Page 145 of Made Better Together

“All the speakers are here at Table One tonight,” the event staffer explains to me before disappearing.

I’m left standing there, clutching my purse, staring at Rori and Connor’s brother.

“Hi, there,” Rori says after a beat, looking sympathetic. She probably thinks I’m anxious for reasons—my speech, or being with famous athletes—other than the real one. “I’m Rori.”

She stands and offers her hand, and I shake it in turn. “Nice to meet you. I’m Eden.”

“Del’s daughter. What a coincidence,” Landon says from his seat. “Good to see you again.”

“You too.”

Rori points to a chair by him. “There are place cards, and you’re next to Landon.”

Great.

“But Landon, why don’t you sit in her spot so she and I can talk.”

“Yeah, good call.” He scoots over to where I was supposed to be.

Now I’m going to be in a Rori and Landon sandwich. Awesome.

We get settled, and a few others at the table introduce themselves—a player for the baseball team, who’s the other student speaker, and a couple of administrative officials with their spouses. Once that’s done, though, Rori and Landon turn their attention back to me.

“So you’re a senior, right?” Rori asks. “How’s the season going for the team?”

It’s cool she’s already aware of me enough to know I play soccer. Since she wasn’t at Grace’s wedding, it’s the first time we’ve met. With our bananas schedules, we haven’t ever been at the same Waves event either, as far as I know.

“We have our first round match for the NCAA championships on Thursday.” Two days from now.

“That’s exciting.” Rori looks genuinely interested, and my nerves begin to ease. Her energy is warmer than I expected from the gritty side she shows on court. “We should try to watch one of the games,” she says to Landon.

“Would love that, if I can.” He shifts to me. “I could make tonight’s dinner since it’s our bye week, but you know as much as anyone how unforgiving NFL life is.”

“For sure. Even more so, now that you’re almost guaranteed to make the playoffs.” At 8–2 for the season, the Waves would need a massive fall-off to not make it.

“All the way to mid-February I hope.”

“Well, if we can make the schedule work for one of Tolliver’s games, we could bring Connor,” Rori directs at Landon. “I bet he would enjoy it. Relive his college soccer days.”

Prickles shoot up my neck.

“Absolutely,” Landon replies enthusiastically.

Danger, danger, danger.

“The games won’t be local after the third round, so it might be hard to juggle your schedules.” Time to change the subject to a safer one. “Grace is one of my managers now,” I say to Landon in an awkward segue.

He doesn’t bat an eye, though. “Oh, sweet. Gracie’s the best.”

“She’s been so wonderful to work with. SLP has helped organize my schedule and manage the non-stop emails coming in, it’s been awesome to stay sane.”

“Love to hear it.”

“Did you work with Connor while he was there?” Rori asks me.

Sheesh, can we stop with the Connor talk? “A little, yes.”

“It’ll be interesting to see what he does after the season,” she replies.