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I t was not going well. This was not at all how I’d planned it, no, not at all.

“So, um…” I was, apparently, the person leading the charge to salvage this dinner, because Tyler had lapsed not what appeared to be a sullen silence, Jayden Santiago was in the bathroom (for the fifth time), and her husband, the Woodsmen wide receiver, had been on his phone again and again since we’d sat down, texting or something. I was getting over being star-struck pretty fast as I became more and more ticked off at how everyone was acting. What was his wife doing in that bathroom? Why was Santiago on the phone like that? Why was Tyler being a booty hole?

All the other diners in this restaurant were openly gawking at our table just like I would have been if I were sitting with them instead. It was really something, wasn’t it? Two Woodsmen stars out having dinner right next to them. Too bad both of them were silent and annoying! Now my anger was boiling and I got over being star-struck to the extent that I directly addressed the player sitting across from me.

“So, um, Zachary,” I said, and he glanced up from his screen. Unlike Tyler, he looked pleasant, if slightly worried. “You’re from South Carolina, right? How do you feel about Michigan?”

“Call me Zach,” he said. “I don’t mind it now, but it was a big change coming up here. I didn’t have four-wheel drive and I wore my winter clothes when the temperature got below sixty.” He smiled a little. “I didn’t think about cleaning the snow off before I drove, either, and when I met Jayden, she thought I was an idiot because I would wait for the wind to blow it away. She said, ‘Get a damn broom!’ I figured it out.”

“It’s a big change for someone from a warmer climate,” I agreed. “You probably had to do a lot to settle in.” He nodded. “That reminds me…if you know anyone from the team who’s looking for help with that, with unpacking and setting up their lives here, you could let them know that I have a side business in relocation assistance.”

“Uh, sure,” he said.

Good, maybe I’d get some bites from that. Tyler hadn’t been any help in getting me new clients, as I’d hoped he might, since they’d all been so angry at him. I was feeling a lot more charitable about their feelings due to the way he’d been acting tonight.

And now he was staring daggers at me, too. I had no idea why until he said, “You’re not working for any of them.”

“I’ll do what I want,” I stated, and Zach’s eyebrows raised. Things now seemed worse, but I kept trying. “Tyler is from Georgia,” I mentioned. “I bet you didn’t get a lot of snow there. Right?” I asked him.

He shrugged.“No.”

Wow. That was all he was giving me? I glared too, but he was looking at his glass of water.

“Jayden didn’t grow up here, either,” Zach said. “She’s from the Detroit area. She came up to try out for the Wonderwomen.”

“I remember her dancing,” I told him. “She was amazing.”

“The best,” he agreed, but then frowned and looked at his phone. I realized that he had been doing that when his wife was away from the table. Maybe he was checking on her?

“Is Jayden ok?” I asked. She’d been in the bathroom for longer than she’d sat with us.

“Yeah, she’s all right. Here she is,” he said and seemed relieved, but she really didn’t look ok to me. It was more like how Iva had looked about eight months ago…oh, good grief. This woman was pregnant, of course. She was probably going to the bathroom because she felt sick, just like how Iva had gone out into the parking lot (and a few times, she’d thrown up into a flower bed or behind a hedge).

“Sorry,” Jayden told us. Her husband put away his phone, so I’d been right about who he was texting.

“You don’t have to stay if you’re not feeling good,” I told her quietly. I didn’t know her personally, but I actually had watched her a lot when she’d worn the iconic uniform of the Woodsmen Wonderwomen and performed during games. She was beautiful, even when it appeared that she had just been ill in the bathroom.

“I’ll be ok. Zach, did you order bread?” she asked, and he held up his hand, signaling to the waiter and requesting that again. “I really wanted to come out and meet you and Tyler,” she told me.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m so glad you did.”

She smiled. “Most of the players’ partners are nice, but there are some who suck. The placekicker’s wife is a real piece of work. I don’t want to hear one more time how the game is won and lost on his foot. Only sometimes!And that doesn’t have anything to do with Britney!” She made a face like she was sick again.

In my Woodsmen research, I’d already seen how that woman didn’t have a lot of friends among contractors and other business owners in the area. There were plenty of stories about how she’d stiffed them, and other moms had reported that she’d made the director of her daughter’s nursery school cry. “She sounds terrible,” I said, and Jayden nodded.

“You’ll meet everybody soon enough. Caitlyn Karma is going to throw my—she’s going to have a party for me, and I’ll make sure she invites you.”

This friend-making opportunity seemed to be working better for me than for Tyler. “Thanks,” I said, smiling back. “I’d love to come!”

