Page 19

19

Ziggy

Ohhh, this is bad.

Every time I start to think maybe it’s not that bad, I hear Miranda in my head again. The guys all know Dad would murder them if they look at me wrong. Or at least trade them to a less desirable team.

And here I am, literally living with the team captain .

Lacrosse, my ass.

Holt’s the freaking captain of the Pounders.

I’ve picked up my phone to text him a half-dozen times in the hour since I gave in to what I thought was over-paranoid paranoia to look up the Pounders’ roster, and every time, I’ve put it back down.

He asked me on a date.

And I want to go.

And I think it’s a date .

But maybe it’s not a date. Maybe it’s just him setting me up to make a friend.

With Fletcher’s fiancée .

It was the Fletcher’s fiancée that got me. I don’t know many Fletchers. But I looked up the roster anyway because there was this little voice whispering in the back of my head that this last week with Holt was too good to be true after the absolute roller coaster that my life has been since Abby Nora’s baby shower.

And there it is in full color.

A picture of Holt— my Holt—at the very top of the team roster. All of that dark hair. The chin dimple. The hooded brown eyes. The broad shoulders and thick chest.

Holding a rugby ball under one arm.

Miranda walks past my door, camera in hand, and gives me a wave.

I wave back.

Frantically.

Like, a get in here and shut the door wave.

She grins as she joins me. “That’s a face. What’s up? Did you take out a billboard calling Abby Nora a twatmuffin and now you’re having second thoughts or need someone to blame it on? I would totally take the blame if you did. Our parents would blame my prefrontal cortex still not being fully developed. You don’t get that pass.”

“What? No. Shut the door. I—did you get a billboard?”

“No, but now I sort of want to.”

“ Do not get a billboard . Please, please shut the door.”

She gives me a what the hell is wrong with you? look as she shuts the door. “The billboard’s getting more appealing by the minute…”

I wave away the teasing. “I have to ask you something and you have to not laugh and also not tell anyone I asked because I’m asking for absolutely no reason at all . Also, I’m so pissed that you picked French instead of Spanish or Italian in school, because I don’t want to say this in English.”

Her hazel eyes spark with mischief as she props a hip at the edge of my desk. “Riiiiiiight. Idle curiosity about something you can’t ask me in our native tongue with the door open. I’m sure it’s completely innocent.”

I’m screwed.

Whether or not I go to the movies with Holt and his friend tomorrow, I’m so screwed. “Why aren’t there pictures of the team players all over this building?”

“Usually are. They took them down for the renovations. Supposed to be done soon.” She grins at me. “Why? Did someone meet a player and not know it?”

I drop my head into my hands. “How serious is Dad about the players not looking at his daughters and how much of it is all talk?”

“ Oh my god , is one of the players your baby daddy?”

“ Sshhhhhh! Keep your voice down. What the hell is wrong with you? And no . He’s?—”

I freeze.

Oh my god.

Oh my god .

What if he is? What if one of the players was on vacation in Greece and I?—

No.

I pull up the roster of players again and scroll through.

None look familiar.

Except Holt.

And my god, he’s handsome. He’s not smiling in his official team photo, but his eyes are. And it’s not just any eye-smile.

It’s an eye-smile that says he’s a beast on the pitch—not the field, as I’ve been told numerous times at work this week—and a gentleman in the streets and still-to-be-determined in the sheets.

“No, it was definitely not one of the players,” I tell my sister. “And even if it was, we could only communicate because we both spoke Italian, so he definitely wouldn’t be playing for the Pounders. I think. Right? Do any of the guys on the team not speak English?”

“They all speak English. Well enough to communicate I want to hook up with you anyway. But didn’t you get pregnant in May? The season was still going on. None of our guys would’ve been overseas.” She angles a look at my computer.

I hit the lock button on my keyboard so she can only see the log-in screen and not what I was researching.

She looks at me.

My entire body goes hot.

Not just my face. My entire body .

Miranda gives me the spill it all now look.

“You cannot tell a soul,” I whisper and wish once again that we could have this discussion in a way that couldn’t be overheard.

She crosses her heart, then holds out a pinky. “Secret to the grave.”

“I’m living in Holt Webster’s house,” I whisper. “He’s the guy I was— am —house-sitting for. But more like cooking for now. Since he’s on crutches.”

She blinks at me once.

Then twice .

She starts to gasp but finishes the gasp doubled over in laughter.

I sag back in my chair. “So it’s not as bad as I think it is? If you’re laughing this hard, it can’t be as bad as I think it is.”

“Oh no,” she says between chortles. “You’re fucked. Or he is. More likely he is. Dad’s gonna lose his effing mind. Holt’s fired. He is so fired. And it’s not funny. It’s really not. But if I stop laughing, I’ll start crying. Tell me you’re lying. Please tell me you’re making this up.”

