Page 15

I head down to baggage claim even though I carried on so I can meet my mother. I spent the whole flight thinking about my weekend in Vegas, and the second I landed, Gabby was the first person I texted, and she replied with a selfie she took of us on the top of the Eiffel Tower and a line about how she wishes I was there with her.

It felt right for her to be the first person I contacted with news.

My mom was the second.

I spot her standing by the carousel waiting for her suitcase. She’s never been a light packer, and she’s only gotten worse with age.

She’s in her own little world when I sneak up behind her with a bear hug, and she whirls around to face me, her face breaking into a huge smile when her eyes land on mine. “Cooper Michael Noah, don’t you ever scare me like that!”

I chuckle.

“Good timing.” She nods toward the belt. “That purple suitcase is mine.”

I grab it off when it comes near us. “Ready?”

“No, I’ve got one more.”

“One more what?” I ask stupidly.

“Suitcase.”

“You brought two suitcases for a six-day trip?”

“Honey, yes, of course I did. One of them is filled with stuff for you, though. I did some spring cleaning and found a few things I thought you might want now that you’re settling into San Diego,” she says.

Oh boy.

She pauses as she studies me for a beat. “Oh my God, you met a girl.”

“What?” I ask, the second time in the last five seconds I’ve sounded like a dumbass.

“You met someone!” She claps her hands together and squeals a little. “When can I meet her?”

“Not anytime soon.” I don’t mention that I actually invited her to come home with me and if she hadn’t had plans tomorrow, she’d be meeting my mom right now.

“So there is someone? That was a test! You failed!” She grabs onto my arm and hugs it. “Tell me everything about her and leave out not one single detail.”

I laugh. This is going to be a long six days. “I have a lot to tell you, but let’s save something for the car ride home.”

“Ahh, I’m so excited, my baby boy!” she says, clapping again.

So I get my sunny disposition from her. But she’s more Type A, while my dad was more laid back—I get that from him. My older brother is my opposite. He’s Type A like my mom, but he takes it to the extreme as a successful attorney in Chicago. He’s married to his high school sweetheart and they have two very active boys. He seems like he’s got it all.

“How’s Connor?” I ask.

“Busy busy. He’s got some big case he’s been prepping for, and he’s been in and out of town a lot. I went to Ethan’s summer league baseball game a few days ago, and gosh, every time I watch him play it reminds me of you at that age. And Jacob’s still doing swim. He had a meet a few weeks ago and got second place,” she says, catching me up on the latest news with my nephews.

“And Marissa?” I ask, referring to my sister-in-law.

“Did I tell you she decided not to return this year?” she asks. She and my mom teach at the same school—my mom teaches first grade, and Marissa teaches fourth. Or she did until this year, I guess.

I shake my head. “Why?”

“Those little journals she makes went viral on the clock app and she can barely keep up with orders. Between that and the kids, something had to give.”

“The clock app?”

“TikTok,” she clarifies, and I laugh.

“Right. And you?” I ask.

“I go back next Monday for teacher meetings, but I’m all ready for the year. My team and I met over the summer to plan and we even made all our copies for first quarter. We’ve got it down pat, which is why I get to enjoy the last week of summer with my baby boy.” She squeezes my cheeks, and she’s pretty much the only person in the world who could get away with squeezing Cooper Noah’s cheeks in public.

I laugh. It might be a long week, but it’s also going to be a fun week.

The second we’re sealed into the quiet privacy of my truck, the relentless grilling begins. “So this girl…”

“I have other items to discuss first, but I will get to the girl.” I navigate out of the parking lot and pay the exorbitant fee for leaving my truck at the airport, and then I head toward the highway.

“Go for it,” she says, holding her hands out.

“When we get home. Maybe over a glass of wine.”

“Uh oh,” she says. “He’s already breaking out the wine. This must be big.”

“It’s huge.”

She sits quietly, her mind working I’m sure on the thirty minute drive from the airport to the three bed, two bath luxury apartment I’ve been renting. When I first moved out here, my boss, Carla, put me up in corporate housing close to the office. I opted for a place with a view of the water despite the convenience of literally walking across the street to get to work. This way I can relax with a view when I get home, but I’m also not far from downtown where I can find the action if I want it.

So far I’ve not really found myself wanting it, though. I’ve been enjoying my quiet existence here in San Diego.

I’m in East Village, literally a three minute walk from Petco Park, where the Padres play. I’ve attended more than a few games since I’ve lived here, and I still keep in touch with a lot of the men I played ball with over the years.

