The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 31
We compromise on a ponytail and lip gloss—though why a ponytail needs hairspray, I have no idea—and then I distract her with the suggestion that she do Mackenzie’s hair and makeup.
I haven’t told my best friend all the details of what’s coming with Beck, because I signed a contract promising I wouldn’t, but it still makes me feel like a heel for lying to her again. I hope she’s suspicious.
My parents know. Their lawyer did the final negotiations with his lawyer, with input from my parents.
It’s for the best to have Mom and Dad involved.
They’ve been there, done that, and seen about everything there is to see in Hollywood. They were the smokescreen I disappeared behind when I left for Morocco after high school graduation, and even though Mom insists on calling me Serendipity, they helped me legally change my name to escape the shadow of their spotlight.
Beck arrives in a red electric Maserati GranTurismo Folgore an hour before the game.
“Pansy-ass car,” my dad mutters as he peers through the blinds.
“That is so sexy,” Mackenzie whispers to me. “Can you be friends with him long enough for me to get a ride?”
“Sure.” I’m contractually obligated to stay friends with him for the next two weeks anyway.
“You two are so adorable together,” she adds. “But if he even hints that your worth is directly tied to your uterus again, by all means, ruin his underwear modeling career.”
She pauses, then lowers her voice even more. “I mean by cutting his balls off.”
“Got that part,” I assure her.
“I trained her to rip those balls off with her bare hands,” my dad growls from my recliner.
“Oh my god,” Mackenzie gasps.
“Dad, quit scaring my friends. You can practice your lines tomorrow.”
“There won’t be a tomorrow if we don’t get our asses in the game.”
Mackenzie goes from horrified to resigned in a heartbeat. “He’s practicing for a movie about the Fireballs, isn’t he?” she asks me.
Beck knocks before I have to answer her, and I leap to reach the door first.
My dad pulls one of those moves he learned in a kung fu movie ten years ago, though, and I end up toppling backwards over the armrest of the rocking chair, almost squashing Meda, who’s been camped out on the arm since Cupcake finally passed out cold on the AC vent in the kitchen.
My legs flail, and I fling my arms out to catch myself as I start to roll sideways off the chair, ass in the air.
Dad flings the door open. “Password,” he growls.
“Your daughter is a kindhearted genius who deserves better than a dumbass like me?” Beck guesses.
Mackenzie snickers.
“My, he’s charming,” my mom breathes.
I spin on the floor in time to catch Beck winking at my mother.
She fans herself.
Dad crosses his arms over his chest. “Quit flirting with my wife.”
“Sorry, sir. Natural reaction to beauty.”
I get myself back to my feet just in time for Cupcake to come barreling into the room.
Meda yowls and takes off for the stairs to my bedroom. I dive for the pig before she can follow. “No, Cupcake! No stairs! Mom! Where’s her harness?”
“You can’t stop true love, Serendipity.”
“You can’t make my cat love your pig.” I’m wrestling with a pig on the floor, in my best Geeks do it in Binary T-shirt, trying to save my cat, who loves me most when I have fresh-cooked chicken or when she’s delivering a sacrifice or yesterday when I rescued her from the pig and let her hang out with Mackenzie’s bobbleheads for the afternoon.
“Your cat was kneading my pig’s belly five minutes before you walked in the door,” Mom tells me. “She’s playing you.”
“So…pulled pork for dinner. Good idea or bad idea?” Beck asks.
Mom gasps.
“Bad idea. Got it. Hamburgers good, Sarah? We’ll grab some at the park. Here. Let me get that pig for you.” He lifts Cupcake, who flails, but despite a grunt or two of his own as he tries to finagle the pig, he gets her in a solid hold and she quits squealing. “Aww, look at the sweet piggy. You want your daddy to take you for a walk, don’t you?”