“Sure,” she told me. “Like I said, there are a lot of nice people and then some do get bitchy. They’re more worried about their time on camera on game day. I mean, we all want to look good, but I’m there to support Zach and the team. It’s real and not because I’m putting on a show.”

I thought of Shay Galton and her performances. “Me too. Totally.”

“I’m glad you’re in the nice group,” she said. “We WAGs should stick together.”

I understood what she meant: she thought that I was part of the wives and girlfriends group. “Oh, I’m not—” I didn’t know what to say, exactly, without making myself seem weird. “I’m used to work for Tyler and I arranged this dinner to force him into a friendship with your husband” wouldn’t have been good. Neither would, “I think that Tyler and I might hook up, but obviously we’d never be a couple, and he only wants me around because he’s not as confident and in control as everyone thinks he is.”

I wanted to go to Jayden’s party, which I assumed would be a baby shower, and I wanted to cheer with her at games, too. So instead of admitting that I wasn’t at all on par with her position, I stopped in the middle of my sentence. I sipped my cocktail, and she looked at me expectantly before turning her gaze on the approaching waiter. “Here’s the bread,” she said with relief, and took a piece.

The appetizers came soon, too, and with food in her stomach, she felt better and the dinner started to go better as well—at least for three of us. None of my raised eyebrows, pointed glances, or sharp nods in his direction were making Tyler do anything but look annoyed, and it was annoying me in return. A lot. But short of pulling him outside by his ear, I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Then I thought of the obvious.

“Sorry, I need to check on my dad,” I mentioned, taking out my phone. I saw that he was fine and I wrote to Tyler, too. “Start talking! Stop pouting like a booty hole!” After a second, he looked at his own phone and then he glared at me, which I gave right back to him.

“Is something wrong with your father?” Zach Santiago asked me.

I ended up telling him about the stroke, and how things were going at the moment. “He’s been really tired and he almost fainted at the game last weekend. He’s with Tyler’s mom right now and I know he’s ok, but he’s my only parent. I feel the need to check, although I know it drives him bananas when I do.”

“Zach’s auntie had a stroke,” Jayden said. The bread basket was empty and so was her plate, and she seemed energized. “She needed a lot of follow-up care and my mom found a good person for her downstate.”

Her husband nodded. “I brought her up to a clinic in one of the Detroit hospitals,” he said. “I can send you the name of the doctor there. We were really impressed with the care she got and it made a big difference in her recovery.”

“No, that’s ok,” I said, because I already knew that there was no way that we would be able to afford the level of treatment that I was sure they provided in a ritzy clinic.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Tyler suddenly spoke up. “Can you send it to me? I think her dad is motivated to work on things.”

“You do?” I asked.

“Send it to me,” he told Zach, who nodded. Tyler asked about his aunt and the aftereffects she’d suffered, and suddenly, the two of them were conversing like normal people. Suddenly, we were all carrying on a totally normal conversation, to the point that Jayden admitted that she was pregnant but they weren’t making a huge announcement, and I said she should talk to my friend Iva since she had the newborn baby Balderston, and then we were making plans to have lunch together so she could do that.

“Baby Balderston?” she asked, and Tyler and I shook our heads.

“That’s an unhappy story,” I answered. “I hope he’ll have a real name soon.”

“I’ve been trying to convince her to call him Tyler, since he and I get along so well,” he told us. “Look.” Then he started showing off pictures of the two of them cuddling, of him feeding the baby, and even one his mom had taken as he changed a diaper.

“Aw, these are so cute!” Jayden said as she flipped through the shots. “You guys spend a lot of time together.”

“Not so much. You know how busy we are,” he said, and she and Zach nodded.

“They see each other because they live with him,” I explained. “Iva was getting evicted and Tyler invited her and the baby to stay with him and his mom.”

“Really? That’s super generous,” she told him, and he shrugged, shaking his head.

“It really is,” I concurred. “He immediately said, ‘She should live here, I have room.’ And his mother has been amazing with helping out.”

“My mom is staying for a month after the baby comes, and Zach’s auntie will be here, too,” Jayden said. “I think we can do it for a month, but I don’t know about longer than that. They have a lot of opinions.”

“You live with your mother, and Kasia lives with her dad?” Zach asked, laughing. He pointed at the two of us. “How does this work? Don’t you want any time alone?”

“Her bed creaks like it’s falling apart when I’m on it,” Tyler answered, smiling at me. Just like his text inviting them out, that kind of comment produced an entirely mistaken impression of our relationship. But we were in way too deep now for me to say something about it, so I just smiled tightly and let it go.

