Wait for It

“I sold all your stuff while you were with your grandparents,” I told Josh on Sunday after his grandparents had dropped them off following their weekend together. Both boys looked tanner than they had before leaving for the weekend.

I didn’t know what I would do without their involvement in our lives. That saying “It takes a village to raise a kid” was no joke. Louie and Josh had five people who cared for them full time, and sometimes it still didn’t seem like enough. I seriously had no idea how single parents with no close family to help made it work.

Not even Louie fell for my joke; they both just ignored me before heading into their rooms to drop off their bags with Mac trailing behind them, ignoring me too.

Grumpy much?

“We have to do the lawn. Don’t take forever,” I yelled after them.

It was Josh who let out a drawn-out grumble, pausing at his doorway. “Do we have to?”

“Yes.”

“We can’t do it tomorrow?”

“No. I get off work too late and the mosquitoes will be bad.”

“I have homework,” the little ass lied.

“You’re full of crap,” I stated. He always got his homework done on Friday; I’d bet my life on it. I had my brother to thank for getting him on that path early on in school. He hadn’t let him go out and play until he got his stuff done.

There was another drawn-out sigh and the sound of a door—a closet door probably—slamming shut. Good grief, I hoped he was going to get over this crap soon. Wasn’t it only girls who went through the horrible hormonal phase? Even then, wasn’t that when they were in their teens?

Luckily, neither one of them gave me any more verbal grief as we all trudged out the back door to fish the lawn mower out of the shed in the back. Mac was terrified of the noise it made, so he was left inside the house. There were three huge spider webs on the door, and I only screamed once as something scuttled across the floor as I pulled out the mower and the two rakes I’d taken from my dad’s house on my last visit.

I handed the boys each a rake. “You rake the leaves. I’ll pull out weeds.”

Josh frowned fiercely but took the garden tool from me. Louie… well, Louie wasn’t really going to get much done, but I didn’t want to raise a lazy butt. He could do his best. With gardening gloves on—I double-checked for roaches living in the fingers—we spent the next hour doing the first half of the yard, only taking a break for water and Gatorade and to put sunblock on the boys when I noticed the back of Lou’s neck getting pink. How could I have forgotten about putting sunblock on him?

Once the weeds had been yanked out and bagged, and half of the leaves were lumped into multiple small piles throughout the yard, the boys stood off to the side, wiping sweat off their faces and looking so done I almost laughed.

“Is that it?” Josh asked.

I slid him a look. “No. We still have to pick this all up and mow the lawn.”

He dropped his head back and let out a groan that had me blinking, unimpressed.

“J, you’re basically a grown man—” I started to tell him.

“I’m ten.”

“In some countries in the world, you could be married right now. You’re pretty much the man of the house. You’re almost as big as I am. I’m going to let you mow the lawn—”

“I’m a little boy,” he argued.

“You’re not that little. What do you want to do? The front or the back?”

Despite everything, Josh knew what and how much he could get away with, and he had to be aware that he wasn’t going to get himself out of the mow job. It was happening no matter what he said. So I wasn’t surprised when he sighed. “The back, I guess.”

“You want to go first or second?”

“First,” he grumbled.

“I can do the other part,” Lou interjected.

“Goo, the handle is taller than you are. You’ll end up running your brother and me over, hitting a car, mowing down a cat or two, and catching something on fire. No thanks. Maybe when you’re sixteen.”

He took it as a compliment, his expression practically beaming. “Okay.” Like he was really proud of the mayhem I thought he was capable of.

“Let me show you how to turn it on, J,” I said and went on to instruct him how to use the machine even though I knew for a fact he’d done it with my dad a few times.

By the time Josh was done, I’d shoved and tripped Louie into three different piles of leaves, and then we had to clean them up afterward. The backyard wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t going to bust Josh’s balls over it, and I settled for sticking my pinky in his ear. “Good job, hambone. Now you have to bag the leaves in the front with Goo.”

The expression on his face made it seem like I was trying to poison him or something. His shoulders slumped and he lumbered toward the front yard with Mac barking from inside the house; I’d closed the dog door on him so he wouldn’t sneak out while we’d been busy. I finally let him out, shutting the gate in his face to leave him in the backyard. Josh was still bumbling around when we got to the front, and I didn’t think twice about putting my index finger to my lips while his back was turned and telling Lou not to say anything.

He didn’t.

In what would probably be one of the last times I was capable of, I picked Josh up in a cradle hold while he screamed, “No! No! You better not!”

I laughed, noting subconsciously how heavy he was.

He shook his head as he thrashed in my arms. “No!”

Obviously, I ignored him even though he was inches from my face. “Louie, he’s saying yes, right?”

“Uh-huh,” the little traitor agreed, his hands over his mouth as he giggled.

