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I shoot him a glare. “Turnabout’s fair play, my friend. If I see your ass up in the air, I’m smacking it, too.”
“Deal. As long as I get to touch your ass, I’m a happy man.”
I giggle. “Right. So…scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage?”
“I’ve got the sausage covered,” he says, and he grabs his groin.
I roll my eyes. “Already with the sausage jokes,” I mutter.
“What?” he protests. “Sausage jokes and slapping your ass any time you bend over. It’s like a staple of making a dinner together, isn’t it?”
“Is it, though? Does it have to be?”
He laughs, and we get started cooking a meal together. He doesn’t know his way around the kitchen very well, which tells me he’s used to ordering takeout, but he takes direction well. He also likes to interrupt my work with kisses, which I don’t exactly mind…until we burn the first round of toast.
We laugh together as we work, continuing to steal kisses and make conversation, and then we sit and eat together.
“Why’s Jonah at your parents’ house this weekend?” he asks.
“We planned it months ago when I found out about the charity ball. I figured I’d either be covering or attending it, and he likes to do a double sleepover every few months. I just miss him, but I might head over sometime tomorrow to say hi.” I’ll see my parents tomorrow night at the ball, something I haven’t discussed with Lincoln yet. I don’t really want to bring it up, to be honest, but the invitations went out to several local former players, and my parents were all too excited to attend—especially given the fact that many of the Aces players are regulars at their restaurant and my dad has sort of built a name in the Aces community, likely much to the chagrin of our darling new coach.
I have a babysitter I call upon occasion, the teenaged kid of one of my parents’ neighbors, and she’ll be watching Jonah tomorrow night when we’re all at the ball.
“You’re close with them,” he surmises, and I nod.
“And you’re close with yours?”
He shrugs a little. “I guess. I haven’t seen them much since they moved to town.”
“You’ve been a little busy, you know, coaching. And slipping in time with your secret lover.”
“Not enough time,” he mutters as he pulls me against him with his hands on my ass, and I can’t disagree with that.
I think about asking what his family would think about him being with me, but I imagine it’s about the same sorts of things my own parents would think about me being with him. Only…my dad owns a successful bar here in Vegas now. He didn’t lose all his money because of the bar back in New York the way Lincoln’s father did, and Lincoln’s father wasn’t forced to stop playing due to an injury incurred at the hands of his best friend the way my father did. Intentional or not, that’s facts.
But dwelling any longer on the topic of families than we already have feels like it’ll just wedge us apart when we both already feel that wedge from so many different angles.
So instead, I focus on enjoying the time we do have. We have the rest of tonight. We have all day tomorrow until we need to head to the ball—barring an hour or so if I pop over to see Jonah.
This is rare time for us, something I feel like we sorely need if we’re really here to explore a potential future together.
We clean up the dinner dishes, and then we settle on the couch. I sit a cushion away from him and perch my feet over his legs. “What do you usually watch?” I ask.
“ESPN,” he admits. “You?”
“I start with the local news, check ESPN, and then pull up Netflix and let it surprise me.”
He chuckles. “Really?”
I nod.
“I don’t even have Netflix. I don’t get invested in shows because inevitably I’ll want to sit and binge and I never have the ability to do that.”
“Not even in the off-season?” I ask.
He lifts a shoulder. “I guess then. But even then, I’m planning for the next season. Coaches don’t get the same kind of time off players do.”
“Do you like coaching?” The question comes out of the blue, and I’m not even sure why I ask it.
