Page 70 of Base Block

“That’s good advice,” Anara said, nodding. She was writing it all down on her phone. “I’m going to tell Heidi, too. She also has an older sister with three kids, so she may already know.”

“I was the first one out of my friends to have a baby. It was kind of isolating,” Victoria mentioned. “They weren’t trying to keep me apart or anything, but they didn’t really understand and obviously I couldn’t do the same stuff with them anymore. I missed them a lot.”

“I don’t think that Rainey will behave that way. She’s a considerate person and she’s interested in others.”

I stared, surprised. “Do you really think that about me?” I asked Anara.

“Yes. Clearly I do, because I said it,” she answered. “There are so many examples. You always took Heidi’s arm when we walked down the stairs in the stadium. When I go to your house, you make sure I have things to eat and drink. You made everyone at your Thanksgiving party feel welcome. You play with kids in the family lounge after games and talk to their moms.”

“Thank you. Thank you for noticing and for saying that about me.”

“You seem to really like those kids and babies,” she continued. “I don’t have sisters like Heidi does, so you can be Aunt Rainey to my child.”

Now they stared at me. “Why are you crying?” Anara asked.

“That’s nice,” I said. Roy’s Tavern didn’t use cocktail napkins so I pulled up my shirt to dab my eyes. “I’ll be so happy to be an aunt.”

“It’s a good job,” Victoria agreed. “All the fun but not much work. Do you have other nieces and nephews?”

“No, but at one point there was going to be a baby in my family. I was living in my grandma’s house—you don’t need to hear this story,” I said, catching myself. It had a terrible ending that might have scared both of them.

We talked less about kids after that and more about Victoria’s love life, about Demitrious and how amazing he was, and about where Callum and I were going after the season ended. That might have come soon, if the Woodsmen didn’t do well in the postseason. We needed to have it settled.

We didn’t, which annoyed Anara. “It takes time to find a property to rent and if you want to buy, that will take even longer. This is not acceptable, Rainey.”

“Not everyone needs a plan,” I told her and had a flashback to saying close to the same thing to Callum, months and months before. He had wanted me to tell him where I was heading after I left Indianapolis but I’d had no idea. I had been so burned out and numb at that point. What had it mattered where I went or how I lived?

“Don’t cry,” Victoria said. She rummaged in her purse and found one of her son’s socks, which she passed to me in lieu of a tissue. “You and Callum will find a nice place, I’m positive.”

I was also sure that we could and that wasn’t why I needed to wipe my eyes on the little sock. But my behavior wasn’t making this a very fun night for them, so I made myself stop crying by putting on my mask of calm.

“I don’t like that,” Anara told me, waving her hand at me.

“What?”

“You do this.” She set her features into an odd expression, staring off into the distance and looking bored. “When you make that face, it reminds me a lot of a vicuña, the smallest camelid. They’re beautiful.”

“Thank you, I think. Why are you comparing me to a camel?”

“A vicuña is a camelid,” she reminded me. “Firstly, you have the same big, dark eyes, and you’re equally pretty. But mostly, it’s because sometimes you get the same blank expression that they do. It’s weird.”

“You really don’t have a problem with directness,” Victoria told her. “Some people would say that you’re like a Canada goose. They’re considered to be rude.”

Anara was completely unoffended. “They’re also very protective of their young. I really admire that,” she said, and I changed the subject entirely. We didn’t need to talk about animals, my mask of calm, or why I was crying. That last thing was complicated.

Despite sleeping in the hotel with his offensive line teammates, Callum didn’t have the same phone restrictions as the Woodsmen always did before their games. He started texting me as I drove home, but I didn’t see until I got there and was taking Maverick out for his walk.

“Anara told Demitrious that you went out and were crying in a bar. Why?”

Then he had written, “What’s wrong?”

Then, “Are you ok? Did something happen?”

“Did Maverick push you down again?”

“Are you all right?”

I quickly responded that I was perfectly ok. “I heard that Anara is pregnant and I got so emotional about it,” I explained.