Eyeing the biggest pile of leaves, I walked over to it, struggling more than just a little with Josh’s weight as he yelled, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”

“Do it? You want me to drop you in the leaves?”

And as he kept yelling for me to have a heart, I dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He’d live. My dad had done it to me enough times as a kid in piles smaller than this one. A couple of bruises weren’t going to kill him.

And sure enough, he acted like he’d gotten shot.

I wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow I ended up on the ground, too. Before I knew it, Louie went flying squirrel on us and dove on top of his older brother. At some point, I noticed my shoes had been thrown across the yard. It wasn’t until they were both draped on top of me, trapping me on the ground and pressing an elbow down on my crotch while a forearm squished my boob, that I started smacking the palm of my hand down on the grass. “I give up. Jesus—”

“Abuelita said you’re not supposed to be saying that,” Lou corrected me from his spot the furthest away from my face.

“I know what Abuelita says,” I groaned as the elbow over my pubic bone pressed down on it again, making me cringe and try to buck Josh off. “But you know what else Abuelita says? Don’t be a snitch.”

“She doesn’t say that,” Josh argued, crushing my mams.

“Yeah, she does. Ask her next time.” They wouldn’t ask, and I’d bet my mom didn’t know what a snitch was anyway. I hoped.

Mac was howling in the background from the yard, fully aware he was missing out on playtime and losing his mind.

Josh hopped up to his feet, giving my poor chi-chis a break, and then held out a hand to help me up—which filled me with a stupid amount of pride. It wasn’t until I was standing that I looked around the yard and saw the mess we made. Fuck. “Shi—oot.”

“Ugh,” was his response.

“Let me grab the rakes so I can help you get this all together.” I sighed again, tiptoeing over to pick up my shoes and put them back on.

“I got it,” Louie said, already running toward the gate that led to the backyard.

I wasn’t thinking, otherwise I would have remembered that Mac was going to barrel right through him once the door was opened. Just as I yelled, “Wait, Lou,” the big, shaggy, white beast did just what I had expected. He knocked Lou to the side as he sprinted across the front yard, zig-zagging in excitement like he’d been imprisoned for the last decade.

And like the paranoid, worrywart I was, I immediately envisioned him running onto the street and getting hit by an imaginary car.

“Try to grab him,” I instructed the two youngest Casillas in our family, as I shoved my feet into my shoes.

Yeah, it didn’t work. Mac was too fast and too strong and too nuts.

When he darted across the street, I yelled his name like a crazy person. I felt my heart drop to my feet until he made it to the other side.

“Wait for me here while I go get him, okay?” I called out to the boys. They nodded, my eyes immediately going to Louie who was wringing his little hands. “I’ll be right back.”

Not bothering to close the gate in case I could get Mac back by simply calling his name—a girl could dream—I looked up and down the street, trying to spot the biggest Casillas in the house. He was such a good dog… until he got loose. He always had been. I could remember like it was yesterday, Rodrigo bringing him by my apartment, so excited. “You’re dead,” I had told him even as I’d picked up the Irish Wolfhound puppy and cradled him to me, one of the few and rare times before he’d gotten too big. Now…

Well, now he was my oversized monster.

“Mac!” I hollered.

Nothing.

“Mac!” I yelled again, holding my hand up to shade my eyes as I glanced down the other side of the street.

Sasquatch’s cousin was a lot of things, but he wasn’t an idiot. He usually didn’t go anywhere further than ten feet away from the boys or me, but every once in a while, especially since we were in a brand-new neighborhood with brand-new smells… he liked to go exploring.

“Mac! I’m not playing with you! Come on!” I yelled again, just as something moved in my peripheral vision.

Sure enough, to my right, the very tip of a white tail peeked out from behind the top of a trash can that had been pulled onto the curb. Relieved out of my mind, I jogged across the street heading to the house squished between Miss Pearl’s and Dallas’s. It was nearly identical in size and style to the homes on either side of it, blocked off by a chain-link fence similar to the one in my backyard. From the highest point of the roof, an American flag hung loosely thanks to the absence of wind.

“Mac,” I groaned loudly enough for him to hear me as I approached the wagging tail on the other side of the trash can. “Mackavelli, come on, man,” I called him again.

His tail just waved in the air more aggressively.

Of course he would ignore me.

He’d been spoiled rotten since he was a puppy, and I hadn’t treated him any worse. Hell, he slept in my bed on the nights he didn’t hog Josh’s. I knew for a fact Mandy had never let him on the couch back when he’d lived with them, but I hadn’t upheld that in two years.

“Mac Daddy, now, come on,” I called out just as I walked around the trash cans to find the tall, long-limbed, grayish-white Wolfhound with his nose to the ground, his butt in the air, and that nearly three-foot long whip-like tail still wagging.