Once we’re home, I lug my mom’s suitcases plus my own up to the eleventh-floor suite I rent. She gets settled in while I open a bottle of merlot, her favorite, plus a bottle of beer for myself.

“Chinese okay for dinner?” I yell across the apartment, and I hear a yes from her bedroom.

She appears a few minutes later, and I hand her the glass of wine while I grab a second beer since the first one’s already gone.

“Balcony?” I suggest, and she nods. “The food will be here in a half hour or so.”

She follows me out, and we each take a seat in the chairs out there. This place came fully furnished, a definite bonus considering all the furniture I own is currently in the house where my ex lives.

I don’t know why I let her stay there. I just wanted to get out of town. I should sell the place, but it’s a lot of work to sell a house and I haven’t had the motivation to put the work into it.

And so it sits there, my ex who cheated on me living there because I’m too goddamn nice to kick her out.

“What’s going on, Coop?” my mom asks after a long sip of wine.

I rub my palms together up and down as I draw in a deep breath. In my head, I recite the little poem my dad used to say when he was teaching my brother and me to remain calm in any situation. Up palm, down palm, time to get calm. Breathe real deep and take the leap.

She glances at my hands. She knows what I’m doing.

“Troy Bodine asked me to fly to Vegas with a job offer. The Vegas expansion team was approved, and he’ll be its manager.” I pause, and then I rush the final sentence. “He wants me to play.”

She spits out her wine, the red liquid flying everywhere. “What?”

I suppress a laugh. It’s so her personality to have an over the top reaction to the news. “He said with expansion teams, he’ll end up with leftovers, so he wants someone who can be the face of the team.”

“You do have a cute face,” she says, grabbing my jaw to cup it and squeeze. “But do you even want to play again?”

I clear my throat then kick my feet up, balancing them on the handrail in front of me as I stare out at the view.

“I think it’s time to get back in the game.” I chug some more of my beer as I think that through.

“Is your elbow back to a hundred?”

“Yeah. And the stats don’t lie. Remember what my doctor said? Around eighty-five percent of patients who get the Tommy John surgery are back in the game after a year of recovery. The pain is gone.” I straighten and bend my arm at the elbow to demonstrate my bionic elbow after the orthopedic surgeon reconstructed my elbow with ligaments from my hamstring tendon.

“How are you feeling about it?” she asks cautiously.

“I’m thinking honestly I’m a little bored. I like working with Carla, but I can still do work for StrongFitKids off-season, and Kaylee and Ben are up in Vegas, so I can work more closely with them on that side of the program. When I left Troy’s place,” I say, leaving out what Troy’s place actually was, “I made a vow to myself that it was time to get back into both games—baseball and dating. And wouldn’t you know it? A gorgeous woman sat down at my blackjack table not ten minutes later.”

“Oh!” she says, clapping her hands again. “This is it! The meet cute!”

I roll my eyes. “We spent the entire weekend together,” I admit.

“And?”

“And…” I shrug, and I take another swig of my beer before I answer. “And I think I might have fallen in love with her.”

“What?” she screeches again, and thank God she didn’t have a mouthful or merlot this time.

I nod. “She’s incredible, Mom. She’s beautiful. Long dark hair that’s almost black, and these big green eyes that just look into my soul. She’s smart, and she’s hilarious.”

She looks a little skeptical, and I answer the question before she even asks it.

“She has no idea who I am,” I say.

“You’re sure?”

I shrug. “Maybe she looked me up, maybe not. But she never mentioned it, and neither did I.”

“You can’t fall in love with someone when you’re not being honest about yourself,” she says.

“I was honest about who I am.” I lift a shoulder. “I just left out baseball.”

“But that’s a huge part of who you are, Coop! You can’t just leave it out of the conversation,” she points out.

“I’ll tell her at some point. I keep thinking it might be good to take her to the stadium and confess it all there. Once I’ve signed the contract and it’s been made official, of course. But for now, I really like being Cooper, the guy who works with kids, instead of Cooper, former baseball player.”

“I suppose I can’t fault you for that, but you have to be honest with her. She needs to know what she’s getting into before she falls for you, too.” She follows up that statement with a sip of wine.

“Too late. We both felt it, Mom. We toured Vegas, and she took me out to the middle of the desert where we watched the stars when it was dark and we stayed out there long enough to watch the sun lift over the horizon while we drank wine and talked about everything.”

