Free Family Affair by Caprice Crane Page B

want to surprise Brett with unwarranted sweetness, and because it’s Wednesday, I decide to bake brownies and bring them to his team at school. I’ve perfected the brownie. If I wasn’t about to get rich off our pet photo booths, I would totally be the next Mrs. Fields.
    Brooke stops by on her way to her job interview and relentlessly makes fun of me for baking.
    “You are so lame,” she says.
    “Stop sweet-talking me like I’m your boss,” I tease. “How many jobs have you lost in the last two years?” Brooke, for some strange reason, keeps taking jobs as a personal assistant, yet she has the worst attitude and personal skills of anyone I’ve ever known. She doesn’t quite match the whole phone-answering, errand-running job description, so she’s constantly getting fired.
    “What I was going to say, if you hadn’t so rudely cut me off, is that you are so lame if you don’t let me have one of those brownies.”
    I fill Brooke in on the latest news, particularly the possiblePETCO deal, the forms Trish and I filled out to apply for loans, and Brett maybe wanting a child. She goes off on another rant.
    “Jesus, really? You, too? You’re already Miss Married. Can
one
of my friends not get pregnant and move to New Jersey?”
    “First of all,” I say, “I’m not pregnant. The idea is that we will potentially discuss it and maybe start trying. And second … New Jersey? Why the hell would I move to New Jersey?”
    “I don’t know,” she says, with a wave of her hand. “My friend Lily did that. I never saw her again.”
    “I couldn’t care less about Lily, or Rosemary, or the Jack of Hearts,” I say.
    Brooke just looks at me, confused.
    “Do you not own
Blood on the Tracks?”
I ask. “Never mind. I promise you I will never move to Jersey,” I solemnly swear. “I think only New Yorkers do that, anyway.”
    “Thank you. May I please have a brownie?”
    “You may. But take it to go; I gotta hit the road. Good luck on your interview. Try not to tell them you got fired last time for calling the boss’s wife a fat cow.”
    Brooke shrugs. “She was.”
    • • •
    I show up like Susie Homemaker with my basket of goodies at the end of Brett’s practice, and as I scan the sea of would-be brownie munchers (way to turn something completely innocent and make it sound eight kinds of
wrong)
, I hope I made enough. I do the math in my head: I made three pans and cut three rows in each, divided those into six sections, which made eighteen per pan times three is fifty-four brownies, minus the three I put aside for Brett and the one that Brooke snatched, equals a total of fifty. I think Brett usually has around forty-five guys, so provided the team hasn’t grown, I’m good.
    As I walk onto the field, secure in my math and brownie-to-player ratio, I notice a female form in front of me. Granted, collegegirls do not look like college girls anymore—at least they don’t look like we did when
I
was in college—but there is a seriously stacked girl out there.
    My approach goes unnoticed by Brett, but one of his dutiful players tips him off.
    “Coach,” he says, and when Brett looks up, the kid nods in my direction.
    “Hey, you,” he says, as he gives me a one-armed hug. “Come to photograph a different breed of animal?”
    “Yes,” I say, as I pull back the plastic wrap atop my basket. “The eating habits of the UCCC Condors. I know they’re carnivores, but I come in peace to tempt them with chocolate.” Then I lean in and talk out of the corner of my mouth. “There are three more for you at home.”
    “Well, I have to say this is … unexpected. Definitely.” Brett half smiles and gives me a look, and then he takes the basket and holds it up to the team. “My lovely and loving wife has brought me treats. Her world-renowned death-by-chocolate brownies. I know you girls are all trying to watch your figures, but if any of you step up and actually show me the hustle”—and here he jams an entire