Page 47 of Base Block

Anara smiled at her hand. “He said that he couldn’t wait. He also said that he had already told the whole team, and someone was going to spill the beans to me by mistake.” She looked up at me and Heidi. “Did you guys know that he was going to propose?”

We nodded in unison and she shrugged, smiling more.

“Demitrious is terrible about keeping secrets. That’s why I never worry about him lying to me because it would show all over his face. For the last few weeks, I’ve been fairly certain that he was going to ask me to marry him. Either that, or he wanted to break up, so I upped the oral sex.”

“Did you think that would keep him around?” Heidi wondered.

“I’m really talented,” she told us, and passed along some helpful tips on how to use our tongues.

“Thank you for sharing,” Heidi said. “But since we’re in a public place, you should lower your voice.”

I could only see parts of the man seated in front of me, his ears and the back of his neck. They had all gone brick red, which contrasted terribly with his orange Woodsmen jacket. Most of the fans in the stadium today had put on an extra layer because the temperature had dropped and Callum had wanted me to bring a blanket, just in case.

“I remember how you had to sleep under my grandpa’s old coat on that smelly couch. I’m sorry about that,” he had said yesterday before he’d left to go to the stadium.

“I didn’t care,” I assured him. “That was the best I had slept in months. Probably years, because I wasn’t afraid at all. I already knew that I could trust you.”

“Hell, Rainey,” he’d answered, confusing me because he had looked so upset for a moment. Then he had grabbed me and hugged me tightly. “Don’t forget that we have our home visit on Sunday. And don’t forget a blanket.”

I had brought one with me, although I wasn’t as bothered by the cold as he had thought I would be. Anara had taken it and tucked it around her own legs, but she had refused to put on the gloves she’d brought for herself. She wanted to be able to look at her new ring, which Heidi and I had also been admiring.

“It’s a beautiful setting,” I said. “The woman I used to live with, Millie, was really knowledgeable about gemstones and she had her own loupe. She could look at pieces and tell the value.”

“What an interesting skill,” Heidi said. “Was she a jeweler?”

“I think she was just greedy,” I answered. “But it did come in handy, because the guy we worked for wanted to buy a bunch of diamonds and she warned him when he was getting ripped off. Later, she took some of them.”

“Some of his diamonds?” Anara asked. She studied her ring, which was not a diamond because she didn’t like those. Her stone was light purple, jadeite, which Demitrious had known was her favorite color. She smiled as she turned her hand from side to side.

I nodded in answer to the question. “Millie pried some stones out of his ring and replaced them with fakes. She knew that he wouldn’t notice and if he ever did, she would have been able to blame it on almost anyone else in the world. He was so careless with his stuff that he left it lying around hot tubs, bars, doctors’ offices, limos. But I happened to catch her one day. I never told.”

“That’s theft,” Heidi pointed out. “You really should have…”

The rest of her words got lost in a wave of cheering, stomping feet, and excitement. The Woodsmen were running from the tunnel out onto the field and I watched for Callum. I hoped that he wouldn’t get cold, maybe not now (since it wasn’t so bad at all), but later in the season. Victoria had promised that there would be snow on the ground and that they might have to shovel the field between quarters.

He played less today. The guy he had been trading off with, Morin, was back to full strength and he was also very talented. He had been the one that gave us the stone toad and he’d given Callum good advice, too. I couldn’t begrudge him being out there, since it had been his position first, and I didn’t want him to be hurt! But I did want Callum to get a chance, and I thought that he also deserved it. I got to see how tired and sore he was every day, and I got to see how much extra time he spent studying and learning, outside of what the coaches asked of him.

But as he always said, he was lucky to have this chance, and I really thought that more good things would come around for him. I was sure of it.

At halftime, we left our seats to get out of the wind, which wore on you after a while. “It would be fun to sit in one of those nice suites,” Heidi had said. Anara had used her monocular to peer inside and she had given us a running commentary on what food was being served—it had made me hungry, although I was trying hard to watch what I was eating.

It was funny to get recognized as we waited in line at the concession stand. “Hi, Rainey!” several girls said, as if we knew each other. Actually, they only saw a slim slice of my life with Callum and it was only the part that we let them see. Like, they had no idea that the dishwasher had broken again, or that the guy next door was really annoying us with his cornet. They didn’t know about Maverick, either, because we hadn’t yet told anyone.

We had decided to adopt him. I had gone back to the kennel the day after I’d first visited there, and he had been just as glad to see me. He had been the next day, too, and the one after that. Then Callum had finagled an opening in his schedule so they also could meet.

“You seem like a good boy, not a hound from hell,” he’d said to the dog. Maverick had tried to jump and he’d sternly told him, “No.”

That had worked, immediately. So the next time the dog had started to jump on me, I had adopted the same tone and said, “No.”

It hadn’t produced exactly the same result, but he had listened a little and backed off to some extent. I would need to work on that because I refused to have an untrained dog, not after what I’d seen of my aunt’s former pet. That was dangerous to people and other animals, but also to the dog himself. When Maverick wasn’t leashed and had run away, he could have been hit by a car. He could have hurt a kid, even by mistake, and that would have led to huge problems for him. I would be his primary caregiver, since I was the one who was around most of the time. I would watch out for him and maybe someday, he would want to do the same for me. Callum seemed to think that he would.

“He’ll be able to protect you,” he had said when we were at the animal shelter. Maverick had rolled over onto his back and offered his tummy for scratches, and he didn’t look very tough or mean in that position. He seemed like a big baby.

I decided to show his picture to my friends when we went back to our seats. The wind whipped my hair around my head and I pulled it into a bun, the kind that Callum liked. “Look,” I said. “Here’s my new dog.”

“Wow! You guys have a third member of your family,” Heidi said happily. She smiled at my phone. “He’s so cute.”

“I’m going to make sure that he’s totally safe around kids,” I told her. “I won’t let him near your baby unless I’m completely convinced that it will be ok.”