Page 9 of The Waiting Game

She made a tsking noise. “What happened, happened. You learned from it, eh?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re never gonna drink and drive again.”

“Never,” Felix swore.

Jonah sighed with relief. It seemed silly to take that as a sign that Felix was committed to his sobriety but Felix would never knowingly lie to Jonah’s grandmother. She meant too much to both of them.

She was like …

Well, it was complicated.

She was Jonah’s mother as much as she was his grandmother. He only had vague memories of his actual parents.

Jonah had only been five when Hana and Zachary Brewer’s plane crashed and he came to live with Yun Ji-min and Lim Cho-eun.

Then, he’d been closer to his paternal grandparents, who lived near Jonah’s home in Seattle.

But they had been older and in poor health, in no shape to care for Jonah full-time.

He’d known and loved his mother’s parents too, but it had still been frightening and overwhelming to move across North America to a new country.

Hockey was the only thing that had felt familiar and when he’d clapped eyes on the little boy with reddish-blond curls who lived four houses down and across the street, he’d somehow felt familiar too.

Felix had felt familiar in a way he shouldn’t have. They’d never met before but it was like they were reunited after being apart for years. They’d taken to each other immediately and it had been impossible to pry them apart.

Little had changed since.

“Jo-nah,” his grandmother called.

He straightened. “Yes?”

“Did you really think you were going to sneak in and out of here and not say hello to your grandmother?” She put her hands on her hips, glaring up at him.

“No?” he said cautiously, because while he’d pulled that trick off occasionally, it was rare. More often when Grandpa Cho was alive but Jonah didn’t need to think too closely about what had kept her distracted then.

Still, at seventy-seven, the woman was as sharp as ever.

“Good. You’ve been neglecting me too,” she said teasingly. “You both skipped dinner last week.”

Jonah chuckled. “Yeah, one whole week out of the year. What a terrible grandson I am.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek.

She grinned. “The worst.” They had a standing dinner with her once a week—travel schedules permitting—but Jonah’d come down with a small cold last week and hadn’t wanted to risk her health by showing up.

She’d scoffed at that excuse but he couldn’t be too careful with her. She and Felix were everything to him.

“But you two will come for dinner next week, yes?”

“Yes,” they both chorused like they were still little boys being scolded for messing up her kitchen garden.

“The Thursday night after you get back from your road trip. You don’t have a game and we need to celebrate your upcoming birthday, Felix.”

Jonah hid a smile. She had their schedule memorized more closely than he or Felix did, and she and her friend Nancy came to as many of the home games to cheer for the team as often as possible.

Felix pulled out his phone. “I’ll put our dinner plans in my calendar so we don’t miss it.”

“Suck-up,” Jonah muttered with a cough into his fist.

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