Page 9 of Cherry Picking

Then again, I’ve spent my life throwing my body at other men at high speed, and nobody believes what I do until they see the jersey. The hair doesn’t help. Neither do the flowers on my neck or the fact that I look like I should be loading an amp into a van.

The calico watches me with raised brows while my phone buzzes again. I ignore it.

Ted has called every four hours since Friday. He has a plan and a timeline for when the Kings need me back. My brother’s death has inconvenienced both.

“Hold on.” She scans the sheets, then turns the board toward me with a pen. “Here. And here.”

I sign them with a loose, careless hand.

She checks the ink, tears off a yellow copy, and hands it over.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

She looks up. “Evie Sutton.”

“Ray’s daughter, then.”

Her expression warms. “You know my dad?”

“He introduced himself earlier.” I pause. “He’s good at his job.”

He’d found us in the parking lot, didn’t wait for us to come to him. He crouched to my dad’s level on the asphalt, took my dad’s hand in both of his, and just waited.

My dad started crying, which he’s been doing lately in these sudden waves I don’t know how to handle, and Ray sat with it. Didn’t rush it, didn’t say anything engineered to make it stop. He just stayed until it passed, then straightened up and told us he’d take good care of him.

It was exactly the right thing to say.

“He is,” Evie says. “One of the best.”

I trace the dirt smudged from her cheek down to her sleeve. She has silver rings on half her fingers and a small tattoo on the inside of her wrist. I can’t make it out from here, and I’m not going to lean in. I think she’d smack me.

“You always have to dig the graves?” I ask.

“Last-minute job after the machine.” She caps the pen. “Happens more than you’d think. Weekends are popular for funerals, and we can’t always contract out. That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

I give her a skeptical look. “Is that right?”

She snorts. “No. If it were, I wouldn’t be a hundred thousand in debt, and I’d have a working car. Gas station hot dogs aren’t a sustainable food group, either.”

“Mm. I’ve had a few of those on the road.”

She smiles, and it lights the whole goddamn cemetery up. I catch a dusting of freckles I’d missed. “So you know they taste better at two in the morning.”

“Absolutely.”

I tuck the yellow copy into my coat. My phone buzzes again.

“You need to get that?” She tips her chin toward my pocket. “You’ve ignored it three times. Might be family.”

“It’s not. It’s my agent.”

“Hm.” She closes the board and tucks it away.

The Kings play Tuesday. Ted has said it in every text since I left. I’ve got four days before I’m back on the ice, performing fine for a full arena of people who need me that way.

“He was really young,” I say. I don’t know why the words slip out. “My brother. Car accident.”

She nods once. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”