“I was thinking that I might buy a second place up here for my mother,” he continued. “She and Iva could live there together, if they wanted. My mom is wild for baby Balderston and Iva needs somewhere permanent where she can unpack and settle. She’s really worried about her whole situation, but we’ve been working legal angles to try to nail everything down.”

“Is her boyfriend a deadbeat?” Jayden asked sympathetically, and he nodded.

“Yeah, but my mom is like a dog on a bone about stuff like this. She’s going to nail Iva’s ex to the wall. She looks all sweet and she thinks that ‘crap’ is a bad word, but you don’t want to cross her. She got the boyfriend’s address out of a real estate agent and she hired a detective to watch him and get evidence of his assets.”

“What?” I asked. “What detective?” No one had said anything to me about that. “Iva can’t…” I stopped myself before saying that Iva couldn’t afford that, because it wasn’t the business of Jayden and Zach Santiago. We would be talking more about it later, though, and I was pretty mad that it hadn’t been discussed with me already.

“My father was that guy,” Zach said. “Now he comes around, sniffing for money. Get the boyfriend on a court docket and get a new name for baby Balderston.”

I agreed that he needed a name and I had plenty of questions about this topic, but I also felt like we needed to stop discussing Iva’s personal problems. “Did you guys see that Herb and Buzz are releasing their own line of men’s personal care products?” I asked. “Cologne, aftershave…”

It was a fun night, and in terms of a playdate, I thought it worked great. Both Tyler and I had plans to meet up separately with the Santiagos and Jayden hugged me goodbye, too. “That was better than I expected,” he said when we got into his car.

“Are you saying that I was right that you needed a friend?”

“I’m saying that I like Zach more than I thought. He and I have a lot in common.”

“Good,” I said. “And I’m glad that you insisted that I come, because I liked Jayden a lot, too.”

“We were both right,” he told me. “I’ll give you the credit for thinking it up, though.”

He was giving me credit, and he was probably also giving a lot of money to a private investigator. “Iva didn’t tell me about the detective,” I said. “Isn’t it expensive?”

“Yeah, but it’s necessary. My mom suggested it and Iva said ok, but that she would be paying for it. There’s no way,” he told me. “It’s too much money.”

“But why didn’t she tell me about it?” I persisted.

“She’s aware that you hate stupid Dominic.”

“Everyone hates him!” I exclaimed. “It’s also no secret that you share that feeling.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t care about my opinion. She cares a lot about yours.”

“Well, I’ll never talk about stupid Dominic again, then,” I said. “I’ll never bring him up. I don’t want baby Balderston to know how much I hate his father, either.”

“When other people talk about stupid Dominic, you can’t go like this.” He turned to demonstrate what he meant, and there was an expression on his handsome face resembling someone who’d lifted something too heavy, like when I’d tried to move Shay Galton’s deionizing casket by myself.

“I look like that?” I asked, horrified. “Good grief, I’ll stop. I don’t want her to be afraid to tell me things. Am I so judgy?”

“No, she’s judging herself,” he said, nodding. “She was sad and scared at first, but now she’s getting mad and embarrassed that she was with stupid Dominic at all.”

“You’re so wise, Tyler.”

“You’re so sassy,” he answered. “You have a sassy mouth.” But he was smiling, so it didn’t seem to bother him. “We’re going to have to stop calling him stupid Dominic, too.”

“I guess so,” I agreed. “Thanks for doing all this for Iva.”

“My mom organized everything.”

“But you’re paying for it,” I pointed out. “Would you really pay for a place for them to live, too?”

“For my mother? Of course,” he said. “She wasn’t interested in moving to California, but she hasn’t said no to being here.”

“She hasn’t been here in the winter yet.”

“Neither have I, except for a few games,” he told me. “I think I’ll be an idiot like Zach was. Yeah, us idiots will have to stick together.”

“I guess I made a good list of potential friends,” I said. I couldn’t help myself.

“Sassy and smug,” he pointed out.

“I’m glad you decided to speak up and participate so they could get to know you, too.”

“You called me out for acting like a booty hole,” he reminded me.

“You were, but you stopped. I would have kicked you under the table, but I was afraid of getting someone else by mistake.”

We drove another slow mile or so in silence. “I don’t do that on purpose,” he said. “I’m not trying to be a booty hole.”

“I know,” I assured him. “You’re not, but you have to figure out how to get out if it without me texting or kicking you. But I’m sure you can, if you put your mind to it. I trained myself out of speaking in rhyme.”