He raised his head and seemed to give me that face that said he was completely innocent of whatever I was assuming he’d been doing. “Come on,” I muttered, slipping my fingers underneath his leather collar, his wiry long hair brushing against the backs of my fingers.

I’d barely begun to tug him back in the direction of the house when a voice called out, “I hope he’s not taking a shit.”

I turned around quickly, caught off guard by how much I hadn’t been paying attention to not notice someone approaching. Sure enough, at the edge of the driveway between this house and Dallas’s was the same man who I’d helped weeks ago. The one who had gotten jumped. The brother. Jack, Jackson, Jackass, whatever his name was; it hadn’t been included on the team’s website.

The yellow discoloring over half his face confirmed it was him even if his features weren’t too familiar to me. He was just as tall as I remembered, and finally seeing him without blood covering his face, I could see he was better looking than the man who was my real neighbor, his brother.

I shook my head, a little uncertainly. Did he have an attitude or was I imagining it? “No. He’s smelling the trash can.” Why did I feel like I’d gotten caught doing something bad?

The man frowned, his gaze darting to Mac, who at the sound of a stranger’s voice had straightened his head and cocked his ears back, his lean body turned in the stranger’s direction. All his attention was focused on the person who was on the verge of standing too close to me. Or maybe he didn’t like the sound of his voice. Knowing Mac, it could be either or.

“I hope you’re watching him. Nobody needs to be stepping into dog shit,” the man grumbled.

I’d put my neck on the line for this asshole? His brother had been the one to come thank me—not that I had needed or wanted a thank you for helping him out—but it would have been nice. “If he poops, I’ll pick it up. But he hasn’t,” I said to him calmly, trying to figure out what might have crawled up his butt.

“I don’t see a bag in your hand,” he tried to argue.

Did he think he was the neighborhood watch?

“He just ran across the street, why would I have a bag on me?”

“Jackson, cut it out,” a deeper, rougher voice chimed in before either one of us had a chance to say something else.

There was only one person that voice could have belonged to: Dallas.

The man’s face went red and his entire body went stiff at getting called out by his supposed brother. He turned his body as the other man, Dallas, made his way down the pathway from his door, arms loose at his sides as he came toward us. But it wasn’t the ancient jeans he had on or the one-size-too-large dirty T-shirt he had on that caught my attention. It was his facial expression. There was a scowl on Dallas’s face that said he couldn’t believe what the hell he’d been hearing and he was disappointed by it. I would know, I’d been the cause of that look on my mom’s face enough times in my life.

Dallas kept coming, his gaze frozen in place, on his brother to be specific, who wasn’t moving. Neither one of them said a word until he stopped right next to the man talking to me, his forehead furrowed as he said in a low voice that wasn’t low enough for me to not hear, “We talked about this shit.” He spat each word out, anger lining each syllable.

I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t wonder what kind of shit they’d talked about. Being a jerk? Unfriendly? Both?

“I already told you to quit being an asshole to the neighbors.”

That explained it.

Somehow I must have disappeared to both of them because the man I could only assume was named Jackson turned to face Josh’s head coach. His neck was red, and I’d bet five bucks it wasn’t the sun to blame. “You’re not my fucking dad, asshole, and I’m not a fucking kid. You don’t get to tell me what to do—”

This was awkward.

And I wasn’t going anywhere.

I glanced from one man to the other, noticing their similarities, which were quite a bit actually. They both had the same long, straight nose, heavy brow bone and strong jawline. Both were handsome in a way, depending on how you looked at them, but Jackson was prettier even though he looked older, more like a cover model, where the only thing cover model about Dallas was his resting bitch face that was too aggressive to be on the cover of anything other than a survival guide magazine. That was it as far as similarities went though. Where one of them had long hair, the other had it shaved down. One had a beard; the other had thick stubble. Blond and brown. Green eyes and hazel ones. A jerk and not as much of a jerk. That last one was still out for judgment. Dallas’s saving grace was that he’d been nice to Louie and Josh.

“I get to tell you what you fucking do since you’re living at my house,” the man named Dallas kept going as if I wasn’t there. “My house, my rules. We went over it already. Don’t make it seem like I’m springing this on you.”

Maybe hanging around wasn’t a good idea after all.

I eyed the distance between my house and where I was. Then I squeezed Mac’s collar tighter. When Rodrigo and I argued, we had always done it away from other people… and a day later, we were usually on good terms again.

“Fuck off,” the Jackson guy spat, shaking his head, his rage clearly obvious to anyone within a quarter of a mile. “I’ve had about enough of your shit. I don’t need this.”

