Page 107 of Serving Bunt

Matty snorted above me. “You absolutely teared up when Keira said our cake tasted like home.”

I reached up and poked his thigh. “Traitor.”

The group laughed, the kind of easy, familiar laughter that came from years of shared locker rooms and tough losses.

Matty’s phone buzzed across the coffee table. I reached for it and handed it to him with a soft smile.

It was a text from Soren.

Matty’s face lit up as he read it. “Clarke had the baby,” he said, voice cracking with excitement. “Eight-and-a-half pounds, twenty inches. They named him Gable Sinclair.”

The room exploded.

“Gable?” Tucker asked.

“It’s a nod to Clarke’s namesake,” Nessa explained.

“Hell yes,” Pink exclaimed. “I won the pool.”

“No way,” Dani argued. “You insisted that it was going to be a girl, despite the anatomy scan.”

“Yeah, but I guessed nine pounds and twenty inches. That’s got to count for something.”

“Bella?”

Bella, the keeper of all spreadsheets, pulled her phone out of her pocket. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say the woman had a spreadsheet for everything—favorite restaurants ranked according to location and wait time, potential books for future book clubs, the nicest (and worst) public bathrooms she had been in. Just last month, she had somehow produced a color-coded seating chart for tonight’s Friendsgiving dinner even though we were eating buffet-style and sitting wherever the hell we wanted.

Needless to say, the baby pool was no exception.

She tapped rapidly at her screen, her brow furrowing in concentration. “Okay, let's see . . . birth date, November twenty-sixth. Eight pounds, eight ounces. Twenty inches long.”

We all waited, the baking show forgotten.

Her eyes widened.

“Oh, wow.”

“What?” Pink demanded, nearly spilling his beer. “Did I win?”

Her face split into a grin. “You didn’t. Coach did.”

Every head in the room snapped toward the man kicked back in the recliner.

“You were in the pool?” Roman blurted.

“Since when?” I asked.

Coach Ward shrugged his shoulders, unaffected by our surprise. “What? I’m not allowed to participate?”

“Of course you are,” Pink said. “We just didn’t realize you had . . . opinions about fetal growth.”

“I have two kids.”

Pink pointed an accusatory finger at him. “That’s cheating.”

“It’s called experience.”

“It’s called insider trading.” Pink huffed.