I snag Cupcake’s harness off the coatrack behind the door and slip it on her before Beck loses his grip. Once she’s leashed and on the ground, I hand the cord pointedly to my dad. “Pretend you’re auditioning for the role of a farmer and go distract all the paparazzi.”
“I eat farmers for breakfast.”
“Okay, Bat-Dad. Pretend you’re auditioning for a role as a bodyguard for the pig that will save the world. The fate of humanity rests on your shoulders.”
“This game was more fun before you were old enough to date.” He’s still growling in his tough guy cowboy voice, but there’s a twinkle in his dark eyes when he takes the leash.
Beck slings a long arm around my shoulder, which sends a delicious shiver that I ignore down my spine. “You ready to be good luck for the Fireballs?” he asks.
“Luck hasn’t exactly been on my side lately,” I point out wryly.
“Then you’re due.” He pulls me toward the door and claps my dad on the shoulder on our way past. “Don’t wait up.”
Dad makes a noise between a hiss and a growl, and Beck practically pulls me over the covered porch and toward the car.
I try to ignore the four beaters that don’t belong parked in the shade of the oaks along the street, because I know there are photographers inside just waiting to get a picture, and I also know they can’t hurt me with the three black sedans holding bodyguards also on the street, but my pulse is still in panic attack zones when Beck opens the passenger door for me. Once I’m closed inside, having safely arrived without tripping, my clothes randomly getting sucked off by an unnatural wind, or a bird pooping on me, I suck in a deep breath.
It’s just walking to a car.
They can’t twist walking to a car. And even if they do, I know the truth, and they can’t hurt me.
Beck climbs in the driver’s seat and starts the quiet engine.
And here we are.
On a date that’s not a date.
Alone.
With no buffer in the car to distract from the fact that we basically have nothing in common except that we both know his sister, we both know famous people, and that he pretty much turned my world sideways with a mis-aimed tweet.
He hits the radio.
The soft sounds of “America’s Sweetheart,” the Bro Code song that launched their career, fills the interior.
Yes, yes, fine.
I know Bro Code songs.
But only a few, and only because my first college roommate was in love with them, and also because all the radio stations in Copper Valley play them all the time still.
“Whoops,” he says with a grin that says this wasn’t a whoops at all. He hits a button, and the music switches to a pop song I don’t recognize. “Better.”
“Reliving the glory days?” I ask him.
He grins wider. “I took Tucker for a spin earlier. Introduced him to the classics. How was work?”
“How was work?” I repeat, because it’s such a normal, mundane question while I’m sitting in a car that’s probably worth more than my house, with a former boy band heartthrob who makes a killing putting his name on other people’s underwear.
Again, like the pair I’m wearing today.
Seriously, him getting into women’s underwear was brilliant.
Dammit.
That came out wrong.
I meant it’s really comfortable underwear.
“My parents run an environmental engineering firm,” he reminds me while we head out of the neighborhood, his fingers drumming on the white wheel, completely oblivious to the fact that I’m ruminating about our underwear. “I know a thing or two about water-saving toilets and solar panels and the energy clapback of windal speed.”
“The—what?”
“Energy clapback of windal speed. Technical term,” he says. “You didn’t learn that one in school?”
“That’s not a thing.”
He grins adorably.
“You’re physically incapable of being serious, aren’t you?” I ask.
“Everybody loves the class clown.”
“Except the teacher.”
“Are you the teacher?”
“No way. I hate people. I just like information.”
He coasts to a halt at a stop sign and pauses to glance at me. “I hate people too. They’re so people-ish. All those arms and legs and noses… The noses are definitely the worst.”
Once more, he’s managed to surprise a laugh out of me.
“People are awesome,” he informs me. “They’re complicated. Everyone has something they worry about. Everyone has someone they love. Everyone’s been through some kind of tragedy. But they still go out to baseball games and smile or head over to the theater and cry. The world’s full of good people doing their best, and we all fuck up time to time, but nobody’s really evil.”