Dallas laughed that same bitter, wretched laugh I’d heard out of him the day he’d been arguing with the woman outside of the house. I couldn’t tell if it was out of rotten humor or if he was genuinely bothered and trying to cover it up, but… it hurt me. “All I’m asking is for you to be nice to the fucking neighbors and quit doing dumb shit, Jack. There’s nothing for you to have ‘enough of.’”

“Fuck off. That’s the story of your life and you know it. Everyone ends up getting tired of your shit eventually,” the Jackson guy continued so angrily it finally triggered Mac’s growl.

If I hadn’t overheard the conversation Dallas had with the woman in the sedan who may or may not have been his wife, I would have no idea what he was talking about. But I did hear it. And the comment had me feeling defensive of this poor man who might be a gigantic asshole to the people who should have been the most important in his life, for all I knew. But still, harsh, much?

Jackson raised a middle finger as he walked by his brother and pressed the front of it against Dallas’s forehead as he walked by. What the hell was wrong with this man? And my neighbor, the real one, didn’t move an inch as his brother did that. He kept those hazel eyes locked on the other man even as he disappeared up the driveway for a moment before the loud roar of a motorcycle filled the air. Before I knew it, a beefy Harley was getting rolled down the driveway—where the hell was that thing parked? In the backyard?—the person behind the handles wearing the same clothing Jackson had on a second ago. Then he was gone.

That was interesting.

Unsure what I was supposed to do, I just stood there. Awkward. Maybe he wouldn’t notice I’d listened to everything said between them. A girl could dream.

And that was exactly what didn’t happen because the man named Dallas turned his attention to me.

Of all the things I could have said or asked, I went with, “Are you the older brother or the younger one?” before I could stop myself.

I didn’t realize how offended someone could get over that question until after it came out of my mouth. If someone had asked if Rodrigo was the younger one, I would have slapped them.

He let out a noise in his throat as he glanced in the direction his brother had disappeared to and shook his head.

That said more than enough.

Luckily, after a moment or three, my neighbor settled for blinking down at me with that remote expression on his face. What did he think I was trying to do? Get information to steal his identity? “Older,” he finally answered.

“Ahh.” That explained everything. I would like to think it was because I didn’t know him that I said, “I’m sure my older brother wanted to kill me a few times in his life.” I could probably count at least fifty different occasions when he would have wanted to shake me at some point. God, I missed him. “That’s family for you.”

Something about that must have been the wrong thing to say because the dark-haired man shrugged like he was shaking off something he didn’t like, his gaze darting to Mac quickly. “Make sure to be careful with him running off. We don’t get a lot of traffic, but shit happens,” the rough-voiced man warned me, forcing the smile off my face.

I didn’t know why his concern irritated me from one second to the next, but it did. “Yeah. I will.” Did he think I was stupid and didn’t know that?

“Buttercup!” Louie yelled from across the street where he was standing on the front lawn, waving me over violently.

I waved back at him before turning to my neighbor one last time, trying to tell myself I didn’t need to get annoyed with his suggestion about keeping better track of Mac. He probably hadn’t meant anything condescending by it. “I should get going. Thanks for—” I pointed in the direction that his brother had gone in. “I don’t know what I did to make him mad, but see you.”

He took my leaving instantly, that sharp, serious face making a dismissive sound but I didn’t miss the way his gaze slid back in the direction of his house. “You didn’t do anything.” His attention shifted to the five-year-old waiting impatiently on the lawn and stayed there for a moment. “Later.”

I smiled at him. “See ya.” Tugging on Mac’s collar, we took a few steps toward the street before I used my grown-up voice on the stubborn-ass and whispered into his floppy ear, “The things I do for you.”

With his head turned over his shoulder, he gave me that silly dog grin of his that erased every frustration I felt toward him. He followed me across the street without a single problem, where the boys were waiting and watching.

“What are you doing standing around? That’s not what I pay you for,” I called out to them.

Louie gaped before asking his brother, “She pays us?”

* * *

“Son of a bitch.”

From her spot inside the break room, I heard, “Did you cut yourself?”

I shook my head, not bothering to see if Ginny had peeked out at my words or not. My eyes were laser-focused on the e-mail I’d just gotten. “No. I just got the schedule for Josh’s baseball team. They want to bump practices up to three times a week. Three times a week. Like four hours during the school week isn’t enough on top of him already going to batting and catcher practice. When am I supposed to have an afternoon to poop in peace?”

“Diana!” Ginny laughed, her voice getting louder, telling me she either had stuck her head out or she’d walked out.

“Who agreed to this?” I asked myself more than her. Practice three times a week and tournaments twice a month minimum. Jesus Christ. At this rate, I was going to need to buy a sleeping bag and just camp out at the facility every day.

“One of my cousins,” she sacrificed them both. “It’s that bad?”

