Page 13 of Hitting the Gap

He pulled his arm out of the tub and rested it along the edge. Glancing over at Bailey, he smiled. “You awake over there?”

“Mmm-hmm, just enjoying the quiet.”

“Does that mean shut up?” he teased.

Bailey popped one eye open. “No, not at all.”

“So you gonna tell me what happened between you and Brad?”

He cringed when her entire body tensed. Nice job, Gonz, way to ruin a perfectly good soak. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to.” Bailey shifted in her seat. “Okay, yes, that’s part of it, but…” she paused and looked up at the sky. “Today just really sucked, and I don’t have the mental capacity to think about Brad and all that shit.” She brought her head back down and glanced at him.

The sadness in her eyes made him want to pull her into a hug. He’d always been protective of Bailey. It killed him that the situation with Brad had obviously hurt her and there was nothing he could do about it. “I get it. No one wants to rehash shit about a breakup.”

“Thanks for understanding. I promise I’ll fill you in on everything that went down and how I ended up here. Just not tonight, okay?”

“Sure.”

They might not be talking about it, but the mood had shifted. He could practically feel the tension radiating off of her from across the hot tub. He was an idiot. He never should have brought it up. Needing to change the vibe, he searched for something neutral to talk about. “So you want to come to the game on Sunday?”

Bailey lifted her head. “What?”

“Sunday, you want to come watch? You can sit with the WAGS, have a couple beers, get to know some people.”

“I’m sorry, WAGS? What the hell is that?”

“Wives and girlfriends. Although since you’d be sitting with my buddies’ girls, it would technically just be the girlfriend section. Although my man Max will be there, so…”

Bailey shifted her body so she angled toward him and rested her head on her arm. “Who’s Max?”

“He’s Smitty’s kid.”

“Oh nice. So besides Max, who would I be sitting with?”

“As far as I know, Peyton, Kendall, and Kia are all attending Sunday. That’s why I thought you might want to go. Kind of get it out of the way and meet them all at once.”

“So I’d be sitting with three girlfriends?”

“Yeah, is that a problem?” He didn’t have a clue why it would be, but she looked a little unsure about the whole thing. “It’ll be fun. We can all go grab a beer or some food after,” he said.

“What are they like?”

“The girls?”

Bailey rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

He chuckled. “They’re cool, you’ll like them. And Max is a riot.” He stuck out his foot and pushed against her leg. “Stop overthinking shit. Come to the game, have fun, have a beer. If you hate them well…” It would be awkward as shit if she hated his friends. “You’ll still have to hang out with them because they’re like my family here, but you won’t have to sit with them at games anymore.”

She chuckled. “Well, that’s comforting.”

“You’ll like them. They’re all really great.”

She sighed. “Whose girlfriends’ are they?”

“Kendall is Pete’s girlfriend and Ryan’s sister.”

Bailey’s eyes widened and her mouth formed a little O. “Wow.”

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