“Except baseball,” she reminds me.

“Except baseball,” I confirm.

“So she’s the one?” she asks.

“It’s way too early to decide that, but if the next time I see her feels anything like this past weekend did…then yeah, I think she might be the one.”

“I want to meet her.”

I laugh. “No.” I don’t tell her I invited her home with me.

“Oh, come on! You know I’ll know within ten seconds whether she’s right for you. Like with Stacy, remember?”

“Exactly why it’s a negative, Mother. I’m not letting anyone get inside this yet.” I drain the rest of my beer.

She blows out a loud and dramatic sigh. “Fine. But if I don’t like her and you want me to say I do, I’d do that for you.”

I laugh. “Like you did with Stacy?”

She rolls her eyes. “Point taken.”

Stacy first met my mom when she came into town from Chicago to visit during the offseason. We’d only been together a few months, and she wasn’t living with me yet, but she was staying over most nights. She headed up to bed first, and my mom let me know how she felt the minute she was out of the room.

“I don’t like her,” she’d whispered to me.

She hasn’t liked anyone I dated. Ever. Mostly, I always suspected, because even though she wanted me to settle down and have kids, nobody would ever be good enough for her baby boy.

She loves Marissa, but it’s different with my mom and Connor. He’s always kept to himself, while I’ve probably overshared with her. He was thirteen when we lost my dad, and he turned inward while I clung onto my mom. He bolted from her house the second he turned eighteen, and that left us time to grow closer and closer as her life became my baseball games.

“Do you at least have a picture so I can have the mental image of you with her?” she asks.

With a bit of reluctance, I pull out my phone. I flip to the message she sent me with the photo of the two of us, and I stare at her for a beat. Her smile is wide, and her green eyes are expressive. God, she’s beautiful.

I hand over the phone, nerves pinging my chest as my mom studies the photo.

“She’s gorgeous,” she says. “Those eyes…wow. So pretty.” She looks over at me. “And your smile, Coop. It’s genuine. It’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen out of you with a girl…maybe ever.” She studies the picture again, and then she looks back at me. “I like her with you. You complement each other really well.” She hands the phone back and clears her throat. “How old did you say she was?”

I let out a long, deep sigh. “Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one?” she shrieks.

“Twenty-one,” I confirm.

“Cooper Michael Noah! You’re robbing the cradle!”

“Oh my God, Mother. Stop it. I am not.” Keeping true to character, my tone is even rather than defensive. “She’s legal.”

“Barely,” she mutters. “What does she want with an old man like you? Money? She wants a sugar daddy?”

“Mom!” Okay, maybe I’m getting a little defensive. “It’s not like that. I taught her how to play blackjack, and it was her birthday, so she invited me to the club. We danced, and then we talked, and then we spent the night together. We ate breakfast, we went up the Eiffel Tower, we got to know one another. It was a perfect weekend, and I won’t let you sit here slandering it and vilifying me.”

“Is she still in school?” she asks quietly.

I nod. “She’s studying marketing.”

“And you’re getting back in the game?”

I know where she’s going with this. “Yes.”

“You don’t think the press is going to have a field day with you dating someone half your age?”

“Half my age would be sixteen,” I say dryly.

“Almost sixteen and a half,” she points out. “Meanwhile, she’s only five years beyond that.”

“Half plus seven is the old saying, isn’t it?”

Her brow crinkles. “Yes, exactly. Half plus seven . Not half plus five .”

I blow out a breath. “I don’t care about her age. You shouldn’t, either.”

“She’s almost twelve years younger than you, darling. When Dad died, she wasn’t even born yet. When you went into high school, she was two . When you went into college, she was starting first grade. When you hit the minors, she was in fifth grade. It’s a wide gap, baby boy.” Her tone is gentle even though her words are harsh.

“You don’t think I’ve thought of that? And I keep coming back to the same thing. It. Doesn’t. Matter. All that matters is how she makes me feel, and I’ve never felt like this with anybody else.” The passion in my voice surprises even myself.

“Okay, then, honey. I’ll give this a chance.” She takes a quick sip of her merlot. “But only because you really do seem a little different to me. You really do seem like you made some connection, and I just want you to be happy. But I want you to be happy while you’ve ensured you’ve fully thought this through.”

“Thanks, Mom. I will make sure to do that.” I say the words to brush her off, but the truth is clear. I’ve already thought it through, and I can’t wait until the moment Gabby is back in my arms.