“How?”

“I would open my mouth and feel it coming and then I’d grab ahold of myself. I’d remember that no one liked it. And no one did, not even my English teacher,” I said. “Eventually, I got used to talking normally.”

“So I can train myself out of being an asshole?”

“Booty hole,” I corrected. I liked that girl’s term for him better. “Absolutely, because it’s not how you really are. Were you actually mad and wanting to hit Zach Santiago?”

“No,” Tyler said. “I didn’t feel like that at all.”

“It was good that you didn’t insult him like you were doing to the guys when you first got here. I heard you were saying crap about César Hidalgo and how he should have retired.”

“How the fuck do you know all this? Are you listening in the locker room somehow?” he demanded. “Yeah, I was saying shit. I showed up at the practice facility to meet the team and the first thing I heard? ‘Bro thinks he’s César. He’s no César. We’re going to show you how we do things in the orange house.’”

“Who said that to you?” I asked furiously.

“They were so fucking proud of themselves and it was—” But he stopped.

“Yes?” I prompted.

“It was like when I started on my college team,” he told me. “I played as a true freshman, and I was about forty pounds lighter than I am now. We were scrimmaging and a linebacker picked me up and threw me onto the ground. Like he was a fucking professional wrestler.”

“A guy on your team? Who did that?” I demanded. “Did you get hurt?”

“I got the wind knocked out of me, and he looked down and spit in my face.”

“Who was that? Give me a name!”

“What are you going to do?” he asked, sounding calmer. “Hire a hitman, like for stupid Dominic? I mean, just Dominic.”

I couldn’t afford a professional; I would have to take matters into my own hands. “Tell me his name right now.”

“No, because I think you are going to try to kill someone,” Tyler answered. “That was eight years ago, and he never made it to play in the confederation. But the Woodsmen were acting just like him, like they were better than me and like that Hidalgo was better, too. Then I knew they were right because I was playing like shit.”

“Because you got too worried and anxious,” I said.

“Maybe. But I ran my mouth, like a booty hole. I’m sorry I did that, because I could have shut the hell up and shown them on the field how they were wrong.”

“That would have been better. So, which Woodsmen were rude to you?” I asked casually.

“No, I’m still not telling you.”

“Fine,” I snapped. Next time I saw Dalila, Coach Nour’s daughter, I’d get it from her. She knew everything.

We drove for a while, and I must have been partially lulled to sleep by the lack of speed because it took me much too long to realize that he was going the wrong way. “Tyler, this isn’t how to get home,” I said, but he nodded.

“I know. We’re making a stop before we go back to the condo.”

“Where?” I asked, but as he kept driving, I knew where he was headed. “My beach?”

“Is this Kasia Beach? I thought the shoreline was public, like in California.”

“Why are we going here? It’s kind of cold,” I mentioned, glancing down at Iva’s outfit. I didn’t have as much coverage as usual.

Tyler’s thoughts were running in the same direction. “You’re exposing more skin than normal,” he said.

“That’s what people do at night, which you already know. Also, Iva is two inches shorter and it does make a difference. That’s why I usually wear leggings when I put on her mustard dress.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a dress that she gave me because she didn’t like it, because it’s not attractive. It’s pretty much the color of mustard, and also, I got some actual mustard on it that won’t come out,” I explained.

“Why the fuck are you wearing it if it doesn’t fit, it’s ugly, and it’s stained?”

When he put it that way, it didn’t sound very nice, but it wasn’t all that bad. “Maybe I should talk to your former stylist,” I suggested. “I know that she totally understands what’s seasonally appropriate.”

“Here we are at the beach,” he announced and got out, slamming the door behind himself. A moment later, though, he came around and opened mine for me.

It wasn’t exactly freezing, but it was fall now, and it felt like it. I wasn’t shivering but it was nicer when Tyler put his arm around me. “What are we doing here?” I asked.

“I thought you said that you liked coming to this place.”

“I do,” I agreed. “You wanted to come because I like it?”

“Also, there’s no cell coverage, so you have to stop checking to see if anyone needs you.”

“You noticed me doing that?”

“About every ten, fifteen minutes you were staring down at your lap,” he agreed. “They’re fine and if someone isn’t, the other two can step in.”

“I know you’re right,” I answered.

“How come you’re always checking, then?”

