“You’ll always be my coach first, Coach Addie,” he replies with a grin. “Flip me off all you want.”
“I won’t let him fire you for it,” Waverly adds.
He slips an arm around her and kisses her head. “She won’t,” he agrees. “How’s the arm?”
“Immobilized.” Waverly’s team also did my hair and makeup for me.
“If we win you tonight, can we take a rain check until you can throw axes again? My form needs work.”
“I’ll go throw axes with you when I’m better if you don’t bid on me tonight.”
“You’ll go throw axes with my wife because you like her better. Legit. I get it. I like her better than me too. But I’m never sure if I get to tag along. I wouldn’t want me to tag along if I were you.”
“I appreciate your self-awareness.”
He blinks once.
Waverly giggles.
I smile, which isn’t something I would’ve done four years ago. But the longer I’ve been with the Fireballs, the more I’ve felt like I’ve found where I belong.
Mostly.
I still have days where my old insecurities rear their heads and warn me not to get too comfortable. But tonight, I’m determined to simply enjoy what I can of the evening. “I would have fun throwing axes with you too, Cooper.”
“Hot damn, she cracked,” he says.
“Must be the painkillers,” I deadpan.
“Nah, it’s all of this Cooper Rock innate charm finally getting past your defenses.”
I like Cooper. Always have. He was talented enough to get paid five, seven, even ten times as much by other teams earlyin his career—winningteams—but he insisted on playing for the Fireballs because he loved them.
Even when they sucked.
You can’t buy that kind of love and loyalty.
And that made it easier to relax around him even when he was still one of my players. When a guy who loves a baseball team possibly even more than he loves his pop star wife repeatedly insists you’re the best batting coach he’s ever had, you start to believe him.
You know what he wants. He wants to win. He wantshis teamto win. There aren’t ulterior motives.
By extension, it was easier to make friends with Waverly than it was to get close to the other wives and girlfriends.
They’re all lovely, but my default friend group should not be my players’ significant others. And now that Cooper’s part-owner in the team, I know Ishouldhave better boundaries with Waverly, but she’s worn me down over the years.
“I’m not the same kind of woman in a man’s world as you are, but I know a little about feeling like the standards are higher for us than they are for other people,” she told me during the first spring training after she and Cooper started dating again. “So if you ever need an ear, you can have mine, okay?”
I’ve taken her up on the offer more times than I ever expected, and I’ve always been grateful for her support. She says having friends who treat her like a normal person is all she needs back, and after getting a front-row seat to her life while she accompanied Cooper on road trips the past few seasons, I get it.
She’s been a good friend.
Waverly’s security detail pops in and tells us it’s time to go. They escort us down to the ballroom in the Madison Towers Hotel, where there’s a roped-off VIP section that we access through a back door.
Jimmy Santiago, the Fireballs’ head coach, is already there, as are Tripp Wilson and Lila Valentine, the husband-and-wife team who hired me before they got married, when Lila inherited the team and was forced to take Tripp on as her president of operations.
Lila’s a redheaded bombshell in an emerald-green dress and a confident smile. Tripp’s exactly what you’d expect of a forty-ish former boy bander with two kids from his first marriage—fit, well-dressed in a custom suit, and starting to get a little more silver mixed in with his brown hair.
Tonight’s about having fun, but I’m still very aware of the fact that I’m on display tonight as a potential candidate to replace Jimmy when he retires at the end of the season. So when Cooper offers to get me a drink, I ask him to get me what Waverly’s having.