“Yes!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her approach me with a bowl of whatever she’d brought for lunch. “Why don’t you call Trip or one of the other coaches and complain? You can’t be the only one thinking about buying real estate by the field if it’s that bad.”

She had a point. I also didn’t fail to catch that she didn’t suggest Dallas, who was the head coach, to be the one I called.

When the team mom had e-mailed all of us after posting the roster, we’d been given all the coaching staff’s phone numbers and all the fellow parents’ numbers. I’d called Josh’s last coach just about every week for one reason or another. I’d had that crazy, moody asshole on speed dial I talked to him so often.

So calling Trip or Dallas wouldn’t be some crazy unheard of thing.

Would it?

“You have a tournament one week in Beaumont and the next week in Channelview? That’s a pickle,” Ginny said from over my shoulder.

Blinking at the list on my phone, I reeled back as I took in the information she had just told me about. Those were both three-hour plus drives! What in the hell? I could only take off one weekend a month, and every other month I managed to get two off. The Larsens wouldn’t hesitate to take Josh somewhere that far away, but it seemed unfair to have to ask them to do that.

Without even thinking about it, I exited out of that e-mail and opened the one with the phone numbers, almost angrily punching Send on the screen when Trip’s phone number transferred to the correct screen. “This isn’t going to work,” I said to Ginny as the phone rang. “They’re out of their minds. I’m calling Trip right now.”

I did and he didn’t answer. Damn it. Facing the list of four phone numbers for each staff member—including that rude one, Jackson, who only ever talked to the boys—I eyed Dallas’s digits for a moment, wondering whether he should be my next option or not. I hesitated. Then I reminded myself of how I was going to be stuck dealing with him for a while; it didn’t need to be weird for whatever reason it could or would be. I hadn’t done anything to make him feel strange around me.

So I copied the number and pasted it into the keypad. “Your cousin didn’t answer so I’m calling Dallas.”

There was a short hesitation before she said, “Might as well.”

“Yeah. This is stupid.” Why was she hesitating so much, I wondered as the line rang. “Hey, is there something wrong with—”

“Hello?” a raspy, masculine voice answered on the other end.

I paused for a second, my words to Ginny hanging off my tongue before I snapped to attention. “Hi. Dallas?”

“This is me,” he replied evenly, almost professionally.

“Hi. This is Diana Casillas. Josh’s—” What the hell was I going to call myself? “Your neighbor.”

There was a brief pause while I’m sure he tried to remember who I was. His neighbor. The one who had saved his brother’s ass. The same one who had a nephew that was—in my opinion—the best player on his team, not that I was biased or anything like that. “Oh.” There was an awkward pause. “Hi.”

That sounded real friendly and honest. Not. “I was calling about the e-mail I just got regarding the schedule,” I tried to prep him.

The deep sigh that escaped him made me feel like I wasn’t the first person to reach out to him today about the same exact thing. “Okay,” was his answer that pretty much confirmed that suspicion.

So I just went right for it like I would have with Josh’s old coach. “Look, I don’t know what you guys were smoking when you put the schedule together, but this is way too busy.” I was doing it. Fuck it. I was a terrible bullshitter. “Three practices a week? He already has coaching two other days. All that with weekend tournaments multiple times a month isn’t going to work either. They’re kids. They need some time to do… kid stuff.”

There was a pause on his end, a controlled exhale. “I get what you’re saying—”

This wasn’t going to end well. I needed to go ahead and accept that.

“—but this is just preparation for when they’re older, playing more competitive ball.” He ended in that deep tone that sounded like he’d lost his voice once and never regained it.

“I think we have three or maybe four more years for that. I think they’ll be fine playing tournaments once or twice a month, and practicing two times a week. There’s no way I’m the only person that this isn’t working for.”

“Three other sets of the parents approved the schedule before we sent it out,” Dallas said in a voice that reminded me how Ginny had mentioned him being in the military. He was telling me this information.

Unfortunately for him, I had a problem with people telling me what I could and couldn’t do.

“Well, those three parents must only have one kid, no lives, and that one kid must hate them because they don’t do anything that isn’t baseball related,” I grumbled back, surprised at what he was telling me. What the hell was wrong with these people?

There was a shout in the background that sounded surprisingly like “Boss!” Then a muffled shout back that I was pretty sure came from Dallas before he returned in a cool, quick voice. “I gotta go, but I’ll think about what you said and somebody will get back to you about the schedule.”

That was it? “Somebody” was going to get back to me? Not him? “Please think about it—”

“I gotta go, sorry. Bye,” he cut me off a split second before the line went dead.

With a groan that came straight from my gut, I pressed my finger against the screen and ground down on my molars. “Damn it.”

