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“Excuse us.” Cooper pops up beside me and takes the car seat in one hand and grabs my hand with the other, weaving us through the crowd.
They all yell his name. I keep my head down as we enter, and he leads us to the back room.
“What were you doing?” he asks once we’re secure.
Damon and Miles come through the other door, Damon beelining it over to Adeline.
“I think that was two touchdowns, baby.” He holds up two fingers and does a dance as he gets closer.
“You wake her, and she’s yours for the rest of the night,” Adeline says.
He stops mid-stride and walks over more slowly, then puts his arm around her shoulders and kisses her temple as they both stare at their baby.
“Hey, I think you left one out there. He’s all caught up with those women.” Ruby, who owns the bar, brings in a few pitchers of beer.
“Shit, Bradley,” I say.
Cooper steps away from me and goes to fill his beer mug.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
I go out to the main part of the bar and ask Ruby to fetch Bradley from the grips of those starved women.
She does, and when Bradley sees me, he looks back over his shoulder at the chaos outside. “Crazy. Do they get like this all the time?”
“After every home game for the most part.” I shrug.
As I lead him to the back room, he continues to look over his shoulder. “Amazing. Damn.”
I want to ask if he’d prefer to be out there with all those girls, but I don’t know if I want the answer.
I bring him into the private room where the guys are arguing about plays. Bryce is practically taking mommy classes from Adeline. I think I need to have a chat with Bryce later.
Bradley quickly joins the guys. I go over to the ladies and realize that I missed that there’s a woman sitting next to Cooper. Who the hell is she? She’s so close to him that she definitely came with him. What the hell?
“She came in, like, a minute ago. Ruby started screaming when she came through the basement, telling her to go away, and Cooper said she was with him,” Bryce tells me under her breath.
“Oh.”
She’s cute. Blonde like he likes and light eyes. She’s petite though. Maybe he likes them small, not tall for a woman like me.
“Who is she?” I ask.
Bryce shrugs.
“He met her at the grocery store. I guess she didn’t know who he was. Sounds a little unbelievable to me.” Adeline rolls her eyes.
As the night goes on, I try not to pay much attention to Cooper and his date, but I can’t help it. He’s attentive to her like he usually is with me. Bradley seems to prefer hanging with the guys and talking post-game stuff, even while Damon holds Clover while she sleeps.
Cooper and his girl play darts. She pretends she sucks so he has to lean over her to give her lessons. Give me a break, who does this girl think she’s fooling?
He waits until the night is halfway done before joining us all at the table again. “Hey, Elle, I don’t think you’ve met Maya yet. Maya, this is Ellery.”
She smiles and says, “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.” Although I don’t mean it. I much preferred it when we kept boyfriends and girlfriends out of our friendship.
My phone rings and I pull it out. When I see that it’s the hospital, I’m thankful I’m being called in.
