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Then again, if Brody was that good at reading emotions, how come he couldn’t see how I felt?
“They’re getting ready to start,” I said, pointing to Mia, who was standing in a gaggle of kids on one end of the field.
“Go, Mia!” Gwen shouted, and Mia waved back proudly.
Brody pulled out his cell phone to take a video of the game. “First soccer game at Mountbatten,” he narrated excitedly. “And our Mia is decked out in her uniform, ready to do her part. Oh my gosh, Grant, look at them. How adorable are they in their little shin guards and cleats?”
My heart swelled at his happiness and the implication Mia was his, too. His love for the girls was like a living, breathing thing, and it lit up his face so much right then I wanted to take my own video. Of him.
The referee held a whistle in her mouth and tried to get a few players from each team to come to the center for the kickoff, and as I watched, I felt the smooth, hesitant slide of Brody’s hand in mine. “Sorry. This okay?” he whispered. “Cleo’s teacher is standing just behind us.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess.” I purposefully did not look at Gwen’s face because I didn’t want to see her smug expression.
But as I watched Mia out on the field, the memory came to me of earlier this week, when Mia had been bragging at dinner about being “chosen” for the soccer team, though in reality, all of the kids who signed up got to play. No amount of Jacey explaining it convinced Mia she was less than supremely talented, and later that night, Jacey had begged Brody to intervene and explain things.
“Oh, no. No way,” Brody had laughingly refused. “Everyone deserves to know they’re an important part of a team, Jacey.”
For the first time, I wondered… Did Brody ever question how importanthewas?
I squeezed his hand, and he glanced up at me questioningly. “I… I know I don’t remember to say it often, Brody, but… Thank you for all that you do for our family. I don’t know what the girls would do without you. I don’t know whatIwould do without you. You really are amazing.”
“Oh. Wow.” Brody blinked, clearly stunned, and I felt foolish. Had I really never mentioned it before? Was itthatmuch of a surprise?
My heart sank. Gwen was wrong. There was absolutely no way that Brody was interested in me, unless he somehow enjoyed men with the emotional aptitude of a root vegetable. This was all pretense.
Gwen’s voice rang out, “Let’s go, Chargers!” and Brody turned back toward Mia, phone camera at the ready. But he left his hand in mine, throughout the utter comical chaos of a six-year-old’s soccer game, and when the Chargers scored and Brody gave me an impromptu hug, I wrapped my arms around him and soaked up every single moment.
If pretending Brody was mine was the closest I would get to the real thing, I was going to pretend as much as possible until it was gone.
* * *
My resolution on the soccer field seemed like a straightforward enough plan, but it only took a matter of hours for it to become complicated.
“Dad? How come you and Brody don’t sleep in the same bed?”
“What?” I looked up from the bedtime story I was reading aloud and stared at Cleo, who was snuggled against my side on the sofa.
“Ella’s dads sleep in the same bed,” Mia said from my other side.
“And you used to sleep in the same bed with Mom when you were married,” Cleo went on. “So why not you and Brody?”
“Uh. Well…” I began.
A sound like a restrained gasp alerted me to Brody’s presence in the doorway of the living room. His eyes met mine, and his cheeks turned beet red.
“Dad?” Mia prompted.
“Yeah, Dad.” Jacey gave me a shit-eating grin from the opposite sofa before turning the same smile on Brody. “Why don’t you?”
Brody raised one eyebrow at Jacey, and she chuckled softly.
“The thing is, girls…” I scrambled to come up with a reasonable explanation, but the sight of a blushing Brody had fried my brain.Sorry, I mouthed with a helpless shrug.
“We do!” Brody lied, wading in to rescue me wearing a big, fake smile. “You just don’t notice because we go to bed later than you and wake up earlier than you!”
“But how come your stuff isn’t in Dad’s closet?” Mia asked.
“Er. Lots of people have separate closets,” I informed them.
