Page 14 of The Art of Catching Feelings

Kim grabbed her phone from her. “Get outta here with that cheesy shit,” she said. “We’ll narrow down the age range to under forty and filter out anyone who selected ‘unemployed’ or ‘self-employed’ as their employment status.”

“TechnicallyI’mself-employed.”

Kim blinked before tapping the phone a couple times. “Believe me, it’s better to start this way. The last thing you want is some wannabe entrepreneur trying to hit you up for free graphic design work for his vending machine business. Ask me how I know.”

In one corner of the bar, a group of guys erupted in a cheer, and Daphne looked up to the TV screen to see Chris rounding first base, stopping at second to point at someone in the dugout, an almost-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The instant replay showed the pitch coming toward him, the way he twisted his body to make contact with his bat, the moment he dropped the bat in the dirt and started running. After the replay the screenfilled with footage from the last gameagain, this time going all the way back to the shot that YouTube video had shown of her yelling through the net. The closed-captioning was rolling across the bottom, too fast and garbled for her to make much sense of it, but she didn’t need to know the specifics to know they were rehashing the same tired ground about how this had happened last game, looks like he has more reason to smile today, and on and on.

“Oh, shit,” someone yelled in a deep baritone, and suddenly there was a commotion over in that corner. Daphne looked up and was surprised to see that they were staring directly ather. The guy who must’ve spoken pointed right at her, gesturing with his sloshing beer as though he were participating in pub trivia and determined to be first to answer. “That’s her! That’s the heckler!”

Even the bartender glanced over at the high-top, where moments before, Daphne and Kim had been quietly enjoying their meal. It only now occurred to Daphne that she was in a bar filled with Battery fans, and the fact that they’d all just seen her drunkenly roasting one of their players on TV was maybe…not the best.

“What do you have to say now?” one of the guys shouted. “Still want to talk trash?”

“Um, no,” Daphne said, even as Kim was already tossing down a couple twenties onto the table.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The guys were still shouting after her as they left the bar, and several people had their phones out, obviously snapping pictures or shooting video of the whole encounter. Great. Just her luck,thatwould end up onSportsCenter, too, and then she’d never hear the end of it from her brother.

“Well,” Kim said, digging through her purse for her pepper spray for the dark walk to their cars. “You did say you wanted someone to know you. So how does it feel?”

Daphne was saved from having to answer by her phone vibrating in her pocket. Unfortunately, it was her brother. She picked up the call, her stomach sinking. He couldn’t have possibly already heard what had just gone down, right?

“Donovan—” she started, but he cut her off.

“It’s Layla,” he said. “We’re at the hospital now. Can you come?”

—

Daphne spotted her brother pacing in the hallway outside a hospital room, finishing up a phone call. By the way he signed off the conversation, she could tell he’d been talking to their parents. Any other time she would’ve asked how they were, how the trip was going, if their mom still boycotted using the tiny RV bathroom if their dad had used it in the hour beforehand. But now she was too focused on how her sister-in-law was doing.

“Is she in there?” she asked, gesturing toward the room. “What happened? How is she?”

Kim came up behind her, a little late from having to park. She touched Daphne’s arm as if to say,It’s okay, calm down.

But Daphne couldn’t help it. Donovan had always been the typical older brother in that he didn’t want to show any weakness in front of his little sister, so for him to call her that panicked had madeherpanic. Now that she was here, though, she noticed that he seemed okay. Tired, maybe, a little worried. But not devastated. Whatever the news was, it couldn’t bethatbad.

“They took her downstairs to run a couple tests,” he said. “Right now they’re saying something about an insufficient cervix, or incompetent cervix? I forget the term. She should be fine, and the baby should be fine, but they’re recommending she go on bed rest to avoid going into labor too early. There’s also some procedure they can do to possibly help, but they’re still assessing that.”

Daphne froze. “Donnie.”

“Duckie.” If she was going to use the childhood nickname she knew he hated, apparently he was going to fight back.

A slow smile spread over her face. “You’re having ababy?”

It seemed to dawn on him, then, that he’d told the news in reverse order. He smiled, too, a full-out grin that told Daphne just how truly excited her brother was to be a dad. “Oh yeah,” he said. “We were going to tell everyone when we were a little further in the second trimester. And then we were thinking of throwing some kind of party where we could tell everyone all at once and…yeah, whoops. You’re going to be an aunt.”

He barely got the last words out before Daphne was enveloping him in a huge hug, and then Kim was hugging her, and by the time they wheeled Layla back down the hallway toward her room, everyone was almost too busy laughing and hugging to even notice.

“Jeez, guys,” she said dryly. “I can see you were really worried. Thanks so much for your concern.”

“Layla, congratulations!” Daphne said, not bothering to wipe the tears out of her eyes as she gave her sister-in-law a hug. It was a little awkward, both because Daphne wasn’t used to being taller than Layla and because she wasn’t used to giving her polished sister-in-law hugs that weren’t of the one-arm-patting-the-back variety. It was the hair. Layla’s jet-black shiny hair was always so perfectly coiffed that Daphne was afraid to mess it up.

“We’re just excited about the baby,” she said. “But how is everything? Are you feeling okay?”

Layla sighed. “I feel fine now. I had some cramping and wasn’t feeling well this morning when I was supposed to catch my flight to LA, so Donovan thought I should stay back. Then I had a little spotting, so we made a doctor’s appointment just in case, and they sent me here…to keep a grisly story short, I guess they’re worriedabout the baby just slipping right out of me if I’m on my feet too much.”

“So what does bed rest mean?”

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