My brain stutters. “Hang on—Birch Lane?”
“Yeah, the one I told you I was looking at the other morning.” She tilts her head. “Why?”
“That’s…” I blink. “It’s my street, I just wasn’t—”
“Notjustyour street,” Eli interjects. “Number twenty-five. Right across from Casa de Pookie.”
My eyes swivel to hers. I knew she was looking in my neighborhood, knew she had looked at a place on Birch, but she hadn’t mentionedexactly where.
Hutchy makes a low, delighted sound beside me. “Guess you’ll have to start wearing pants to get the mail.”
“Oh, for fuck sake,” Eli groans as the table chuckles. “If I evenhearabout you walking out there in boxers, Miller—”
“It’smydriveway!”
“It’ll beherview,” Eli fires right back.
Lulu’s mouth curves in a quiet, unhurried smile that makes my stomach twist. “Relax, big brother. Doubt I’ll be staring at Logan’smailbox.”
“Maybe hispackage, though,” Zoe says, smirking over her coffee as Eli shoots her a look and the table cracks up.
Lulu’s grinning into her smoothie as if she hasn’t just dropped the image of her bedroom window and mine lined up every night. And morning. And every minute in between.
“That’s gonna make mornings interesting,” adds Jake.
“Not for me,” I mutter, aware of Eli boring holes into my skull.
“Liar,” Hutchy says under his breath, the bastard.
Lulu’s eyes lock on mine for half a second, and her lips twitch before she turns back to Tamara and Charlie, launching into a discussion about a claw-foot tub and light fixtures.
Note to self: blinds. All the time.
I catch myself watching her, the way she makes whoever she’s talking to feel like they’re the only person in the room. No rush, no edge. Just open. The opposite of every conversation I grew up with.
Chase leans around Zoe. “At least the commute to work will give you more time for glue sticks and glitter.”
The smile Lulu gives him is polite. “It’s more than glitter.”
Chase grins. “Yeah, but isn’t it mostly just fun and games with the kids all day?”
Lulu’s smile doesn’t falter, but I see the subtle shift. Shoulders settling, chin tilting just so. “It’s teaching, Chase. You know—math, science, history, shaping little humans into people who might not belittle someone else’s career over pancakes.”
Zoe elbows him hard enough that he almost sloshes his coffee.
“Ouch,” Hutchy says under his breath.
My fork stalls halfway to my mouth, and I hear Chase mumble an apology, which she graciously accepts. It’s such a Lulu comeback. Sweet, sharp, impossible to argue with.
She’s always telling stories about her students; sass sharp enough for a locker room but delivered by sixth graders. Sunshine might be her default, but there’s steel underneath—the kind that turns chaos into laughter and makes a class full of kids feel safe. She carries their scraped knees and heartbreaks with the same gravity as algebra.
They’re lucky to have someone like her in their corner. My old man only cared about ice time and stats; my mom preferred quiet and order. Lulu is none of those things. She’s star charts and lesson plans, a sharp tongue that still cries at Disney movies. Glitter and logic. Soft and fierce and all the best contradictions that shouldn’t fit together but somehow do. People don’t know what to do with her, so they often underestimate her.
I don’t.
The conversation splinters into preseason schedules and travel, plus the looming home opener. We’ve got a brutal stretch of back-to-backs in the first month, the kind that makes rookies groan. But I’m wired for it. Double sessions, early conditioning, late nights reviewing tape—this is the life my dad drilled into me before I could even hold a stick. He still calls weekly with unsolicited strategies, as if the Storm doesn’t have an entire staff for that. Easier to nod along than admit I’ve built my whole routine around proving him wrong.
A burst of laughter from the other end of the table pulls my attention. Lulu’s angled toward Zoe, Charlie, and Tamara, phone in hand.
