“No. You look suspicious and mildly alarming.”
Will shrugs. “Told her not to wear it, but she insisted.”
“You shouldn’t have come at all! I don’t need a bodyguard.”
A smile touches his mouth. “Executive protection a—”
I hold up a menacing finger. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
Brandon does the dad whistle through two fingers, and it’s so loud I have to clutch my head. He finally sits back down when his nephew gets three strikes. He then leans around me to indulge in my worst nightmare: my date having a conversation with Will, the one man he’ll never live up to. “Hi, I’m Brandon. And I guess you’ve already met Annie?”
I watch the moment Amelia slips back into character. It’s painful.
She smiles so big her mustache unpeels in the right corner. “Hi there! M’name’s Joe! And this here is my brother, Sam.”
I watch in silent dismay as the two men’s hands cross over me to join in a man shake. The sight of Will’s butterfly hand clasping my date’s very normal one makes me irrationally angry. I shouldn’t be able to compare the two men so directly like this. It’s not fair to Brandon. And when Will’s eyes cut to me for the briefest of heated moments, I’m afraid that the thought He licked my neck this morning is projected onto my face. Will’s invisible fingerprints all over my body are now glowing like a radioactive substance.
“Nice to meet you both,” says Brandon.
“Likewise.”
Brandon sits back and then leans into my side. “That’s definitely a woman with a fake mustache, right?”
“It appears to be so, yes,” I say, my gaze fixed forward, wishing I could drop the two people beside me into a black hole somewhere.
“I think moving to the country is going to take more getting used to than I expected.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m still not used to it.”
He laughs. “Not sure it does.”
Will crosses his arms, and his knuckles brush the back of my arm. My rude, rude stomach barrel-rolls. I want to glare at Will.
A conversation Amelia is having with the woman in front of her suddenly grabs my attention. “I’ve never seen you at these games before. Who did you say you were here to see play?” says the woman decked out in Little Grizzlies gear.
“Never seen us, huh? Strange. We’re here every weekend to cheer on little Tommy.”
“Timmy,” Will corrects.
“Right. Little Timmy. Poor thing never was very good at baseball, but I tell him to keep on trying, just like his aunt!”
“Uncle,” Will says.
“Uncle, right. Oh look, there he is getting up to bat!” Amelia stands up, her jeans （that is, Noah’s jeans） swallowing her whole, and yells, “Go, Timmy!”
“That’s my son…Matthew,” says the woman.
Amelia pretends to squint heavily. “Well shit. That’s what I get for leaving my glasses in the car. Brother, can you see Timmy?”
“No, brother, I cannot,” Will says deadpan, and I want to push them both off the back of these stands.
Brandon, somehow oblivious to the Two Stooges scene happening beside me, asks, “How long have you owned your flower shop?”
Oh no, flower shop questions. This is what got me in trouble on my last date. However, I’m Annie 2.0, so I’m prepared for this. I crack my mental knuckles and prepare to wow him with a flourishing answer. “Four years.”
Yep, wowed him.
Will bumps my arm intentionally. I toss a quick glare at him, and he widens his eyes with a keep-going look. Wait, so is he here to cheer me on or sabotage me? I feel like I’m on a spinning-teacup ride.
I sigh and turn back to Brandon. “What I mean is…four years in the brick-and-mortar shop. But before that I owned a flower truck and would sell out of farmers markets.”
He looks genuinely impressed and interested. Another check mark. “That’s really cool. Did you travel to other states or stay local to Kentucky?”
“I pretty much stayed within a fifty-mile radius,” I say, and then realize this is the perfect conversational intro for a question that’s become important to me as of late. “Um, which is actually why I think I’d like to travel more in the future.”
“Go Timmy!” Amelia yells again.
Will shakes his head. “Still not Timmy.”
“Rats.” Amelia sits down.