* * *

When three days went by and I hadn’t gotten a new e-mail about the schedule being changed for the better, I started to get a little frustrated. When another day went by, including a practice, with half of the parents complaining to one another about their outrage regarding practices and tournaments, and still none of the staff commented about anything being done… I got more frustrated. But it wasn’t until four more days passed, including another practice, with nothing changing and no one saying anything, that I realized the truth.

Nothing was going to happen.

And that just wasn’t going to work.

I’d already talked to my parents and the Larsens about Josh’s insane schedule and they had all assured me we could make it work between all of us, but that wasn’t the point. What about the parents who didn’t have four extra people to help them out? What about the parents with more kids, who all had other sports and activities? What about my Louie who liked going skateboarding and riding his bike from time to time?

I understood how highly competitive sports worked. I had family members who had grown up to be professional athletes, but a ten-year-old completely sacrificing all of their free time? That didn’t seem like the best idea to me. They needed a couple more years to be kids, didn’t they?

So between clients, I picked up the phone and redialed the numbers I had saved in my contacts a week ago. And when it went to voice mail, I left a message. Four hours later, when I still hadn’t gotten a response, I called Trip again and left him a voice mail. In my desperation, I called again and left another message on Dallas’s phone. I may or may not have been making faces the entire time it took me to get home from work at seven that evening, making up all kinds of random excuses why I hadn’t gotten a call back from the team’s head coach when I lived across the street from him and worked with the assistant coach’s cousin, who worked down the block. The only thing that had kept me from walking to the mechanic shop where I’d overheard Trip worked was that would be creepy and crossing the line. A work place was a work place.

“This is bullshit,” I finally whispered to myself as I sat in my car before opening the door and heading up the path to my house. Unfortunately for Dallas, I dropped my keys on the ground and it took forever to wipe the fob off on my pants, otherwise I might have missed him getting home. The fact was I didn’t miss anything. As an old, Ford pickup rumbled its way down the street and turned into his driveway, I stood there. In the cab, I spotted that familiar buzz-cut dark head of hair behind the wheel of his big, old F-350.

I stood there, watching and debating whether to leave Dallas alone or not.

I went with not leaving him alone.

Before his truck had even disappeared into the garage set back along his driveway, I was already crossing the street and making my way over, hands tucked into the back pockets of my black jeans.

“Hi,” I called out to him as I approached. He already had one leg hanging out of the driver side, the door flung open wide.

“Hey” was his response as he got out, his eyes going a little wide into what I knew couldn’t be exasperation, right? Dressed in a long-sleeved, button-up, navy blue work shirt and khaki cargo shorts with more holes in them than pockets, Dallas was dusty as hell. I still hadn’t figured out what he did for a living, not that it mattered or that it was even my business.

I smiled at him, trying to be as sweet and nonthreatening as possible. My abuela, God rest her soul, had always told me you get a lot more out of life being nice than being a cabrona. God, I had loved that woman. “I wanted to see if you had changed your mind about the schedule,” I said, still smiling, trying to be all nice and innocent.

Almost as if sensing my bullshit, Dallas narrowed those hazel eyes at me. “It’s been brought up, but nothing has been decided,” was his political bullshit answer.

I was a lot of things, but a quitter wasn’t one of them. “Okay. In that case, I hope you guys see reason and change it because it’s crazy.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone with the “C” word. Maybe.

When those light-colored irises went even smaller, I decided that yeah, I probably shouldn’t have. “I’ll make sure you know if anything changes.” His tone clearly said, “get out of my face,” so I knew he was full of it.

“Please,” I peeped, getting desperate. “Everyone was complaining about it. Even Josh said he was tired just looking at it, and he doesn’t really have an off switch.”

Dallas eyed me one last time before starting to make his way around me. “I got you,” he threw over his shoulder, not bothering to spare me another glance. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Thanks!” I hollered after him, squeezing my fists at my sides at the brush-off he’d just given me. Son of a bitch.

The man whose brother owed me the teeth in his mouth lifted a hand as he walked into the house right before the security door slammed closed behind him. I was getting sick and tired of him brushing me off. If he wasn’t going to listen to me, then damn it, I knew other people would. Because like my grandma would also say, if being nice doesn’t work, que todos se vayan a la fregada.

* * *

By the time the weekend came around, I had spoken to nearly half the parents on the team and gotten a definite feel that I wasn’t in any way, shape, or form the only one who wasn’t okay with the revised schedule from hell. We wanted it changed and no one in power was willing to do it. Governments had fallen thanks to pissed off citizens. Why couldn’t Tornado parents or guardians do the same thing on a smaller scale?

Over the course of those days, the parents I talked to reached out to others they knew and soon the entire team had been contacted. There was a handful that genuinely didn’t care about the schedule or understand why we were upset by it. Suck-ups.

