I can’t pass those up either.”
“How many soaps can you use at one time?”
“Well, it’s just me, so one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen. But each of those are different scents. They’re coordinated to the space.”
The wind blows again, this time sending my straight red hair into my eyes. I take a moment to push it back behind my ears and find Brady smiling at me.
“Tell me what a coordinated soap is for the kitchen.”
“I like food scents for the kitchen, like lemon. Once the weather is hot, I’ll switch to basil-scented soap because that reminds me of summer. Now, in my bathroom, I like pretty scents, like rose or honeysuckle.”
“I don’t know if I should tell you about my soap situation,” Brady says.
I laugh as I watch Willy and Petey continue to run and dook. “You’re probably wondering why you’re even talking about your soap situation.”
“Fair point. But I’ll tell you anyway. Although it might change your opinion of me.”
I smile at Brady as Willy zooms past his leg. “You aren’t an unscented soap person, are you?”
“This is probably worse,” Brady says. “But I just have a bar of soap on the sink ledge.”
I give a mock gasp. “Brady, nooooo.”
“Addison, yessssss.”
Oh, I like the way my name sounds when he says it.
“Your soap game needs to be upped.”
“Well, nobody has been over except for Brody, so I’m safe. For now.”
“You absolutely need a good soap.”
“If you would have told me this morning I’d be listening to ferrets dooking and discussing the merits of hand soap on the infield of Soaring Eagles Park, I would have said you were insane.”
I laugh. “Well, if you would have told me some stranger in a coffee shop who had nose hairs long enough to make a woven floor rug would have tried to read my private journal, I would have claimed insanity, too.”
Brady laughs. “What?”
“That was my morning. Before I arrived here.”
Petey zips by and hops over Brady’s feet, which makes both of us laugh.
“How did we go from the Library of Congress to nose hairs?” he asks, his voice incredulous.
“That’s on me. I follow the thread provided. I do the same with the internet. I don’t want to know how many hours of my life I have wasted reading about things that are strange just because I found a path to it via Google.”
“Oh, I’m the worst at that,” Brady says, sitting upright now. “Like one time, I was looking for an axe for throwing, and hours later, I’m reading about all the different kinds of axes and head weights a—”
“You throw axes?”
“I do. Have you ever done it?”
I shake my head. “No. I mean, I’ve seen places where you can throw axes. Is that what you mean?”
Brady grins. “It’s a little more than that. I throw axes in a league.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I like it. I do that and surfing in the off-season.”
An image of Brady in a wet suit flashes through my brain. I remember how good his trousers looked on his butt, but a wet suit?
I swallow. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts. We’re hanging out. Talking about liquid soap and competitive axe-throwing, and all of this means nothing.
You’re wrong, my heart suddenly says. The very fact that Brady is sitting here, content to talk about these things with you, speaks volumes about him.
“Do you know what’s weird?” Brady asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“What?”
“I know I met you at Brody’s wedding last December, and I know you’re friends with him and Hayley, so normally I would be nice, but I wouldn’t sit here and talk to you like this for that very reason.”
I wrinkle my nose. “That makes no sense.”
Brady’s eyes meet mine. “I know it’s stupid. But I always wanted to have my own path that never intertwined with Brody’s. I wanted people to like me for me, not because I was the less successful twin of Brody Jensen. He’s his own man and a much better ballplayer than me, and I know I have to wear that title of ‘the twin who is not as good of a ballplayer as his brother.’ I didn’t want to share anything else with him, including his friends or his wife’s friends. If I had to come here and play, which I had no choice in due to the trade, I was going to make as much of it mine as I could.
“But here I am, talking to you, and you’re entwined in that world that belongs to him,” he