“ I didn’t know who he was . One of the catering staff told me he played lacrosse. The night we met. He was doing security at the event where I puked on Abby Nora’s brother-in-law.”

“Ziggy. Copper Valley doesn’t have a lacrosse team. At least, not on a professional level.”

“I was a little distracted trying to get a new life together to care to look that up. My options were continuing to bleed money staying in a hotel, continue to let Mom and Dad cover the hotel, move in with Mom and Dad and Naked Tuesdays, or house-sit for a guy who was going to lacrosse camp for six weeks.”

“Does he know who you are?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think?—”

A bark in the hallway interrupts me.

I stare at my door.

Miranda does too. “Was that Jessica?”

I bolt to my feet, stifling my favorite Italian curse word. My stomach swishes, but I don’t feel like I have to run to the bathroom.

This is progress.

Definitely progress.

But only on the morning sickness front.

Definitely not progress on the part where I’m living with— and have a crazy stupid crush on—the captain of the Pounders and my stepfather might kill him.

“Tell me Dad will be reasonable about this,” I whisper to Miranda as I fling my door open.

“Zero chance.” She trails me down the short hallway to the entrance of the Pounders’ admin building, where Mom’s holding Jessica, who’s growling at Quinoa because the Pounders have a male receptionist and Jessica needs therapy.

But Mom bringing Jessica to a building with a fair number of men isn’t the biggest problem.

The biggest problem is the large rugby player on crutches swinging into the waiting area from the other side of the building—the side of the building where the players come to work out and see the physical therapist —sputtering, “ Jessica? ”

“What the fuck did you just say?” the slightly taller, slightly bigger, mustachioed guy behind him says while the dark-haired woman with both of them gapes at Holt.

Jessica snorts at Holt.

“ Mom . You can’t have the dog here,” I say.

Holt’s eyes whip to me and go comically round. I shake my head at him. Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk to me .

Have we known each other long enough for subliminal communication to work?

He blinks like he’s clearing his vision, then squints harder at me, and I wonder briefly if he knows enough Spanish for me to tell him he doesn’t know me.

He did say he was in Spain.

But I don’t want to risk it, so I subliminally communicate harder.

Miranda makes a noise. “Oh, I see it,” she whispers.

“Who the fuck are you calling Jessica ?” the other guy— rugby player too, I assume, based on the build and the mustache that half of them seemed to have in their team pictures—says to Holt, which jerks him out of gaping at me.

“Fletcher, my goodness, your language,” my mom says. “Jessica is my daughter’s dog.”

The woman makes a noise.

I don’t know if it’s a laugh or a whimper or something entirely different, but she clears her throat, then makes it again.

Do I know her?

She seems familiar.

Roughly my age— fuck .

Was she at Abby Nora’s baby shower?

How does this keep getting worse? How?

“Apologies, Mrs. Keating,” Fletcher says.

“He has a longstanding, difficult history with Jessicas,” the woman says.

Holt’s staring at me again, and it’s not hard to see that he’s putting the pieces together and realizing that this is very, very, very bad.

His cheeks are going pink over the dark scruff he’s been growing, and there’s no easy comfort between us like there was at breakfast this morning.

I want to go back to breakfast.

I want to go back to breakfast and skip work and go see a movie with him today.

Dammit dammit dammit .

“How did you know Jessica’s name, dear?” Mom says to him.

He jerks his attention to her awkwardly enough that his companions look at him funny too.

“We ran into each other in the parking lot a couple days ago,” I blurt, “and she growled at him and I told him she doesn’t like men so he knows she’s not supposed to be here since there are so many men in this building.”

And now everyone’s staring at me.

“ Nice ,” Miranda whispers.

No, not nice .

Nice would be if this wasn’t happening.

How the hell is this happening?

Well, your dad got you the job with the catering company, and he likes to help people out, so it makes logical sense that at some point, he also set Holt up to work security for the company since the players need extra jobs in the off-season to supplement their income, which means ? —

Which means it doesn’t matter.

This is happening.

I’ll just have to go talk to Dad and explain it to him and make him be rational about it.

“Ziggy, that’s nonsense,” Mom says. “Of course Jessica likes men.”

“She does not like men,” I repeat.

“She likes your father.”

“Does she?”

Mom opens her mouth, then closes it.

“Huxley.” Holt looks at Fletcher. “Pet the dog.”

“Dogs love him,” the woman with them tells me.

“They really do,” Miranda agrees. “He almost didn’t make it out alive the day the whole team volunteered at that dog shelter because they were killing him with how much they love him.”

Fletcher’s eyeing Jessica.

The woman—I assume his fiancée at this point, who is definitely familiar—squats down at Jessica’s level. “Do you hate men, sweet thing?”

Jessica snuffles at her.

Fletcher squats too, and Jessica instantly growls, her little ears going back.