But there was no way a big group of us could all be ignored. I figured, if nothing was done, those of us who disagreed could plan to not show up on the new date that had been added during the week. I wasn’t just doing this for me; I was doing it for Josh and Louie. When the hell would I manage to do things with Louie if we were always busy with Josh? He was at such a delicate age for memories and shaping the outcome of the kind of person he would become. I didn’t want him to ever feel like he was less important than his brother. I knew what that felt like, and I’d never want either of the boys to experience that.

Someone decided that at the end of practice, we were all going to talk to the coaching staff. And that was what happened. A swarm of parents descended on the head and assistant coaches of the Tornado. It looked like a mob with the three men and one woman in the middle. Some people were shouting to get heard; there was some finger pointing, but mostly there was a ton of “Yeah!” when someone overheard a good point another person made. Somehow I’d gotten wrangled into the middle of the circle, right at the center of the action. My head had started hurting earlier in the day, and the near shouting didn’t help it at all.

I was only partially surprised as Dallas, while in the middle of saying, “Stop yelling. I can’t think when you’re in my face,” looked right at me. He’d been glancing from face to face from the moment he’d been surrounded, but as soon as his gaze landed on me, it stayed there.

What the hell had I done now? He’d brought this on himself, hadn’t he?

“It was brought to our attention,” he said, staring right at me, “how unhappy you are with the schedule. I get it. I’ll get together with the rest of the staff and see what changes we can make.” He repeated the same words he’d told me days ago.

I looked from side to side as discreetly as possible, but when my eyes went forward again, Dallas still hadn’t looked away. Why? I hadn’t been the only one to complain.

“Some of us don’t mind the schedule the way it is,” one lone, ballsy parent piped in. It was the woman who had complained during the tryouts when the two women sitting in front of me had been talking about Dallas’s body.

“Some of us have a life, Christy,” one of the parents, whose name I couldn’t remember, shot back. “Our kids need lives too.”

“It isn’t that bad,” Christy kept arguing, her gaze landing on me and narrowing. What the hell was happening? Why were multiple people looking at me like I’d caused this? Hadn’t I tried to prevent it? “We never had problems like this before. Some people need to realize they aren’t always going to get their way.”

The fact that she was looking right at me didn’t help the situation at all. The schedule hadn’t been like that before. One of the parents I talked to told me that.

Plus, I wasn’t an idiot. Josh hadn’t left his old team on good terms. His coach had moved him to second base to give his own son the catcher position and we’d complained. Soon afterward, the team had picked up another player and Josh had gotten screwed over again. Coincidence? I think not. It had been his idea to leave, and I had supported him 100 percent… even though I’d called his ex-coach a prick when we finally walked out of there for the last time. Had rumors gotten around here already about that? I knew how tight this community was. There might be two degrees of separation between everyone.

Either way, I knew this parent was talking about me. Us. I’d have to be an idiot to not recognize that. And I didn’t like it.

From what I’d learned, only three new boys had joined the Tornado at the same time Josh had, and I didn’t know where the hell the parents of those kids were. If they were even here. Regardless, with parents of kids in competitive teams, you had to assert your dominance before your voice was lost forever. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to put Josh into that position of having the parent that was just okay with everything. If anyone ever picked on him, they were going to learn the hard way my family didn’t get messed with.

Those were the excuses I was going to go with to justify what happened next.

“Why are you looking right at me as you say that?” I asked the woman calmly. Was today “Pick on Diana Day” and I hadn’t gotten the memo?

The woman sneered, and I swore a couple of people standing right by her took a step away. “I didn’t say your name, did I?”

I didn’t have an anger problem. I never had because I didn’t bottle up my emotions, except for that one stupid period at the age of twenty-six when I wasted months of my life on the second worst thing that ever happened to me: my ex. If I had a problem with someone, I dealt with it, and if I happened to stay mad afterward, it was no one else’s fault but mine.

But I was going to beat the shit out of this woman the second there weren’t any witnesses around, I decided instantly. “You didn’t have to say my name. You were staring right at me. Am I the one having a hissy fit about wanting things to go ‘my way’?”

The woman had the urge to shrug.

I made sure not to break eye contact with her as I stayed pretty damn calm. “I’m not having a hissy fit. The schedule is ridiculous, and I’m not the only one who thinks so, so don’t put this on me, lady.” Looking back on it, maybe I shouldn’t have used the “L” word. Someone had called me that once and it had the same effect on me as the “B” word did.

“But you started it,” she argued.

