Page 33 of The Sweet Spot

I blinked a few times. Tangi was pregnant again? Why did that still sting? She had a kid with Ethan. She was married to the tool.

“She’s pregnant?” I asked.

Wolseley’s face instantly blotched red. “Shit. I wasn’t supposed to say anything. She wants to wait a little longer, just in case. You know, the first-trimester thing.”

“I won’t say anything.”

But I kept thinking about it until the server deposited the hummus and homemade pita chips. I was starving and dove right in, while Wolseley first tried the pita chip, then dipped her fork into the hummus before finally going all out and dipping a pita chip into the dip. I wolfed it down, but I could see she was thinking about it.

“They use apple cider vinegar as their acid. Interesting choice,” she said. Nothing about her tone sounded haughty because Wolseley wasn’t like that.

“I didn’t notice.”

“Part of my training,” she said, flashing her sweet smile. It was nice to see itagain.

After I mostly devoured the hummus and pita chips, the artichoke dip with corn chips came next. I could tell it wasn’t made with real cheese, but it wasn’t entirely bad. Not the first thing I’d pick. But the corn chips were good.

“You didn’t like it?” she asked.

“Not really. Kind of bland.”

“Noted,” she said.

The jackfruit tacos were actually good, the marinated vegetables were delicious, and the mushroom dumplings exceeded my expectations, although I was ranking them close to the artichoke dip. The star of our lunch were the burgers, fries, mac and cheese, and pizza. I could have eaten it all myself, but Wolseley had to eat, and I was getting full. We still had dessert to come.

“Great choices,” I said. “The mac and cheese almost tasted like the real thing. But that pizza blew me away.”

“The pizza was great,” she said, as we ate the cabbage salad last to cleanse our palates, according to Wolseley. “I think I can make better mac and cheese.” Her devious smile made me laugh.

Our dessert came, and it was nice getting to share that and the meal with her. I was pretty sure the passionfruit pie was going to be tasteless, but it was mixed with strawberries, which gave it a much richer flavor. The sorbet was a bit bland, but it went well with the sweet pie.

“Thank you for lunch,” she said after I’d asked the server for the bill.

“We should do it more often. It was fun.”

A little frown formed again, and now I was truly stumped. I thought the outing would cheer her up, but now I’d gone and potentially upset her again, and I had no idea how I’d done that.

“Okay, what did I say?”

“Nothing. It was nice. Thank you,” she said.

As we drove back to my place, I kept rolling things around in my head, and I was coming up empty. Part of me wanted to call Tangi and ask her what the hell she’d said, but Wolseley wouldn’t like that, so I kept playing it over and over again, determined to find a way to break Wolseley’s funk.

Chapter Eighteen

Wolseley

Iavoided taking Tangi’s calls or answering her texts. I needed space and more time to feel sorry for myself, but after the first few home games of the season, and almost two weeks of no communication, Jill had had enough. She insisted we both go to her place, which made sense since the Ravens were playing in Graham Place while the Kodiaks were out of town. That meant Tangi could easily pop over after work.

Jill ordered Chinese food because she wasn’t the best cook, and I got there before Tangi did. I’d had a rare day off, which meant I had time to call my parents and not rush them off the phone, get some much-needed supplies for myself, catch up on chats with my chef friends, reply to all the questions Jan had emailed me about Daniel, but most of all to relax and not have to worry about feeding Brandon, and now Ryan. He was due to come over for a sampling after the road trip, but during the road trip, he was going to have all the same meals I’d arranged for Brandon, so that made it easy to order double. I also sent along extra snacks for him too.

I planned to enjoy my four days off. That’s the arrangement I had with Brandon. As long as his road trip meals were set, and he had enough snacks to keep him going, I had as much time off as I wanted while he was gone, and after a long training camp and the first week of the season, I deserved it.

“Thank you for coming,” Jill said when I got there. She and her dog, Chloe, met me at the door. “I know you’re still upset.” She took my coat and hung it up. Jill kept an immaculate home. I often wondered if her cleaning obsession came from a place of coping and finding things to do when she had such a shitty mother. I kept a clean kitchen and did a good job of keeping Tangi and Ethan’s condo clean, but I was pretty sure you could eat off any surface in Jill’s home, including the floor. She even wiped poor Chloe’s feet each time she went outside to do her business.

“Really, it’s fine,” I said. “I’d like to put it behind us.”

Jill gave me one of her hardened looks, the kind her ice-blue eyes could freeze you in place with. “No, we aren’t doing that. I don’t like what Tangi said, and I know it hurt you, so we are going to nicely hash this out today, and you aren’t going to just let it go because that’s not healthy.”