AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It hadn’t been that long ago Ian said that to me, but the delivery of such simple words now felt loaded down with subtext. Indecision was a bitch, and I couldn’t shake the ominous tingling in my gut that I wouldn’t be able to get through this weekend without both of the situations coming to a head.
A dinner meeting was simple enough, if that was all it truly was.
A kiss with an old friend wasn’t simple at all, unless that was all it was to him.
The first was straightforward for me. The second wasn’t straightforward in the slightest because I found myself on the end of the equation as the person doing the wanting, with no indication at all that he’d be willing to step into that space with me. Which was what made it a thousand times more inconvenient that my heart did a weird skipping thing when I looked at the entrance and saw that he’d finally arrived.
First a skip. A breathless beat before it began again. That was when his eyes found mine from across the distance. Then it was off to the races, beating harder and faster until I felt it in my fingertips.
I tore my eyes away so I wasn’t watching him like a freaking stalker—not to mention my own looks of intense longing probably didn’t help anything either—and instead focused on greeting the people who approached my saved seats on the bleachers. My dad, as usual, chose to stand, but he gave me a slight pat on the back.
“Harlow,” he said.
“Hey, Dad, thanks for coming.”
My mom picked her way up onto the bench just below mine, giving me a smile that was also holding intention. She looked … sorry.
“How was your birthday?” she asked, her hands tightening over her purse, stretched so thin that the skin almost looked translucent. She wasn’t just sorry. She was nervous. “I hope you got my text in the morning.”
I managed a smile. “I did. It was great, thank you. I felt very spoiled all day,” I told her. Details would be kept safely tucked away from this crowd too, because I could just imagine trying to explain it all to my mother, with Sheila and Poppy within earshot.
No thank you.
And speaking of the latter two women, their greetings were night and day from my own parents’. While Poppy paused to say hi to someone she knew, Sheila opened her arms the moment she was within reach, squeezing me so tight that I laughed.
“Honey, I’ve been so excited to come watch this. You have no idea.” As she took a seat, her eyes soaked in all the chaos in the building.
“Really?” I asked.
She patted my arm. “Are you kidding? I had a million kids in different activities, and I’ve just been waiting for my granddaughters to be old enough to start attending all over again.” She gave my mom a friendly smile. “Not that Sage is my granddaughter. I promise I won’t overstep, but she sort of feels like a nice bonus, with the two of them just next door.”
From the bench behind them, I watched my mom struggle with what to say. She’d never quite known how to deal with the Wilders, and as I got older, I realized that a lot of that came from her own hang-ups and insecurities.
That was true of most interactions in life. The way someone acted, for good or for bad, usually said so much more about them and what they’d been through than it did about you.
My parents were proud of the life they’d built, but they’d never been comfortable around people who were quietly wealthy in the way Tim and Sheila had been. They had a successful business spanning into its second generation of their family, two sons who played professional football, and now two sons-in-law who did too, a beautiful big home and a huge swath of land where they’d carved out the kind of life people dream of.
And sometimes, I suspected that the easy way the Wilders loved, the way they welcomed and accepted, was just as uncomfortable to Mom. When I was younger, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around it, coming from the family that I did. Then, I was just happy to be in their orbit. It wasn’t that disagreements didn’t exist and everything was easy, but the Wilders weathered the hard because at the anchor of that family was acceptance. It was love rooted deep, without conditions and without reservation.
Poppy stepped over the bench, sending my parents a friendly smile, before she plopped down beside me and sighed. “There are so many people in this building right now.”
I laughed. “Kids sports are a whole different level of crazy.”
She gave me a sideways hug, then whispered in my ear. “A little bird told me that Coach Scott has been flirting with you.”
I gave her a look. “How the hell does news travel in this place?”
She laughed, then tilted her head toward the young couple she was chatting with in the first row. “Their son plays. She told me he can hardly keep his eyes off you.”
I blew out a slow breath because right on schedule, he looked over and gave me a private little grin. Poppy nudged me with her elbow, then cleared her throat knowingly.
“You stop it. He wants to meet with me to talk about a girls’ flag football team, that’s it.”
She snorted. “Before or after he tries to shove his tongue down your throat?”
The glare I gave her made her laugh, but my stomach roiled with unease. There was only one tongue I wanted anywhere, and he approached in long-legged strides with a stoic look.
“His tongue will be nowhere near my person, thank you very much,” I said primly. “I haven’t even agreed to meet with him yet.”