“Fuck me,” he mutters, then glances at my mom, but doesn’t apologize for his language.

She sighs and shakes her head. “I suppose I can give that one a pass.”

“It could be the mustache,” his fiancée says to him, which makes Miranda snort.

Holt looks at me again.

I shake my head again too.

It’s clear the questions are coming. But we have to make it through today without him blowing it so I can make a plan and fix this.

I have to make sure my dad doesn’t kill him.

The woman scoots closer to Jessica and scratches her head. “Mrs. Keating, Fletcher didn’t tell me your other daughter had started working for the team too.”

“Dad hasn’t made the announcement yet,” Miranda says. “This is Ziggy. She hates favoritism and wouldn’t be here except he begged her since she’s so good with food and wine and he wants to show Copper Valley’s other team owners that we’re the best.”

“Lovely to meet you, Ziggy.” The woman flicks another glance at me, her eyes narrowing slightly like she recognizes me too. “I’m Goldie. I don’t play. But this is Fletcher and Holt. They do.”

Goldie.

Has Abby Nora mentioned a Goldie?

“I play,” Fletcher says. “Captain, not so much. ”

“You’re not a Keating,” Holt says to me.

I freeze.

Mom straightens.

Fletcher and Goldie both look at me, and Fletcher says a long, “ Oooooooh ,” that earns him a look from Goldie that I interpret to mean Holt’s already told them we’re going to see a movie together, and Goldie put together much faster that this situation is bad.

I know her.

How do I know her?

“Nice eyes spotting Ziggy’s new nameplate on her office, Captain,” Miranda says. “She never changed her name after her mom married my dad, but we don’t really do the step-thing because family’s family, you know?”

He stares at her for a minute, then looks at Fletcher. “Lunch time.”

Like that’s not the most awkward answer to Miranda’s family explanation.

Oh god.

Oh god oh god oh god.

I told him my parents have Naked Tuesdays.

He knows my parents have Naked Tuesdays.

I almost choke on my own horror. They’d be mortified if they found out one of their players knew. And what if he casually mentioned it to the rest of the team?

I have a house sitter because I took pity on this pregnant woman who would’ve been stuck living through Naked Tuesdays at her parents’ house if I hadn’t .

Am I whimpering out loud or is that just in my head?

Goldie rises. “Definitely lunchtime. Can’t heal if we don’t feed you well.”

“How’s your foot doing, Holt?” Mom asks .

“Getting there.”

“Roland told me you should be able to play again next season.”

“That’s the goal, ma’am.”

“He’s such a good captain,” Mom tells me. “The players just adore him.”

“Some of us just tolerate him,” Fletcher says.

“They say the same about you and your mustache, dear,” Mom replies.

He grins. “I know. I like it that way.”

Jessica sneezes toward him, which isn’t something she did at home at all the two weeks Holt was gone but has done to Holt every day since he’s been back.

Apparently Jessica’s decided she doesn’t like Fletcher specifically enough to snot on him too.

Fletcher looks down at her, and she spins around to aim her butt?—

I leap forward and grab her leash from Mom. “ Jessica , we do not fart at people. Especially in offices.”

Goldie chokes on a laugh. Miranda lets hers roll free.

Fletcher mutters something that sounds like, “Yeah, Jessica,” which makes Goldie cough again.

And Holt rubs his brow with a sigh. “I’ll wait in your car,” he says to Fletcher.

“It’s eleventy billion bloody degrees outside,” Fletcher says.

“So hurry your ass up. Mrs. Keating, nice to see you. Miranda, stay out of trouble.” He pauses and stares at me for an awkward pause. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” I choke out. “All of you.”

Goldie squints at me the same way I’ve probably squinted at her a half dozen times already .

Like she knows me too.

It had to be Abby Nora’s baby shower. Which means Holt’s teammate’s fiancée knows that her friend Abby Nora thinks I’m a horrible person.

Awesome .

My brain hurts.

My stomach is starting to as well.

“They’re good people, but don’t get too close,” Mom says after Goldie and Fletcher have left to catch up with Holt in the parking lot. “There are lines when it comes to fraternizing with the players and their significant others.”

“Goldie’s good people. Fletcher’s questionable. Holt’s nice though,” Miranda says.

“And still a player,” Mom says.

Fuck. “Right. Of course. What are you doing here? Why’d you bring Jessica?”

She smiles at me. “I thought you’d like it if we brought you lunch to celebrate the end of your first week on the job.”

“Just me? Did you bring enough for Miranda too?”

“I’m calling in an order to that Greek place you loved so much the last time you were home.”

I might’ve hooked up with a guy in Greece that ended with me pregnant, but Tater Tot isn’t having anything to do with the idea of gyros and tzatziki and grape leaves just yet.

“Can we do pasta instead?”

Plain noodles.

I can do plain noodles.

And then I can figure out how to move into a new apartment immediately.