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Fourteen
The next day at breakfast, I let the team know that they beat the Heartwood Bulldogs and they were ecstatic. Ironically, the Heartwood cheerleaders walked in only a few moments later to line up at the omelet station and waffle bar. Echo pretended to ignore me, but it was really obvious. I stared at her over the rim of my latte.
“I don’t know if I can handle the sexual tension in this room right now,” Dom said, looking at me.
“Don’t be gross,” I said. “There are children present.”
“Then stop looking at her like that.”
I couldn’t.
Echo also got in line for an omelet and I glanced at Dom. “I’m trying. There’s . . . a lot going on. We have a lot to chat about when we’re alone.”
Dom raised his eyebrows.
“I can’t wait to hear about it.”
I couldn’t wait to tell Katie and Penny that they didn’t need to bother setting me up with the girl in their book club. I had found my own girl and we were going to give it a shot. Everything would probably blow up in my face but, for right now, there was hope and promise and butterflies in my stomach.
After breakfast we split the squad up and I took those who wanted to watch the Finals with me. Their eyes got big when they saw the performances of the top ten teams and, I had to admit, so did mine. I made notes on stunts and transitions and tumbling and music, and even bows.
One team had a base who got hit right in the face with the back of a flyer’s head and her nose exploded with blood. The coaches rushed onto the mat and stopped the routine, and my stomach dropped for the coaches of that team. They were allowed time to clean up, reset, and do their routine again at the end and they nailed it. If I were judging, they would have been my winning team.
During the awards, all the teams came on the mat and the scores were announced in order from last place to first. Since all the squads had gotten their scores already, they could pretty much tell where they had placed once the announcer started listing the places and scores, but it was an unwritten rule that the winning squad couldn’t celebrate until they had actually been announced as the winners.
As I suspected, the team that had the mishap with the base was the winner, and they totally deserved it. Everyone hoisted the injured team member up in the air and gave her the trophy. I wiped tears from my eyes and hoped no one was judging me. I always cried when teams won, even if they weren’t mine. Seeing the absolute joy on the cheerleader’s faces got to me.
I took the kids back to the hotel for lunch and decided I needed some time for myself. I checked with the chaperones and went up to my room and filled the bathtub and dropped in a bath bomb I’d brought with me specifically for this purpose. I hadn’t known if I was going to be able to use it, but I was seizing my moment.
Before I got into the tub, I ordered some more room service. I had racked up quite a bill, but I didn’t care.
The room service arrived: chocolate mousse and strawberries and ginger ale because I didn’t think it would be responsible to drink on this trip. But I’d had them put the ginger ale in a fancy glass, so it was almost like champagne.
I slid into the tub and rested my head on a rolled-up towel and just . . . let myself soak. I’d been going, going, going for weeks now, and it was nice to pause. If only I had my kitties on the side of the tub to yell at me to get out of the bad water, this would be perfect.
I ended up falling asleep in the tub, lulled by the warm water and soothing scents of the bath bomb. I woke up when the water started to chill, so I drained some and then filled the tub again and didn’t get out until I was entirely pruny.
Not sure what else to do with myself, I got dressed in some casual clothes and texted Dom to see how everyone was doing. He said the kids were still in the pool and he was going to herd them to dinner soon.
I told him that I’d meet him downstairs and answered a few of my text messages. I had all kinds of things to get back to in Corsica on Monday that I was trying not to think about. So much work that I was putting off. It had been hard for me not to open up my emails and start answering them. I’d put on an out-of-office message, but that didn’t stop people from messaging me and asking for projects with ridiculous deadlines that I would never agree to anyway.
