Page 74 of Last Night Was Fun

“Back off, pal. They’re mine.” She playfully nudged him with her elbow.

He laughed again and stumbled a step sideways in the sand.

Emmy thought back to their conversation with Henry that morning in the lobby. Well,hisconversation with Henry that she had toforcibly insert herself into because they wouldn’t even pause for a breath. “What’s your mom’s name?”

“Rose,” he said with a small smile.

“And your dad?”

“John.”

When he didn’t say anything else, she wondered if he was uncomfortable talking about them. “What are they like?” she asked, somehow knowing he’d open up to her, even if that was the case.

He softly smiled again, but it looked almost sad. “They’re the best. My parents did everything for me. They paid for every baseball camp and traveling team when I was a kid. They came to every game.” He huffed and swiped his hand through his hair. “They gave me the best shot, and I crashed and burned—literally.” He squeezed his shoulder again and shook his head.

Emmy stopped walking and turned to him. “I don’t think that’s fair to say. You’ve done pretty well otherwise. And besides, if you’d kept pitching, you’d be old by baseball standards now. Maybe even staring down retirement. I mean, sure, you’d probably be sitting on an obscene mountain of money with a bunch of trophies and rings, but your glory days would be behind you. I think you’ve got a lot of glory left in other ways, Gabe Olson.” She poked him in his uninjured arm and smiled.

He looked at her for a few beats, considering, and then softly smiled back. “Thank you.”

“It’s the truth,” she said, and kept walking. He followed her for a few silent paces. The waves invisibly crashed off to their right; trees rustled to the left. “What you said to my parents at dinner, is that true? I didn’t know you wanted to be on the training staff.”

He shrugged. “It’s a long shot and will probably never happen, but it’s kind of a dream. If I can’t beonthe field, it’s as close as I can get.”

Emmy considered it with a tilt of her head. “Well, I think you’d be a great coach. And you would be traveling with the team.”

“Yes. And doing early workouts and ice baths and weight training—for them, not me.” He said it like it thrilled him.

“You sound way too excited about all that.”

“It is exciting.”

“Sure, if you like your limbs falling off by your late twenties.”

“With the right training, they won’t.”

“Whatever you say, Coach.”

They walked a few more paces without talking. The silence between them grew increasingly comfortable.

“You know what I’ve been thinking about?” Gabe eventually said.

“What?”

“All the times we overlapped without even noticing it.”

Emmy glanced sideways at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean all the times we were texting each other and didn’t catch on. Like that night we were out with Torres and Ishida and complaining about being at a work thing when we’d rather be home and we werewith each otherat the work thing.”

An awkward, embarrassed laugh popped from Emmy’s throat. “Goes to show what kind of company we are, I guess.”

“And then the next day when I brought you breakfast, and you texted me you were recovering from your hangover with spicy food and reality TV when I’d literally just brought you spicy food and left you watching reality TV.”

“Yeah, that was pretty bad. And that day early on when we both told each other we got good news at work, and we’d come from learning about the promotion minutes before.”

“I think we were even in the same room for that one.”

“And when you told me you were helping with a family thing, and then I ran into you helping with your cousin’s boat the next week.”