I don’t actually hate people, but I do prefer to have a few tight friends to letting the entire world know my business. Also— “Nobody?”
“Okay, yeah, photographers who sneak through people’s bushes and scum who dox people online are evil with no redeeming qualities. And don’t get me started on trolls who call people fat and send dick pics. They all get anal herpes and their mothers call them ugly though, so there’s that.”
“You’re the reason Bro Code broke up, aren’t you? The other guys couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Yep,” he replies with yet another grin, this one totally shameless and not a bit insulted. “But really it was because they knew they’d never be this awesome. So how many frog habitats did you save today?”
I jerk my head sideways at him. “How did you know about the frogs?”
“At the windmill site? Ellie told me.”
“Did she tell you which flowers bees like too?”
He smiles, but the oddest thing happens.
He blushes too. “Yep. Everything I learned about how to treat a smart lady, I learned from my sister.”
He’s fed me plenty of stories the last two days, but this is one I don’t believe.
Not even a little.
Because the blush is giving him away.
I peer closer at his tan cheeks, to make sure it’s not a trick of the light, and oh my god.
He’s blushing harder now.
Beck Ryder.
Blushing.
Over flowers.
A warmth creeps into my belly, and my pulse amps up again. But for once, it’s not a terrified race in my veins.
Nope.
It’s something entirely different that I refuse to think about.
Because this relationship is fake. And temporary.
And only for the good of the giraffes.
And that’s what I’m going to keep reminding myself.
16
Beck
We make it to Duggan Field a few minutes before the first pitch, and with the help of the staff, we sneak in through the players’ entrance and reach our private box. Only a few people call me an asshole or ask Sarah what I’m paying her or why she doesn’t have better taste or more self-respect.
The two serious personal security dudes on either side of us help.
So does Sarah plastering on a brilliant smile instead of answering a single question, despite the tightening grip she has on my hand.
We’re both in sunglasses and ballcaps, and she’s so tense I swear her hair and earlobes are extra stiff too by the time we get to the private box that was stupidly easy to reserve tonight.
Fan support’s waning for the home team.
The Fireballs are in danger.
“Where’s Mackenzie’s favorite seats?” I ask as we settle into the aging cushions at the narrow table overlooking the field, where Colorado is finishing batting practice.
She points to deep left field along the third base line. “She’s basically in love with Darren Greene.”
So, two season tickets for Mackenzie on the left field line. First time Sarah hits the bathroom, I’m ordering them up.
“What about you?” I ask her.
She frowns and takes a slow study of the stands. We’re between home plate and third base, with a clear view of the sun lingering over the hazy blue mountains to the west behind the bleachers, and an even better view of the infield and the Fireballs dugout.
“I never followed baseball until I met Mackenzie,” she tells me. “So I’ve never given it much thought.”
I drape my arm over the back of her seat and point out to the bleachers. “Ever sat there?”
“Once. The guys around us kept buying her beers, and we were both very happy by the time the game was over. Mackenzie caught a home run ball.”
“She get it signed?”
“No, we lost fourteen-nothing that game. She threw it back. After dunking it in a beer.”
“Ah. Bad luck seats then.”
“Definitely,” she agrees with a smile. “They have a four-and-twelve record when she gets seats near left field. Everywhere else is like one-and-six. But nowhere near as bad as the bleacher game.”
“But did you have fun?”
Her smile goes wistful. “I did. I think I needed baseball in my life. It’s normal, you know?”
“You never went to see the Dodgers or Angels play when you were growing up?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Once. The Dodgers. I was eight. All three of us went, and that was when Dad was doing the Stone McFlint series, and Mom had had two back-to-back blockbusters and more Emmy and Oscar nominations than she could keep track of, and we barely got into the stadium with all the paparazzi wanting pictures and shouting questions, and that was with a six-deep security detail. They both threw out a first pitch, then got invited into the announcer booth, and then into the owner’s box, and then to a box where there were some basketball players hanging out, and every time we switched boxes, they got caught up in people wanting autographs and pictures. Plus, they got a picture of me that looked like I was picking my nose, and when I went back to school a few weeks later, everyone made a big fuss of me being Booger-Eater Darling.”
