“Why else would I come here?”
“Maybe you were hoping to run into someone ...”
Hazel and I have been best friends since we were five. She pushed me off the seesaw at recess, I threw dirt at her, and thatwas the beginning of a lifelong friendship. There is probably no one in this world who knows me better.
This time she’s wrong.
If anything, I’m hoping to avoid that someone.
“Not even close,” I tell her.
“She was here about fifteen minutes ago,” Penelope offers up.
I glare at Hazel. “You told her?”
Hazel laughs. “You think I had to? Who is she living with?” Miles. Bastard is going to pay for this during practice, that’s for damn sure. “Besides, what is there to tell?”
I walked right into that one.
“Nothing.”
“Really?” she challenges. “I heard that you guys had dinner last night.”
“You heard that from where?”
Nothing in this town can ever be kept as a secret. I swear, people talk more than anywhere else.
She shrugs. “Around.”
“As much as I’d love to stay here and continue this conversation, I have a practice to get to.”
They both wave, and I return the gesture with a lift of my cup and get in the car. On my way, I call Justine, checking on my mom and how her day went. Thankfully, it’s one of her better days. She had no real issues and Donna Anderson, Miles’s grandmother, is on her way over to relieve Justine for the day.
Donna and my mother are still very close. She comes by on the nights I have practice. They usually watch a movie, knit, or work on whatever craft she brings, and it’s always those days that my mother is happiest, which alleviates the guilt I had about playing Frisbee to begin with.
It was even Donna who insisted I join a team. After the accident, I wasn’t in a good place. Losing my father was hard, but watching my mother struggle ate me alive. I just wanted tofix it, to get her some semblance of life, but nothing I did helped. It wasn’t until I joined the Disc Jocks that I found a part of myself returning.
Thankfully the park is empty, except for us, and I get a spot close to the field. The three guys are already out there, tossing the disc back and forth in a triangle.
“Oh, look who showed up,” Lachlan says first.
Of course it’s Lachlan who has something to say. Not that if the roles were reversed I wouldn’t be the one to give him shit, but he’s the second-most jaded out of this quad.
I open my arms wide as I keep walking. “I’m sorry you were so bereft without me. I’m here, princess. I’ll make it all better now.”
Miles chuckles. “I didn’t miss you.”
“I’m still not sure I’m talking to you.”
Killian snorts. “Lovers’ quarrel?”
“Something like that,” Miles replies. “He’s mad because I forgot to tell him that his ex-girlfriend from fifteen years ago was back in town.”
“You forgot?” I say with disbelief.
“Yes, I was kind of dealing with a lot,” he tries to defend.
Lachlan walks over, placing his hand on Miles’s shoulder. “I’ve got your back, buddy. For all the shit Everett has given us over the years, he deserves a little discomfort. I heard you guys had dinner last night.”