“I didn’t start sh—anything. My kid needs a day off during the week. This has nothing to do with me. My kid is ten. He isn’t in the majors yet. You want him getting Little League elbow or stress fractures in a couple of years? I don’t want Josh to have to get surgery before he’s even out of high school because I wanted him to win a fu—damn tournament he isn’t going to remember when he’s sixteen,” I snapped at her, irritated.

“I do care about my son,” she tried to argue.

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

It was shameful how much I enjoyed her cheeks going red. “But you implied it!”

I shrugged right back at her the same way she had at me, and it sent her into a rage. Bitch. “Well, you have an awesome way of showing it when I just told you about how he could injure himself by overdoing it, and you’re still arguing with me over something that’s had plenty of studies done on.”

“I do care about my son, Teen Mom—”

God help me. I took a step toward her. I didn’t know what the hell I was thinking about doing to her, but it was something, damn it.

The expression on my face must have said just that because the woman shut her mouth and took a step backward, her hands immediately coming up to her face.

“Okay! Okay!” An arm was waved up and down. “That’s enough. Christy, go home. You’re out of here for the next two practices for that,” Dallas ordered. When the woman started opening her mouth, he blinked, that alone working better than any “zip it” gesture. “You started it and you know it.”

I almost stuck my tongue out at her when her gaze swung over to me.

“Diana, make sure somebody else brings Josh to the next practice.”

What? Was he fucking kidding me? I hadn’t even done anything but defend myself!

Just as I opened my mouth to argue that fact, Trip jumped in. “Everybody else, we’ll talk over the next couple of days and come to some agreement on changing the schedule. We’ll e-mail you,” he concluded with a whole hell of a lot of finality to his voice. Where was the guy who had hung out with me at the bar?

I was pissed. As the mob finally split up, I stood there, stunned and about five seconds away from pepper spraying half the parents.

I turned to try and find Trip, who had done little more than smile at me from twenty feet away lately, but he was surrounded by parents deep in conversation already. Dallas… I had no clue where the hell he had disappeared to. And Jackson was standing off to the side with his arms over his chest, looking so unimpressed with life, I wasn’t sure why he bothered still breathing.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Tia?”

The sound of Josh’s voice almost immediately ripped me away from the edge of diving back into Diana From Years Ago who would have told everyone to lick a dick. First, I had to mentally picture myself smacking everyone in the back of the head, and then I cut off the rage that had started taking over. It was maybe only ten seconds after my nephew called me that I managed to turn around with a nearly serene smile and find him looking up at me with a suspicious expression on his face.

“What happened?” he immediately asked.

My head hurt, but I knew that wasn’t what he was picking up on. If there was someone in the world who was my spirit animal, it was this kid. I wasn’t sure how I ever forgot it. And since Louie wasn’t here, I told the one who had already heard everything and more in his life the truth. “I’m about five seconds away from going to kick Jonathan’s mom’s ass, and then kicking her mom’s ass afterward to teach them both a lesson.”

The kid burst out laughing, reminding me of how young he was beneath it all. “Why?”

“She’s out of her mind. We were having a parent meeting and she started talking nonsense. I might go kick Jonathan’s ass too for being the reason she’s here.”

Josh laughed again, shaking his head. “You’re crazy.”

“A little,” I agreed, winking at him, suddenly feeling whatever was left over of my rage disappear. How could you stay mad when you had so many great things in your life? “You ready to go home?”

He nodded, his grin a mile wide. “Yeah.”

“All right, come on.” I waved him toward the walkway, pausing until he was by my side. “According to your coach, I can’t come to practice with you next time because of that psycho, so tell your grandpa tomorrow that he’ll have to bring you. I’ll call him, but you tell him too, okay?”

That had Josh stopping and frowning. “Why can’t you come?”

“Because, I told you, she was saying crazy stuff about how it’s my fault that we’re trying to get the schedule changed, and I might have said something about how she didn’t care about her kid and that’s why she thinks the schedule is fine,” I explained to him honestly, not wanting him to consider me a liar. I felt like, if I didn’t lie to him, I hoped he would learn not to lie to me either. No one was perfect, and I didn’t want him to believe he needed to be. He just had to be the best kind of person he could be and stand up for himself. Being “right” was so subjective.

“And because of that you can’t come?”

I nodded, giving him an “I know, right?” face.

The downturn of Josh’s mouth deepened and he shook his head. “That’s not fair.”

“I don’t think it is either, but I guess I did egg her on, too, J. I didn’t have to say anything back to her. I could have just let her think whatever she wanted to.” That simple truth had me resigned. I could have let it go. I really could have. “Too late now. It’s okay. It’s just one practice, and hopefully they will change the schedule so it’ll be worth it.”

“That’s stupid.”

I shot him a look.

“That’s dumb,” he amended.

I shrugged, reaching up to rub at my temple with my index and middle finger. “She’s just mad her kid is in the right field.”