I chuckled, "How sneaky."
"Desperate, actually. I'd like us to win one for a change." Bryce took a drink. "Parents like to blame a team's loss entirely on the volunteer coach. They can't accept that it's due to their own child's complete lack of athleticism."
"Even for kids of that age?"
"It starts at birth. Every parent likes to think that their child is a prodigy. They're either the cutest, the brightest or the most advanced. No father wants to admit that maybe, just maybe, their child is big, dumb and ugly."
I assumed he was joking and laughed.
He fixed me with his gaze. Serious. More serious than I thought the conversation warranted. "I love those kids. I do. It's most of their parents I can't stand. The dads like to get in my face. 'You didn't let Jimmy bat,' they say, or 'my boy should play first base, not outfield.' It can get exhausting. None of the dads wanted to do the job when they were asked. Now that I'm doing it, they spend most of the time telling me how I'm doing it wrong."
I could relate to confrontational fathers. My downcast eyes must have lent insight into my thoughts. He added, "The moms are worse. Most of them are too busy staring at my ass to even notice their kids are in the game." I couldn't help but laugh at that, and his eyes twinkled at my reaction. "It's good to see you laugh. I was beginning to wonder if you knew how."
"I'm not usually like this," I felt embarrassed. "Normally, I'm very outgoing and personable. Even fun by most people's standards. But being here, I feel like -"
"A fish out of water?"
I shook my head. "A fish on a hook. From the moment I got off the plane, I felt snagged on the line. Being pulled back to a place I've struggled to swim away from. I've spent years distancing myself from this place and who I was here."
"What's so bad about either of those things?"
"I keep forgetting; you didn't know me then --"
"I don't know you now," he interrupted. "But I like what I've seen so far." He rinsed out his coffee mug and placed it in the dishwasher. "I can't imagine you were much different as a kid, but even if you were, you're not a kid anymore. Quit dwelling on the past. Give folks' round here the chance to see who you are now; a successful adult, who I keep hearing is also a bit of a celebrity."
A car drove up with a rattle of gravel. I moved to look out the window and discovered it was Oliver home from work. Bryce went to look as well and stood behind me. I must have tensed up because he squeezed my right shoulder and said, "I don't know what this place was like for you. If you say it was bad, I'll believe you. But, if you can't make peace with your dad, you should consider making peace with this town. There's beauty here if you look at it with fresh eyes."
"You did what?" Lauren nearly spat out her Pinot Noir. The four of us had gathered in the living room after dinner. It had started with a bottle of wine with pot roast. Now, there were four empty bottles, shared between Lauren and me, while Bryce and Oliver had stuck with beer.
"I vomited on Rachel McAdams?" It came out more like a question than a statement.
"That's what I thought you said. I had hoped I was hallucinating."
"It wasn't on purpose! It just goes to show that you shouldn't trust day-old sushi."
"So, what happened? What did she do?"
"Nothing. She was very understanding. I paid for her dry cleaning, and she was sweet enough to send a get-well card and Pepto Bismol to my office the next day."
Lauren's face was disbelieving and halfway between laughter and horror. "She sounds far more forgiving than I would be. I'm still traumatized by that time you got sick on the tilt-a-whirl."
The sheer mention of the incident sent her and me into hysterics, but the other two only smiled. They were unfamiliar with the story, so I felt obligated to elaborate. "Our parents used to take us to the Parkland Fair every year. I normally have a pretty tough stomach --"
"Except that he had felt a strange desire to inhale a dozen hotdogs before we started to hit the rides." Lauren embellished.
"It was two," I corrected. "Anyway, the spinning made me sick --"
"Not sick. It was an eruption of vomit."
I shook my head, smiling. "It wasn't that bad."
"It was like a scene from The Exorcist! And if that wasn't bad enough, the ride had just started, and the operator refused to stop to let us off."
Oliver made a disgusted face. "You had to sit in it?"
"I wish it had been that easy," I replied, feeling queasy thinking about it. "The centrifugal force of the ride kept blowing chunks into our faces. We were both pretty much covered in half-digested hotdogs by the time the ride was over."
Lauren turned to Oliver, "Now you understand why I don't enjoy rides."
"And why I no longer eat meat," I added.
"Well, that's not entirely true..." Lauren said with a naughty smirk.
I rolled my eyes and turned to Bryce. "What about you, boys? What's your most embarrassing brother story?"
Bryce reacted immediately. "We don't have one."
"That's not true!" Oliver threw a beer bottle cap at him from across the room. "You're just afraid I'm going to make you look bad."
"That's what happens when you tell an embarrassing story about someone else. Besides, Lauren's already heard it."
"I haven't," I prodded. "You've already heard two of my embarrassing stories. The least you could do is share one of yours."
Bryce chuckled. "A little tit for tat, huh? Alright, go ahead, Oli. You tell it better than I do."
Oliver seemed excited and took a less casual position on the sofa. He turned to us, as though he were making an important presentation. It was apparent that it was a story he enjoyed telling. "It was my sixteenth birthday, and I had a bunch of friends over for a party. Our dad was going to let us have a big bonfire in one of the fields on the farm. He even went out and bought us a few kegs. He was awesome, like that. Bryce was only twelve, so he wasn't invited, even though he wanted to come pretty bad."
"I only wanted to be there because I knew it would annoy you." Ah, brotherly love.
Oliver ignored him and continued. "We'd had a rainy summer that year, so a lot of the fields were flooded. There was mud everywhere, so we were going to have some fun with it. We had made a few mudslides with tarps that led into the man-made pond our dad used for the horses."
"Okay," I said, not entirely sure where the story was going. So far, I hadn't heard anything incriminating.
"Well, at some point, without anyone noticing, the little shit crashed the party. He had also helped himself to one of the kegs --"
Bryce laughed out loud. "Jesus, Oli. You make it sound like a drank the whole keg. It was six pints, at most."
I raised an eyebrow, "You kept count?" He looked back at me with a coy smile and shrugged.
"Irregardless," Oliver went on. The fact that it wasn't a real word irked me, but I didn't correct him. "It was an hour or more before I noticed he was even there. I found him behind one of the tack sheds, shirtless, making out with Leanne Tuttle."