Josh’s words had me freeze-framing in place. I had to glance over my shoulder with a long, marinara-covered spoon in hand so I could read his lips and make sure I hadn’t imagined his words. “What did you say?”

The almost eleven-year-old with his head in the fridge peeked out, a gallon of orange juice clutched in his hand. He faced me as he said the words I’d been hoping to have misheard: “Can my friends spend the night?”

My initial thought was no, please, Jesus Christ, no.

I didn’t even have to try and pull the memories of the last time his “friends” had slept over. Friends? More like demons from the ninth circle of hell.

My soul had been scarred; it hadn’t forgotten for one single second about the broken bunk beds, cracked dishes, clogged toilet, or, God help me, the yelling and the running through our apartment. I’d thought boy sleepovers would be like the sleepovers Van and I had damn near every weekend: we’d hang out in my room, look through magazines, watch movies, paint our nails, talk about boys, and eat all my mom’s snacks. Boy sleepovers were fucking hell, at least at Josh’s age. I took for granted how well behaved Josh and Louie were on their own. I really did. For all the shit they lost, things they forgot, toilet seats they peed on, food products they shoved into the cushions of the car, and the dirty socks they left everywhere, they were pretty damn great.

It wasn’t until I was around other people’s kids that I remembered why—before Josh and Louie—I hadn’t planned on having kids for a long, long time. If ever.

And somehow I’d gotten away with not having more than Josh and Louie at the same time for almost a year. It had taken me a year to recuperate from the beasts Josh had invited to stay over. Hell, I still hadn’t gotten over everything. I’d gotten lucky he hadn’t brought it up before.

Unfortunately, my time had run out.

How could I tell him he couldn’t have friends over so close to his birthday? He had already told me he didn’t want to have a party, but in the words of my mom, how could he not have a party? I’d always thought get-togethers were more for the adults than for the kids, but now I knew for sure that was the truth. Josh really could have been perfectly happy getting twenty bucks and going to the movies or the batting cage.

“Please?” the boy asked with so much hope in his voice it crushed my soul.

Please don’t do this to me, I thought, but what really came out of my mouth was more like “Sureeee…. But no more than three, okay?”

Was it too much to hope that he would say he really only wanted one friend over?

It was.

Because his response went: “Three’s good.”

God help me. I was paying for everything I’d ever put my parents through with interest.

* * *

“See you tomorrow morning!” I called out to the mom getting into her car, waving a hand with a little too much enthusiasm.

I’d bet she was excited. She’d just admitted her only child was spending the night at my house. Of course she was going to be ready to get the hell on with her Friday night. She hadn’t even bothered coming inside the house to make sure I didn’t have cages or a torture chamber. The boy on the Tornado team had been kicked to the curb: my curb.

Two out of three boys were over, and I could already hear them stomping around inside my house.

Oh my God. What had I done? Why had I agreed to this?

I wasn’t built for sleepovers.

If I could have hunched over and cried silently, rocking back and forth, I would have. Something was going to get broken before the end of the night, and I had no way of knowing what it would be. My sanity maybe. God, help me. I’d already eaten two packets of Pop-Tarts from how stressed I was and I had another foil-wrapped package tucked into my back pocket in case of an emergency.

When the sound of a truck engine idling had me opening my eyes again, I let out a deep breath and watched as the passenger door to a black Dodge pickup truck opened and out hopped a blond boy with a backpack in his hand. I’d forgotten Josh had mentioned that he was one of the kids spending the night. I smiled as he bounded up the pathway, not even turning around to pay attention to Trip who had parked the truck and was making his way around the front grill.

“Hi, Miss Diana.” The little blond smiled in a way that would have been shy on any other boy except him. On him it looked like… I don’t know what it looked liked. Trouble, more than likely. He’d come right up to me at the last practice and introduced himself. If I thought Josh had confidence, he had nothing on this kid. It reminded me of someone I knew: his dad.

“Hey, Dean. How are you?”

“Good.” He was still smiling.

So was I. He was cute. “Josh and the other boys are inside. Want me to show you where?” I asked him, glancing up to see Trip coming behind him, a knowing smirk on his playful, handsome face. From the looks of it, he had the ability to smell his own kind too, except his was trouble.

“I can figure it out.” Dean blinked those blue eyes just like Ginny’s. “Thank you for letting me spend the night.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, stepping aside to let him in the house.

Trip watched his son as the boy went in without a second glance behind him, calling out, “Bye, Dean!” in a sarcastic tone. To which he got a shouted reply of “Bye!”

Just “bye.” Not “bye, Dad,” no nothing. Even that hurt me.

Trip and I both shook our heads. I grimaced and he just looked resigned. “It’s the beginning of the end, isn’t it?” I asked the blond man still coming up the pathway.