“Not a great family outing, huh?”
She lifts her shoulder. “That’s the life of a Hollywood kid.”
I point out to center field. I don’t like that people can be shitheads, and I don’t want to dwell on it, or let her dwell on it either. “My favorite seats. Right there. As soon as we were old enough to hop the buses and the light-rail, before Bro Code, me and the guys from my neighborhood would get the cheap seats and hang out with all the bleacher bums a few afternoons every summer. Levi won fifty bucks off one of them once, betting Andre Luzeman would hit a grand slam. And Wyatt would always come up with different things we could spell on our chests. Got sunburned once, except the giant B.” I traced the letter over my chest and stomach. “We were Balls that day.”
“Of course you were,” she says with a laugh.
“Tried to do it again after we were all twenty-one. Got all painted up, reserved an entire row, dragged Cash’s brothers into it with us, Wyatt too, of course, and we all wore hats and sunglasses and these fake beards. Got the rattiest clothes we could find. Slouched. You know. The whole deal to go incognito.”
“Did it work?”
“Nah. First off, we got in the wrong order, so we were the Birefalls, and then, because we looked like really bad ZZ Top impersonators, the cameras zoomed right in on us. We’d hit the jackpot big time with the band the year before. Davis had just gotten his first tattoo, which was all over the tabloids, so between that and Cash’s nose, we didn’t even make it through the first inning before security was hauling our asses out of there to get us away from the fans who were getting a little rabid.”
She’s pensive again. “You chose that.”
“We did. Had a lot of fun. Still do. We talk sometimes about buying out an entire section of the bleachers just to try it again, but it’s not the same, being alone, just us. I like finding out the guy sitting in front of me collects signed baseballs and knows every player’s stats by heart. Or that the grandma two rows back is at her first game to give her first grandkid the birthday present of a lifetime. The realness of it. People being people.”
“You really like people.”
“People are fucking awesome.” They are. I don’t always trust them these days, but if I weren’t famous, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.
“What would you be if Bro Code had totally flopped?”
I open my mouth, but the words don’t come right out.
Because I’ve thought about it. Often, matter of fact, and more recently with Ellie’s accident putting a few things in perspective.
But I’ve never actually said it out loud.
A curious smile teases her lips. “What?” she asks again.
“It’s stupid,” I tell her. “I probably would’ve ended up working in middle management for my parents.”
“That’s stupid?”
“No. I mean, working for my parents wouldn’t be stupid. They’re rock stars. Not like, actual rock stars, not like Levi, but, you know, saving the world rock stars.”
“So what’s stupid?”
Shit, it’s getting warm in here. I glance back at the two bodyguards, who pretend they’re not listening.
“Are you blushing again?” Sarah whispers.
I scrub a hand over my face like I can wipe the pink away. “I wanted to be a doctor.”
“Why is that stupid?”
“Gotta be smart to be a doctor.”
“Being mildly clueless on social media is not the same as not being smart.”
“I was a B student at best.”
“And now you’ve seen the entire planet and launched a billion-dollar empire.”
“Building a fashion empire is not like brain surgery.” And it wasn’t even me. When the Giovanni of Giovanni & Valentino decided he wanted out, the empire crumbled, my non-compete clause evaporated, and Charlie suggested I sign on with an up-and-coming designer who needed some runway cred. I put my name on some loungewear, and it took off from there.
Not saying I didn’t have an eye for what the average guy wanted in casual wear and shoes and board shorts, and that I didn’t insist I’d only put my name on clothes that were actually comfortable to wear, just that it found me more than I found it, and I do a better job at hiring the right people and smiling pretty for the cameras in clothes I like than I do at being a fashion mogul.
