The Other Fish in the Sea by Jenn Cooksey

list” items in the catalog and hasn’t been paying all that much attention to what we’ve been talking about, has picked up on the uncomfortable tension and is now watching Pete carefully. Kate is looking at Jeff, Tristan is looking at me—it almost feels like he’s avoiding eye contact with Pete which is weird—and the rest of the people present are looking like they wished Jillian had brought more catalogs.
    On a sigh and looking down at the drink in his hands, Jeff murmured, “He says baseball ruined his life.”
    “How in the fuck did it ruin his life?”
    “Pete , dude, he was really fuckin’ good like you...” Good like you?? I glanced at Tristan in confusion and he gave me the barest shake of his head meaning, “Not now, I’ll tell you later,” so I looked back at Jeff as he continued. “But he blew out his goddamned shoulder, had a surgery for that , and then right when he was just startin’ to get game time again, his fuckin’ elbow went and he didn’t come back from the Tommy John, okay?”
    I’m not sure what “the Tommy John” is, but I’m guessing it’s a sports related injury or something, seeing as how it’s named after a person and Jeff put the “the” in front of it. You know, like Lou Gehrig’s disease wasn’t called that until a famous baseball player died from it.
    “SHIT!” Pete swore through clenched teeth. “You still should’ve fuckin’ told me.”
    “Yeah, I know, dude. I’m sorry. I just thought…you know. We good?”
    “Yeah I know…go back to your story.”
    And just like that, Mr. Hyde, AKA: “Lonely Pete,” settled back into his normal , unpretentious temper. He did seem distracted for a while , though , because he pulled Jillian’s catalog away from in front of Melissa and   just stared at it without flipping any pages.
    “Okay. Uh… Shit . I forgot where I was,” Jeff said to himself in irritation at having done exactly what he’d been teasing Melissa about doing last night.
    “Your dad moved out of state,” Tristan supplied for Jeff who widened his eyes at him and blew out a silent breath as if to say, “Jesus, I’m glad that’s over.”
    “Right. So when he came back five or six years later, he looked up all his old buddies. Now, Katy’s dad was my mom’s lawyer and how she and my dad actually met. When my dad moved back to town and got in touch with Tristan’s parents and Katy’s mom, Katy’s parents thought it would be fun to fix him up so they could triple or something. Anyway, my mom had just gone through a divorce where she walked away with an assload of money and she wasn’t looking for anything serious , so Katy’s dad set up a blind date. My parents had only been dating a few months when my mom got pregnant.
    “When she found out, she decided to buy the house and used Katy’s mom as her realtor. My dad stepped up by moving in with her and agreeing to raise a baby with her, but he didn’t love her and wouldn’t marry her, so she had Katy’s dad re-write her living trust naming her unborn child as her sole heir. My mom didn’t have any family she was close to and since Tristan’s mom was pregnant with him, the two pregos started hanging out a lot which worked out well because my dad and Tristan’s dad were becoming best friends again. That’s why my mom named Tristan’s parents the trustees and shit. From what they say, my mom was never really mad at my dad about not marrying her but, even though he didn’t need the money, I think leaving my dad outta the will was kinda like a screw you thing similar to what Melissa’s Playboy Bunny grandma did…I still wanna see that picture by the way.”
    Kate and Melissa both rolled their eyes and Melissa asked, “You’re just never gonna drop it, are you?”
      Jeff grinned at her. “Nope. Anyway, there was all this chaos when my mom went into labor and had major complications trying to have me, so they had to put her under to do an emergency c-section. They got me out all