Page 74 of Scoring Chance

“Stan, a pleasure as always. We need to have a pickleball rematch.” Marissa shakes his hand, then flops her hand in Tanner’s almost like she expects him to kiss it.

“I’m game.” Stan mimics some pickleball moves.

Kyle points to his oldest spawn. “My son Wesley, currently top player on his lacrosse team.”

Wesley steps forward and gives Stan a hardy shake. He looks about Davy’s age, though his hygiene seems much better. “Good to see you again, sir.”

“And my twins Cayleigh and Brynleigh.”

I half-expect these girls to say “Come play with us, Danny.” They look about seven or eight. They take a step forward in unison, doing little to dispel their Shining aura.

“Hi, Mr. Stan.” Also said in unison. They turn to Tanner. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Tanner.”

Fear crosses Tanner’s face. He’s a scaredy cat when it comes to horror movies and possessed doll movies.

“Y-you, too,” my husband says. I squeeze his hand. “My kids are playing in the backyard. Why don’t you join them?”

“We’d love to,” Wesley says. He takes a hand of each of his possessed doll sisters and they nearly skip out the sliding door.

“Don’t worry. They’re gone. They can’t hurt you,” I whisper to Tanner, who stifles a laugh.

Kyle watches his children of the corn with a twinkle in his eye.

“I love ‘em. It goes by in the blink of an eye. But you know all about that, Stan,” Kyle says.

Tanner and I get the adults their cocktails as the pre-dinner chatter flows. Kyle’s already circling like a shark, zeroing in on Tanner and me with predatory interest.

“So…” Kyle sips his drink. “The whirlwind romance. How did you guys meet?”

“High school. I was new and when I joined the hockey team, this player loved pranking me.” Tanner shoots me a wink. “What he didn’t expect was that I could prank back just as good.”

Tanner may seem all sweet, but the man has a dark talent for team pranks. He could be a total savage when he wanted to.

“I wasn’t sure what to make of you at first. Once we got out there on the ice, I thought, this guy’s okay. It’s like he can read my mind. Our passing is so quick and in sync, people think we have a secret language.” A nostalgic feeling pulls at my stomach.

‘“I can tell that about you, Tanner,” Stan says. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

“It’s always the quiet ones what?” he asks.

“It’s just always the quiet ones.” Stan laughs into his drink.

“I second that.” I clink my glass against Stan’s.

“Hockey is a very violent sport,” Marissa says in between cocktail sips.

“Aggressive, not violent,” I say.

“So, are you divorced, Tanner?” Kyle asks as he spreads cheese on a cracker and shoves it into his mouth.

“Widowed.”

I cock an eyebrow at Kyle. That’s what you get for trying to stir shit. He shrugs it off in stride.

“So you’ve been friends for a while. And then you just realized you were meant to be husbands? Romantic,” Kyle says, with no feeling.

“It was,” I reply smoothly, but Tanner cuts in before I can spin corporate-level PR.

“We’ve known each other forever,” Tanner says, his voice steady, easy. “Sometimes, it just takes you a while to see what’s right in front of you.”