Page 71 of Moms of Mayhem
“Oh, good,” Frankie’s voice said from the little iPad in the corner, and my shoulders sagged. I wasn’t sure whether it was with relief that I could avoid this conversation a little while longer or disappointment that I wasn’t alone with Emmy today.
The screen flickered, and Frankie’s bald head shimmered under the lights of the Yeti training room. Someone behind him was submerged in an ice bath.
“You made it,” Frankie said. “Look at you! Standing tall. Not waddling. There’s almost a pelvis-shaped glow about you.”
“Modified lateral step-ups,” Emmy said as she walked past me, snapping a resistance band between her fingers like a warning. “He crushed them yesterday.”
“Crushed is generous,” I muttered. “I did them without swearing. That’s progress.”
“Hell yeah, it is,” Frankie said, slapping the whiteboard behind him. It was chaos as usual—half a diagram of the hip joint, a meme about pain tolerance featuring a screaming goat, and the phrase‘your labrum is your legacy.’“You saw the surgeon again, right?”
“Yesterday,” I said. “And the brace is off. Still no high-impact but cleared for resisted mobility work and maybe some light on-ice edge drills soon if PT keeps going smooth.”
Frankie threw his hands in the air. “That’s what I like to hear! We’ll have you slicing ice like a hot knife throughbuttah by February. Assuming you don’t dislocate yourself trying to put on socks.”
“There was a close call,” Emmy said dryly.
“That was one time,” I grumbled.
Frankie leaned into the screen, smirking. “Well, the boys miss you. Sort of. Krieger’s got your locker now and keeps blasting alpha wave meditations while foam rolling. I’m ninety percent sure he’s summoning forest spirits.”
“Is he still trying to copy my shot?”
“Oh, he is, and it’s tragic,” Frankie said. “It’s like watching a duck try to ride a bicycle. Determined, but deeply wrong.”
I couldn’t help laughing. Emmy didn’t look at me, but she smiled as she walked past with a Pilates ball.
Frankie clapped once, startling whoever was behind him. “Anyway. You’re doing great, Beckett. New Year, new hip, no excuses. This is your comeback arc, baby. Just remember: stretch your hip flexors, hydrate like it’s a part-time job, and if you think clamshells are easy, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Thanks, Frankie,” Emmy said, still not looking up.
“Bye, Emmy! Don’t let him fake cramp out of bridges again!”
“I didn’t!” I called, as the screen went black.
She turned to me slowly, eyebrow raised. “Did you?”
I lifted my hands. “I had a leg spasm yesterday afternoon while we were going over my workouts. Technically true.”
She chuckled, and the sound was pure evil. “Technically, you're doing extra now.”
And just like that, my hip and I were back in the seventh ring of hell disguised as Pilates.
But if it put a smile on Emmy’s face, I wasn’t even sure I cared.
This was a terrible idea.
Emmy never mentioned this morning’s stealth moves, but she had to know, right? I agonized over it all day, trying to decide if it was worth remaining anonymous.
By the time dinner rolled around, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
I shifted my weight on the porch and stared at the little blinking red light that had caught me this morning, not bothering to hide my face this time. Despite the chill in the air, the bag of tacos in my hand from Slice and Spice was sweating. Or maybe that was me.
In all of my 37 years, I couldn’t remember a time when a woman had ever made me this nervous, but the more I saw of her, the more I wanted her to smile.
And fuck, I loved being the one to make it happen.
When she didn’t immediately react to the motion sensor on her porch going off, I rang the bell and immediately regretted it.
