Page 92 of Ready to Score

“Good things?”

Carmella grimaced. “Well…”

Jade laughed good-naturedly. “Yeah, I figured. We had a bit of a rough go of it. Mostly my fault.”

“We told Franny you were into her,” Charlie offered. “She was stubborn about believing us, but we told her.”

“We’d never even met you, but we could see it from a mile away. And look at you now.” Janet was lacing up her purple bowling shoes and kept her eyes on her laces as she spoke.

Jade leaned in and pressed a kiss against Franny’s jaw in response. Franny guided them to two open seats, where they began to get their own shoes on.

The group was quiet, the sounds of the bowling alley the perfect distraction. The lane to their left was occupied by a small family. Amother, father, and their two kids. The kids had small bowling balls and bumpers up against the sides of the lane and every time one of them sent one flying down the glossy wood, sweet peals of childish glee floated through the air.

Franny finished tying her shoes and sat back in her seat, getting comfortable despite the hard plastic underneath her. She’d underestimated how much she had missed this. The smell of stale pretzels and cheap pizza, the sound of balls rolling across the wood. Happy bowlers, serious bowlers, and the ladies surrounding her. She watched with a full heart as Jade struck up a conversation with Janet and Charlie. Her brain and ears found themselves disconnected; whatever words they were sharing flowed in one ear and out the other. All she retained was the soothing timbre of their voices as they all melded together.

She wanted to label this a perfect night, but that gave her pause. How many nights had she had recently that she’d calledperfect? More than seemed fair, surely. They had all been different too. Her first date with Jade. Once when they’d taken a late-night trip to Minnie’s for some cobbler after a bout of hair-pullingly-hot sex. Even one nighttime football practice where it had started to rain and the kids made the executive decision to keep going. Was all this perfection possible? Was it sustainable?

Maybe she’d been using the wrong words to describe them. Maybe all those nights hadn’t been perfect at all. Maybe she’d just been happy. Consistently and deliriously happy. Not just with Jade but with her life in general. She was a coach again, she was a part of something big, she was building connections. Hell, she was even calling her mother more. Franny had spent the past two years wading through, biding her time until the work she was doing actually paid off.

She was there now, and it felt incredible. So much so that shehardly knew what to do with herself. Honestly, maybe there was nothing to do but live it. Enjoy it. Let the good times bolster her for when the more difficult parts of life circled back around. There would be no focusing on that, though. Not while she had her woman at her side and some pins to knock down.

“Are we bowling or what?” Barb stood up, flexing her ball in her arms a few times. “You might be Franny’s girl, but don’t expect us to take it easy on you, newbie.”

Jade’s answering grin was positively wolfish. It slid across her face slowly, transforming her from sweet conversationalist to competitive hellcat. Franny shook her head with a laugh.

“Those are fighting words,” she told Barb. “This woman’s got a competitive streak like no other, Barb.”

“I do,” Jade said. “I don’t know how to play for anything but the win.”

Barb grinned back, and it was genuinely the first time Franny had seen so many of her teeth. “I suppose you’re up first, then. Show us how you roll.”

“Oh lord,” Stella groaned.

Charlie reached out and patted Franny’s hand after Jade got up to choose her ball. “You done good, Franny girl. You done good.”

And she knew it was true.

The Spring After

I told Landry that he was going to have to carry on this tradition without me. If I never see another deck of cards in my life, it’ll be too soon.”

Jade was sitting, bent over the edge of her bed, tying the laces of her sneakers. Franny was in the en suite, cleaning a new tattoo she’d gotten that afternoon.

“It won’t be so bad,” Franny said, her voice muffled. “It’ll be all the same guys as before.”

“That definitely doesn’t make it any better,” Jade grumbled.

She threw herself back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with a pout on her face. She was being ornery, she knew it. But she’d managed to get out of going to those damn poker games ever since the school year had begun. They hadn’t had anything close to a perfect season. The Greenbelt Gators had taken their fair number of losses and setbacks. They hadn’t ended the season with a championship trophy the way everyone had hoped they would. But they’d made it far in the playoffs. Further than they had in the past four years. The disappointment among her players had been palpable, but so had the hope for next year.

Their loss this season had been a major upset for the kids, especially the seniors who’d left for greener pastures with no championship titlesholding them up. Greenbelt had closed out the season with a spot in the championships. They’d lost in the semifinals to Oakbridge High but finished with twenty-eight wins and six losses for the year. The only comfort was that West Beaufort hadn’t even managed to make it past the first round of the playoffs.

They had put a lot of work into keeping the players energized. Tryouts were just around the corner, and Jade had a lot of hope, not only for all the new blood coming in but for their upcoming season in general. They were taking it all the way this year. There was no other option; she wouldn’t allow it. Jade felt that familiar fire in her belly swell every time she thought about the work that needed to be done to get them there. Their most recent upset was like gasoline on the flames, and the way it engulfed her completely was all the motivation she needed.

In the meantime, Landry hadn’t fought her on her absences at the poker games. Jade figured he had too much on his plate to worry about whether she was up for a weekly game of Texas Hold’em, but now all of a sudden, he was insisting on it? It was weird. And annoying.

“Why couldn’t he just let us take him to Red Lobster or something, like a normal person?”

“I think Red Lobster is more of a graduation dinner place. Shellfish isn’t the meal for retirement.”

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