She’d brought a folding chair and sunglasses. Puffy white clouds scudded across a sky so blue it dizzied. The pesky cough that had hung on for weeks was just about gone. She no longer felt like a convalescent. Especially when Gabe was standing next to her in jeans and a polo shirt, hands on his hips, squinting out at the field, silver whistle glistening from the chain around his neck.
Sex on two legs with a whistle, she thought.
There truly could not be two more different men than Gabe and Annelise’s father. Who, ironically, was also considered an actual sex bomb by a large portion of the population.
“Why flowers?” Gabe said. Still watching the field.
She knew what he meant. “Mmm... because when I found out I was pregnant, suddenly I was fitted with these like—don’t laugh—new goggles. The metaphorical kind. I’d been gung ho on this... GO LEESY GO! GO GO GO GO!” She leaped to her feet.
Annelise was a pink and blond and peachy blur driving the ball toward the net.
“KICK IT!” Gabe bellowed. “NOW! NAIL THAT BABY! YOU CAN DO IT!”
BAM!
The Acorn goalie leaped heroically, pigtails flopping, but came down hard with an armful of air and THWACK! The ball slammed into the net.
Much enthusiastic shrieking and pogoing ensued among the Hellcat Canyon Wildcats.
“Atta girl, Annelise!” Eden hollered. “Beautifulgoal!”
Annelise raced and bounced a horizontal path along the sidelines to high-five Gabe, Eden, and anyone else who had their hand stuck out, just like a pro boxer before a big match.
“Her first goal this season,” Gabe said proudly.
“And about her seventy-second try.”
They both smiled. Annelisealwayswent for the goal, whether it made sense to do it or not. She was crushed every time she missed one. Once she’d slipped and accidentally kicked her own butt, landing hard in the mud. Eden wouldn’t admit it out loud, but sometimes watching fifth grade soccer was as much fun as watching a Warner Bros. cartoon.
Gabe was working hard on helping Annelise to choose her moments.
“And that was a bull’s-eye, too,” he said with relish. “A real beaut of a goal. GIRLS, GATHER ROUND.”
He trotted off to talk to his team full of colty-legged little girls possessed of endless supplies of energy, not all of it juice box–fueled.
And while he was gone Eden contented herself with watching him: the way he moved, his confidence, his easiness with who he was, his good-humored authority with the team. All of it was downright erotic, as far as she was concerned.
He strolled back up the line, shared a few words with some other parents swigging from thermoses, then returned to his spot next to her.
Hand shading his eyes, looking toward the field, he said, “...you were gung ho on this...”
“...this really proscribed career path—I was going to be an attorney and live in a big city. I decided—and suddenly all I wanted was a... nest. Near my family. And near all the familiar things I’d always loved so I could share them with my baby while at the same time being completely independent.”
He turned toward her. “Complete—”
“Mr. Caldera! Mr. Caldera!” Their goalie, Michelle, clearly had some urgent business, which may be a bathroom break. He trotted off to have a word with her.
Then trotted back.
“...completely independent...” he prompted when he returned.
“Yep. And as for flowers... when I was pregnant I was just so much more emotional, and when I saw the shop for sale... Well, flowers require tender care and creativity and they make people happy and everything else just a little more beautiful, and suddenly the idea of being a purveyor of beauty and happiness, of being a little part of other people’s life events around here made me feel part of something bigger, and I wanted that. Like I was creating this lovely net below a high wire or something like... What?”
He’d turned to stare at her. Taking his eyes from the field. Entirely. His expression was almost... awestruck.
“Nothing,” he said lightly. After a delay.
His voice was a little gravelly.