Carter glanced at the steps, which were all the way down at one end, and then at the door to the cabin, all the way at the other. “And you didn’t consider jumping the railing?”
Ouch. “Just when my dignity was starting to recover.” He sighed. “You working the late shift? Or can I bribe you with dinner to forget the specifics of this incident?”
“Neither, sorry.” Now Carter looked embarrassed. He hunched his shoulders a little and ducked his head, as though that made him any less of a giant. The whole effect was charming in its incongruity. “Uh, I’ve got about a half an hour and then I’ve got to go….” He swallowed the last few words in the sort of mumble he used to use when his mom caught him doing something he shouldn’t.
This had to be good. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Carter sighed and uncurled, flopping bonelessly in the chair. “I have to coach a T-ball game.”
Nothing could have prepared Jeff for the mental image of six-foot-four Viking god-man Carter herding a group of ankle-biters at the least athletic team sport known to humankind. That was too wholesome. Things that wholesome did not mix with Jeff. It was like baking soda and vinegar. Jeff and wholesome together got very messy and then exploded.
“Why is your face doing that?”
“Shh,” Jeff said. “I’m savoring this moment.” A moment imagining a flock of five-year-olds celebrating a win by attempting to crowd-surf their coach? They probably couldn’t dump a cooler of Gatorade on him like a college football team might, but they had their own individual water bottles. They could get a similar effect.
Carter rolled his eyes. “Whatever you’re imagining, there’s probably a lot more runny noses, kids picking dandelions, and surprise vomit.”
“Yeesh. Moment ruined.” He shook his head to clear away those images as well as the ones that came before them. He’d learned his lesson with Carter the first time. Carter was kind and generous and supportive, and he’d been Jeff’s safe place when his life fell apart around him.
But Jeff was only safe until his stupid heart got involved, because Carter was alsostraight. The last thing Jeff needed was to rekindle his high school crush as a grown man. “Why coaching?” Then something occurred to him and he glanced surreptitiously at Carter’s left hand. No wedding ring, but that didn’t mean anything—
“It was my dad’s team.”
Wow. That waswayworse than Carter being secretly married with a kid.
“The garage sponsors a team every year, and he always used to coach it.”
“Of course he did,” Jeff murmured. The man was a saint.
Carter blew out a breath. “When it came time to sign up to sponsor a team again this year, Mom got teary-eyed and started to say we’d need to ask the parents if anyone was willing to coach, and I couldn’t stand the idea of her asking someone, so I said I’d do it.”
Because Carter was a saint in training. Not like Jeff didn’t know that; he’d put up with Jeff trailing after him long enough. “Of course you did.”
That earned him a nudge from Carter’s booted foot. “Shut up. I guess that means you don’t want to come?”
Jeff blinked. “To watch your kids’ T-ball game?” he clarified.
Carter stood and stretched, and Jeff tried not to watch too obviously to see if his shirt rode up. It didn’t. “The T-ball is coincidental,” he said. “There’s a food truck that sells those Mennonite sausages—”
Jeff’s stomach growled, reminding him he never finished his snack.
Carter smirked.
“I’ll get changed.”
LESSON TWO
Prepare to Reevaluate Your Assumptions
YOU KNOWwhat they say about assuming?
Don’t get me wrong. Assumptions have their place. Without them we’d be calling the grocery ahead of time to make sure they have milk.
But every once in a while, you get this inkling that the assumptions you’ve made aren’t serving your best interests. Sometimes something makes you look away from the tree trunk six inches from your face and realize you’re in a forest.
And sometimes that invokes pants-shitting terror.
It’s scary when your worldview shifts. There’s comfort in the familiar. But surviving and thriving requires the ability to recognize when we’re wrong and adapt to the truth. Humility is good for you.
