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“Who’s it from, Mom?” Lindy sniffs the white rose, then makes a face. “You got blood on the petals.” She takes it out of my hand and twirls it. “Looks kinda cool.”
I shrug and unlock the car. “No note.”
“Your secret admirer sucks. How are you supposed to know they love you if you don’t know who they are?” She skips back toward the house.
“Where are you going, young lady?”
“To throw it out, like the other ones.” She lifts the lid on the trash can and tosses the rose inside before running back to the car. “Maybe you should talk to Sawyer and Hudson, Mom. See if they saw anybody walking around like a lovesick fool.”
“Very funny,” I humor her. “But not tonight. I told Maddie she could ride with us. Hudson is staying home with the girls tonight. Teagan isn’t feeling well, and it’s a late game.”
I pull into Maddie’s driveway next door and press my forefinger and thumb against my temples, feeling the dull throb of a headache starting.
Maddie slides into the front seat in her Dixon jersey, all smiles. “Who’s ready for some football?”
“I am,” Lindy cheers a little too loud.
“You just love staying up late,” Maddie taunts, and my daughter blushes.
“The boys are cute too.”
Sweet Jesus, save me now.
* * *
Ishould have known better.
Lindy has basically grown up in this stadium. It’s a rite of passage for the Kingston kids. But she was a littletooexcited about tonight’s game. That should have been the giveaway. But I chalked it up to her wanting to spend time with her best friends.
Annabelle Sinclair, Scarlet, Juliette, and I all stand on the sidelines during pregame and watch our daughters talking to the ball boys.
“They’re trying to flirt, right?” Scarlet asks.
Jules snorts out a laugh as Annabelle and I giggle.
I look over at the girls again and sigh. “If that’s whatthatis, they’re doing an awful job.”
“Do you think we were this bad at their ages?” Juliette asks as Declan jogs over to the girls, says something we can’t hear, and apparently scares off the ball boys.
Good job, Declan.
“You may have been,” I argue, “but I’d barely spoken to boys at their ages.” Not until one night a few years later. And I’ve paid for my mistakes with that one boy every year since. Like now, when he jogs over, stops next to Declan and high-fives the girls.
Annabelle hums wistfully. “Ballet may have taken up most of my life, but I still managed to find time to be a boy-crazy teen. Looks like karma is biting me in the ass now, isn’t she?”
“Listen... The only boy I ever flirted with in high school was Cade, so I don’t really have anything to compare it too. And if I take Brynlee home tonight and tell her father she was flirting with some athletic trainer, he’s going to ground her little ass until she’s thirty,” Scarlet adds.
“Then don’t tell him,” Jules fires back. “It’s just a little harmless flirting.”
“Wait.” I look back at the kids. “How old are they? I thought they were ball boys.”
The girls all laugh at something Brandon says, but he looks away from them and locks eyes with me, then winks.
He’s teasing me.Ugh. I’ve brought avoidance to a whole new level since Aurora’s birthday last month. I still can’t believe he overheard what he did. Jules has been trying to make it up to me since. She’s insisted on setting me up on a date for an event the entire family has to attend Saturday night. I was going to say no, but I guess itistime to start putting myself out there.
And if I tell myself that enough, maybe I’ll actually believe it.
Maybe.
