I shook my head, smiling as the guys launched into a debate about whether or not hot dogs should be counted as a type of sandwich.Sigh.We had been down this road before. Several times, in fact—the last of which had turned semi-violent when half the team had staged a gas station sandwich fight.
That had been a fun one to explain to Brooks.
Because Clarke and I traveled with the team, we were used to their amusing antics—the half-serious debates, the constant chirping, the weird inside jokes that came from spending half of the year crammed together in hotel rooms and buses.
But today felt different. It felt like family.
The messy, too-loud kind who argued over stupid shit at Thanksgiving and then passed you a slice of pecan pie like nothing had happened. Or so I had been told by friends and Hallmark movies.
Family traditions were as foreign to me as the idea of living on the moon. Even before my mom had passed away, we had never had that kind of closeness that most daughters craved from their mothers. Mostly because she had always been more taken with theideaofparenthood rather than the messy, exhausting reality of actually being a parent.
Thankfully, she had missed the peak of family vlogging by about two decades, because there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she would have been a “mommy vlogger,” one of the filtered, performative ones who doled out parenting advice between brand deals.
She had wanted a curated version of parenthood, and sadly, I had never fit the aesthetic.
To be fair, I would have made terrible content.
I was too stubborn, too independent, too resistant to be the kind of daughter she’d wanted to shape. I listened to podcasts and watched obscure documentaries. I didn’t dress for style or trends, but rather for armor. Black was safer than pink; combat boots were better than ballet flats.
She had never understood my bisexuality either. She didn’t even try to. She wasn’t cruel about it, but she had looked at me differently after I’d come out. Like I was something off script, a detour she hadn’t planned for.
Deep down, I thought she always hoped I’d grow out of it—whatever “it” was in her mind. That maybe one day I would wake up and want the kind of life she had always wanted for herself: a comfortable home, a husband, and a couple of kids who thought just like their mother.
But I was doing okay. Better than okay most days, even if I still carried that invisible ache of having never been quite enough for the one person who was supposed to love me unconditionally.
And now, with a baby of my own on the way, that ache twisted into something sharper.
I didn’t just want to be different from my mother—Ihadto be.
I wanted my kid to know, without question, that they were loved exactly as they were, not in spite of it.
A harsh breath whooshed out of me.Damn.Who would have guessed that a friendly argument about hot dogs would lead to such heavy thoughts and repressed memories? Now, I was anxiousandhungry.
“I’m going to grab a snack,” I blurted, peeling myself off the lounger and grabbing my oversized tote. “Anybody need anything?
Clarke and Nessa waved me off, and I made my way toward the food table, on the hunt for something salty that wouldn’t immediately send my stomach into a tailspin.
That was when Pink spotted me.
“There are pickles in the fridge and ice cream in the freezer,” he said, popping a dip-drenched carrot into his mouth. “You know, if that’s what you’re still craving these days.”
I smiled. “Pickles are so first trimester. I’m onto avocados now.”
“That seems . . . relatively normal.”
“With barbecue chips and chili oil.”
He smirked. “Still, anything is better than that pickle-Cheetos-ice cream slop.”
“Says the man wearing a flamingo shirt.”
He held out his arms and spun slowly, showing off every inch of his white, flamingo-covered shirt, unbuttoned enough to expose his abs and chest hair. The man had zero shame.
“You feeling okay?” he asked, lowering his voice.
“You know, growing a person. Trying to keep down my lunch. Living the dream.” I nodded toward the margarita in his hand. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t dying for a sip of that margarita.”
His brow furrowed just slightly, the way it always did when he was clocking something deeper beneath the surface. People could think what they wanted about Jared Pink, but the man had a lot more going for him than boyish good looks and fuck boy charm.
