Feel the Fire (Hotshots 3)

“Great. Tons of running.” Walker answered for Wade, who had taken a mammoth bite of broccoli.

“I worry about you guys out there in the heat.” Heidi delicately plucked a piece of pasta with her fork. She was still in her suit from work, makeup impeccable as always, but the executive persona never stopped her from taking her mom role seriously too. “You drank lots of water, right?”

“Yes, Mom. What are you gonna do without us to nag next year?” Wade’s eyes sparkled. The last thing Tucker wanted was another reminder of how little time they likely had left before the boys flew the nest. Wade might be counting down the days, but he sure wasn’t.

“What do you mean? I’m going to have you guys forever.” Heidi was even more in denial than Tucker, but the sharpness in her tone said that she too was feeling the slide of time slipping away. “Doesn’t matter how far away you end up, we’re still going to nag. It’s what parents do.”

“Yep.” Tucker nodded, keeping his tone pragmatic. He knew from long experience that the more he clung to the boys, the faster they ran. Any nostalgia he had for their younger selves was best kept to himself, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it. “And you better get as serious about test prep as you are about football if you want to go anywhere.”

“Don’t worry. We’ve got test prep classes after football all next week. I’m as good as gone. Just gotta see which recruiters come calling.”

Yup. There it was. Wade already limbering up those wings, ready to fly even if that meant a nosedive toward the ground, fearless as ever. Another year and they’d be weeks away from college move-in dates, and all these hypothetical future plans would be all too real. Wade’s eagerness was, however, an excellent reminder that he couldn’t get hung up on Luis’s unexpected return. The boys had to be his number one priority, this year especially. They needed him fully on his dad game, not muddled and distant like he’d been guilty of prior to the food being served.

“For me, it’s all about where Mary Anne ends up.” Walker sighed dramatically, glancing down at the phone next to his plate like that might make his girlfriend appear at the table.

“Smooch. Smooch. Can’t believe you dropped shop to take AP English with her this year.” Wade might be all in on a football scholarship, but academics weren’t his strong suit. Tucker bit back another “partying is not a major” lecture.

“She’ll help me study,” Walker countered.

“Uh-huh. Better be safe with studying and—”

“Little ears,” Isaac said mildly, gesturing at Angelica, who sat between him and Tucker. Isaac was possibly the least flappable person on the planet, and the rare occasions when he spoke up, he tended to get results, as evidenced by both boys nodding.

“Hey, I’m not that little!” At five, Angelica still had a talent for getting more pasta on her face than in her stomach, but the promise of kindergarten in the fall had her asserting her desire to be one of the big kids at every turn. Her dark eyes mirrored Isaac’s but her pout was pure Heidi.

“Sure you’re not, squirt.” Walker, like Wade, tended to spoil her, the whole family doting on the little girl. Tucker supposed he was something of an honorary uncle to her royal cuteness. But even so, her presence often made Tucker become more aware of his outsider status—Isaac might be the bonus dad for the boys, but with Angelica at the center, this was a tight five-person family unit. Oh, they were all happy to have Tucker in their orbit, but he never felt truly needed here. Especially now, as the boys got older and all this talk of college dominated dinner conversations, he wondered how much longer this twice-a-week tradition would last.

Appreciate it while you have it. Soon enough it was going to be him and a stack of frozen meals with the boys off on some new adventure, him not wanting to impose on Heidi and Isaac’s cozy hospitality any more than he had to.

He wasn’t jealous of their relationship in the typical sense—God knew he’d made peace with his slew of complicated emotions where that was concerned years ago, but he did envy them each other. On the nights he had the boys, they still had plenty of companionship, no painfully quiet rooms or forgetting to eat.

You could date. Heidi had said it so often that the words echoed in his brain in her persistent tone. But for many, many reasons that wasn’t happening, and that was one more reason to make the most of the limited time they had left with the boys at home. So he tuned out melancholy thoughts about the passage of time as well as the replay of every conversation he’d had with Luis earlier in the day, and focused on the swirl of dinner activity—Angelica talking about day camp, more football stories from the boys, and Heidi weighing in with a funny anecdote from her work as an exec for a solar energy company.