“I think I never quite got over the whole thing of finding my dad after the stroke, like, the shock of it,” I said. “I dream about it and sometimes when I’m awake, it pops into my head. When I walk into the house and he doesn’t answer me fast enough, or if he doesn’t pick up my calls, then I see it again. I can smell the burned coffee that he had left on the stove until it boiled away to nothing. The handle of the pot melted and he was so upset about that later, because it had been my mother’s that she’d brought with her when she moved here.”

“I get that,” Tyler said. “Sometimes memories stick. I have one…no, I don’t want to talk about that.”

I waited, but he didn’t continue. “Do you want to put our feet in the lake?” I had already kicked off my shoes when we stepped onto the sand and he looked down at his own.

“I don’t like the water,” he answered, which I knew. “I nearly threw up on that ferry to the island.”

“You got seasick?”

“I was scared out of my damn mind,” he said. “We were out in the middle of that bay or whatever it is, and I knew I’d never make it to the other side if the boat went down. Can you swim?”

“Yes, but only open water swimmers would be able to make that distance. It must be over three miles to shore in the middle of the straights, but maybe you could have clung to debris from the wreck and gotten rescued.”

He stopped and looked up at the sky. There were only faint stars out tonight, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was shaking his head and I realized that I hadn’t been very comforting.

“Also, your boat wouldn’t have sunk,” I added. “You weren’t in any danger, no more than when…I’ll leave it at that.”

“Thanks,” he said, and we resumed walking. “I’d go back to that island.”

“You will next summer, and the one after that,” I agreed. “The team meetings are there every year.”

“I’d go with you,” he corrected. “I didn’t get to see too much and you said you never went. I would be glad to take you, even if we have to be on a boat.”

“You don’t need to pay for a bunch of stuff for me, Tyler. I don’t expect that. But if you really did want to go…”

“Everyone said that it’s pretty there in the spring,” he noted, which made all kinds of questions enter my mind. Would he still be here in Michigan in the spring? Did he mean that he’d stay after the season was over? And if we went together on a trip, would it be like a separate-room kind of deal? No, he would think we would be together. I pictured that and everything inside me clenched briefly in anticipation of pleasure.

“Your dad would probably like it,” he continued. “So would my mom.”

“A family vacation,” I interpreted, and he nodded. No more clenching.

“Even though I don’t like the water, I can appreciate that it’s beautiful here.” He stopped and looked across the lake.

“When it’s warmer, we can come back and go in. We don’t have to go deep,” I added. “You could get used to it and float around.”

He literally shuddered. “Yeah,” he answered, but it sounded much less than enthusiastic.

“Want to put your feet in now?” I asked again. “It’s calm.” It was pitch black, like a big expanse of rolling ink, touched with silver from the light of the waxing moon.

“Uh, ok.” He looked more and didn’t move, not until I reached down and tugged his hand to pull him closer. Then he took a while as he bent to remove his shoes and his socks, and then roll his pants. “What kind of fish are in there?” he asked.

“There’s nothing as big as you. There’s nothing nearly as big as you in the shallows. The worst thing you’ll encounter is a pointy rock.” I took his hand again. “Ready?”

The wet sand was cold and the water was more so. The shock of that made him focus less on the fear, though, so it was a good thing when he yelped, “Fuck! People go in here on purpose?”

“Lots of people,” I agreed, leading him out. “You can dive and swim—”

“Kasia, don’t go so deep!”

The water hadn’t reached my knees. “Ok, I’ll come back,” I said, and stepped to his side so that the waves only lapped our ankles. “See? This isn’t so bad.”

“It’s all right,” he answered, but as close as I was, I could feel his heart beating. He really, really didn’t like this.

“Tyler?”

He looked down at me. “What?”

“You were going to kiss me before, when we were on my comfortable bed. Want to do it now?”

And he broke into a smile. “Yes,” he told me, and he did.

Good grief. It was just his mouth on mine, pressing firmly and then, when I parted my lips, it was also his tongue carefully stroking. It shouldn’t have made me feel like I was on fire, all through my body. He put his arm around me to hold me closer and his palm cupped the back of my neck, and he kissed me deeper. I forgot that we were standing in the cool water and that maybe it was a little cold outside, because this was so…

Tyler pulled back, and I fell forward like I was boneless, gasping. “Your neck ok?” he asked me. “Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you ok, in general?”

It made sense that he would ask, since I had flopped on him, had struggled to breathe, and was now shaking and clinging to his arms to stay upright. “I’m great,” I answered. “Very.”

His fingers rubbed my neck. “We should get out of this water.”

“Oh, your ankle!” I jerked myself upright. “The cold can’t be good for it.”

“I feel great, too,” he said. “I thought we could sit in the sand and I could kiss you more.”

He did.