when Josh made his way toward me after practice, his eyes narrowed on the dads who were still sitting where I’d left them on the bleacher. He gave me this look that said he wasn’t amused by the two strangers sitting so close. He usually didn’t like men talking to me, and in this case, nothing had changed.
“What do they want?” he asked immediately.
“Oh, hey, J. I’m glad practice went well. I’m doing fine, thank you,” I replied in a mocking voice.
Josh didn’t even blink as he jumped into our imaginary conversation. “That’s good.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and waved him to the side. “Ready to go?” I changed the subject. There wasn’t a point in explaining anything about the dads.
“Ready,” he answered, shooting the two men a wary look before walking next to me down the pathway that led from the team’s practice field to the parking lot. The complex had four other fields and one of them was being used for a girls’ softball team practice. “Are we gonna pick up Lou now?”
Setting my hand on his shoulder, we kept walking. “Yeah. I’ll make dinner when we get home.” Earlier in the day, Louie had called from the school’s phone saying he wasn’t feeling well. With a day full of appointments, I had checked with my mom to see if she could go pick him up and she had. She’d said he hadn’t been running a fever but that he’d been complaining of a headache and sore throat. She’d offered to keep Louie overnight, but he’d said he would rather come home. He didn’t like sleeping away from Josh if he didn’t have to, and I didn’t have the heart to force him to sleep somewhere else.