Page 26 of Home Sweet Home

Evie could only manage a nod before turning around, the heat rising in her cheeks as she left to put in the order.

At the counter, Kayla waggled her eyebrows. “He’s a cutie.”

Evie leaned on the cool, smooth surface and checked him out subtly. The man cradled a cup of coffee and was looking out the window. When he caught Evie looking, he gave her a smile that made her want to melt into the diner tiles. “Sure.”

One hour, one burger, and one slice of cherry pie later, he was gone, and Evie picked up the signed credit card receipt from his table. There was a phone number written there, and a smiley face with the wordthankswritten in small block letters. He had decent handwriting for a dude.

Evie held it up to Kayla, who whistled. “Nice work, girl.”

Crumpling the receipt into a ball, Evie dropped it into the trash can. It was a boost of confidence, a gallon added to her loneliness tank. She couldn’t let it get full, just a tiny fill up here and there, enough so she wasn’t running on empty.

“Really?” Kayla said with a sigh, but before she could lecture Evie further, her phone chimed. “Shit. It’s Ryleigh’s daycare.” Kayla looked around. The diner was mostly empty, so she answered it. “Hi. Uh, huh? Okay. Yep. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Everything okay?” Evie asked.

Kayla inhaled. “Something about inappropriate artwork. I gotta go talk to them. Can you—”

Evie waved her off. “Got it covered. Get out of here.”

Three seconds later, Kayla was out the door, mouthing, “Thank you” as she left.

With the lunch crowd gone, Joe’s was uncharacteristically slow, and Evie found herself with nothing to do. Her mind kept wandering back to practices from the past few weeks. She and West had fallen into an easy routine, and Evie had been relieved to find out that working for West wasn’t all that bad. Sure, she was super tired most of the time, but that had always been the case. West himself was exactly as Evie remembered him, to the point that she sometimes felt like she’d gone back in time. In fact, when the cute man in the diner had smiled at her, Evie had thought to herself that his smile wasn’t nearly as bright as West’s.

It wasn’t the first time since they’d started working together that she’d found herself thinking about West even when he wasn’t around, and the only thing that worked was preoccupying her brain with something else. So Evie refilled ketchup bottles, scrubbed down all the tables twice, stuffed napkins into the dispensers, and made a fresh pot of coffee, which didn’t come out as well as Kayla’s but was still drinkable. Once she was done, the diner was sparkling.

After a few seconds of standing at the counter with her hands tucked into her short pockets, Evie glanced around to make sure no one was watching, opened her phone, and typed West’s name into the search bar. He had a wide internet presence. The results were full of photos from games, interview footage, and hundreds of news articles. The most recent articles speculated why he’d torpedoed his career by taking steroids. She clicked on the top article from theLA Times. The lead photo showed familiar faces—a smiling West autographing Freddy’s brother’s jersey, the Cougars sign blurry but recognizable in the background.

“I want to give these kids the same experiences and opportunities I had,” a quote from West said.

Evie scrolled to the comments. Most of them were surprisingly positive, and as much as Evie hated to admit it because Rich was a pretentious asshole, he was good at his job. She kept scrolling and sorted the comments by the most upvotes. The top comment read, “Once a cheater, always a cheater. True Devils fans wouldn’t be so quick to forgive and forget.”

So it wasn’t working as perfectly as they’d hoped.

The rest of the pre-scandal results were about West’s romantic life. She tapped on an archive of paparazzi photos. West wearing his baseball cap and aviators, holding hands with a woman, both of them clutching iced coffees. At first, she thought all the pictures were from the same outing, but when she looked closer, the women were each a bit different. One had a blond ponytail, a neon-pink sports bra, and leggings. Another woman with jet-black hair down the middle of her back was wearing a jean jacket and leather pants, even though it looked to be about eighty degrees, based on the palm trees.

“How’s it going with the Cougars?”

Evie jumped, and her phone slipped out of her hand. Joe bent to pick it up, but Evie held out her hand. “I got it.” He was too old to be bending, and she didn’t want him to see her screen. After she turned off her phone, she stuffed it in her pocket, trying not to look guilty. “They’re getting the hang of it.”

“How’s he doing?” Joe asked. “Any good?”

“Very,” Evie said with a sigh.

In two weeks, Evie had learned a lot about baseball, enough to know that West was a great coach as well as a great player. If Oliver missed a ball at bat, West said something low in his ear and patted him on the back. When Freddy’s pitches veered wide, West teased him, and the next one went straight down the middle. He kept his suggestions to Josh casual, mentioned in passing on the way to the watercooler or into the dugout. And it had worked. There was still so much to do, but the boys could play as a team. She wouldn't have said any of that to West’s face, though.

Joe smiled, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “Glad to hear it.” He looked around the empty diner. “Got a second? Been meaning to talk to you about something.”

A million thoughts circulated through Evie’s head. The first was she was about to be fired. Maybe he’d seen what she’d been looking at on her phone.

Noticing the panic on her face, Joe laughed and sat down at the counter. “Nothing bad. I’ve been thinking it might be time for me to take a step back. Pam’s been asking me to spend more time with her, and the truth is, I’m getting old.”

“Nonsense,” Evie said. “You’re a spring chicken.”

Joe chuckled. “Tell that to my bones, creaking and groaning all day like a rusty box spring.”

Despite what she’d said, Joehadbeen slowing down. She’d seen it in the dark half-moons under his eyes when he stepped into the diner at seven and in how much more often he needed to sit. His hair had already been going gray when her mom worked at Joe’s. In the past few years, it had turned white.

“I want you to manage it,” he said. “You’re smart. You work hard. I can trust you. There’d be a raise. A significant one since you wouldn’t be on tips anymore. You’d handle the hiring and payroll and inventory.”

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