“Welcome to join us, my dude,” Griff says.
Clearly not as distracted as I thought he was.
Bea opens her mouth, but I leap in before she can say a word. “Brilliant. My boys love pizza.”
“Griff—” Bea starts, but both of us look at her, and she shakes her head again. “Never mind.”
“I suspect she intended to tell you that I can’t eat cheese,” I tell Griff.
He grins back at me. “She was going to tell you that I’m only using you because every good baseball player needs celebrity friends.”
I smile broader at that. “I’m happy to be used for my talents before the world tires of them.”
“I’m going to trick you into eating cheese.”
“Truly, that’s a relief. I hadn’t expected Hudson to be harder on me than you were. And I enjoy a good challenge.”
Tank glares at Griff.
Griff grins back at my security man.
And several hours later, my boys are ecstatic beyond belief to be having a pizza night out.
I sequester them at one end of the table, one across from me and one beside me, and tell them they can only escape to the arcade room if they actually eat dinner and behave politely, and I remind them that both Butch and Pinky are at the next table and can see them as well.
Daphne has joined the family dinner.
To my utter surprise, and the boys’ delight, Lana takes the final seat at the reserved table with us.
“I invited her,” Bea tells me. She’s managed to sit beside me, and our knees are constantly brushing against each other. “Daph’s sister is having a problem, and I have this gut feeling that Lana’s a better person to talk to her about it than I am.”
“With the hotels?” I inquire. “That’s not Lana’s specialty.”
“No, it’s a personal thing.”
My boys are discussing pizza toppings with each other, so I lean in closer to Bea and drop my voice. “I rather miss being personal with you.”
She visibly shivers as her eyes go dark. “Same.”
“Dad? Can we try anchovies?” Charlie asks.
Hello, mood-killer. “On the side so that you waste minimal pizza if you don’t like them.”
The boys dive back into the menu, and soon we’ve all ordered—salad sans cheese but with chicken for me, all of the pizza that the kitchen can make for the rest of the table—and the conversations resume.
It’s remarkably casual.
Easy.
Comfortable.
Almost unreal in how much this feels as though we’re on the set of a family show where everyone gets along, and everyone likes each other, with Bea and her brothers including Lana without an ounce of awkwardness over the fact that she and I were once lovers who now share teenage boys.
Except this is real.
Completely real.
Another now-familiar longing hits in my chest. I pretend to ignore it. I’d generally never admit that I smile as a shield to my feelings, but when sitting in a place where I feel as though I’ve found a family to belong to, one that cares more about how you are than about how you perform—I’ve found the parts of life that have been missing.
