The pool lights are on, there's a fire in the paver pit. The Braves and the Rockies are playing. The sliding door is left open, and people are filtering in and out, grabbing food, hanging around the sofa.

Russell put the peach cobbler in Pat's mini fridge. He couldn't bear the thought of someone else eating it.

She's sitting on the sofa with a Coors in her hand. She's in shorts and a t-shirt, blonde hair capped with a faded Braves hat, frayed bill and all.

Russell's best friend Jackson sits next to her. She smiled at him, and not in a teeth-baring, I'm-going-to-eat-you-for-breakfast kind of way. In a genuinely kind way.

Watching the two from the back patio, he wonders what she was like before. Only for a second. He feels like she was just how she seems now. Warm, charismatic. Obviously competitive. She's pointing at the screen and shouting about a bullshit call, and Jackson's throwing his fists in the air in celebration.

When Paula came over, bags full of party items, Katherine looked at him from the sofa, drunk as hell, with a glower.

"You didn't tell me it was your birthday," she said in a tone that did not at all match her face. It was kind and sorrowful.

Twenty-seven.

It doesn't feel like a real number. In a month, his dead wife would've been twenty-seven, too.

Russell looks down at the toes of his boots. Heather.

Heather reminded him of his mom in a lot of ways. Their hair was almost the same color of honey brown. Heather often found herself in the kitchen. She was a stress-baker, and all throughout college, he skipped study hall with his teammates to make sure she wasn't finding some new recipe to try.

Jackson used to poke fun at him, but after a while he asked if he could come, too. Heather became one of his best friends, and they all moved to Wyoming after school. Jackson, Heather and Russell, and their baby girl.

A wave of confusion washes over him, and he wants to shake his head. Stop being sad. He feels the need to be happy for something, for someone, to be on his best behavior.

He shakes his head and takes a swig of his beer. It's my fuckin' party, and I'll cry if I want to.

"Are you coming to practice tomorrow?" Jackson asks.

Katherine is looking up at the ceiling, ankles crossed on the coffee table. His legs are running right along hers, stretching a few inches past.

"I think so," she hums. "It'll be nice to get some sun."

Russell walks over to the refrigerator, sighing through his nose.

Katherine had never realized how many people Russell knew in this place, let alone how many he called "friend." Even that bitchy bartender is here. She keeps eyeballing Katherine, but she doesn't say anything.

"So how'd you come to meet Russ?" Jackson asks, cracking a Coors open, and hands it to Katherine over the back of the sofa. Clearly too comfortable, he throws one of his long legs over it, then the other, and slides down beside her.

"Uh..." Katherine gives him a wry chuckle. "He saved my life a few months ago." She takes a sip of her drink. Beer is still god-awful, but she promised herself to lay off the liquor, at least for tonight. It's Russell's birthday. She shouldn't embarrass him in front of his friends, his girlfriend.

"How's that?"

Of course you couldn't just say "wow that's intense" and move on.

She suppresses an eye roll and purses her lips, staring at the television. It's the bottom of the eighth inning. The Rockies are up by three, three on, two out.

"I fell into a creek just over that way back in March." She gestures vaguely to the other side of the house. "And he and Jake found me and got me to the hospital before I froze to death."

"That's intense," Jackson says. She looks at him for half a second before a laugh bubbles between her lips. Jackson smiles. "So what, you're...you're paying him back by staying here?"

Katherine's smile fades. Paying him back. Torturing. For saving my life. She said something like that to him not that long ago. You should've left her in that creek.

"Kind of," she sighs, nodding. "I just don't really have anywhere to go, so." Wow. Go to bed before you say more.

She blinks hard, cocking her head a little, and starts in on her beer again. Jackson is looking at her with furrowed brows.

"I find that hard to believe," he says. "Someone's got to be missing you."

Katherine plays with a loose string on the sofa. "Um...yeah. Yeah, I think so. Maybe." She looks at him with pursed lips. "Russell told me he told you what, uh...what happened. So you don't have to play dumb if you want to ask questions."

Jackson shrugs and shakes his head. "Just because I know what happened doesn't mean I know your story."

She holds a hand to her chest, and her head rears back. "You get any more poetic than that I'll have to kiss you."

"Promise?"

A grin, a real one, splits across her face.

Jackson isn't a bad-looking guy. Short, sandy brown hair, glittering blue eyes, bright white smile, tall, athletic build. If she had a type, she supposes he would be it. He's not a douche so far either, and he has half a sense of humor.

Paula walks behind the two with a sheet cake in her hands. Twenty-seven white candles are bored into a cake with a longhorn on it.

Jackson smiles and looks at Katherine. "Russell hates the happy birthday song."

"We should sing it at the top of our lungs."

"In falsetto."

Katherine and Jackson follow Paula outside. Katherine clears her throat, nudges Jackson, and takes a deep breath. Jackson belts out the first falsetto note, and everyone turns to look at him with raised eyebrows.

Russell looks over his shoulder, unease pulling at his muscles as he notices everyone's attention on him. They're all singing happy birthday to him.

Even Katherine and Jackson, who are wrestling by the porch with grins on their faces, until his arm comes to rest over her shoulders.

Russell's heart sank, watching her lift her beer towards him, that big smile flashing in his direction, while her other hand reached up to hold onto Jackson's arm.

"Happy birthday." His eyes shift to Paula. Warm smile, warm brown eyes. She did all of this for him. He should be so, so happy to have found someone like her. And he is, but not in the way she is.

Russell dons a brief, insincere smile before blowing out all twenty-seven of those damned candles.

Seven of them light up again. Seven, for how old his daughter would've been in May. Seven, for her favorite number. He could almost feel her hand patting his arm, encouraging him to blow out his candles.

I tricked you, Daddy!

Looking over Paula's shoulder with tears in his eyes, stooping to blow out those last seven candles, he watches Katherine's smile fade, and her arm comes to rest at her side.

Russell never cared for chocolate cake until he met Heather. She had the best recipe, and he has never been able to find it. Not in any of her binders of recipes, not on her computer. Her mom didn't even have it.

So when he and Paula were first getting to know each other and she asked what his favorite dessert was, and he replied "chocolate cake," he didn't mention specifically his wife's chocolate cake.

Store-bought isn't anything close. He's pleasantly surprised with this, though. Paula did it all herself, even the longhorn design.

"Fuck yeah!" Katherine is the only person on the property cheering for a Rockies loss.

"He's kind of a show-off," Jackson sighs. Katherine looks up from her frosting-covered fork and out at the fire pit.

"I didn't know he could play guitar," she says, and her tongue scrapes up some of that frosting.

Jackson nods. "A real crooner, that one." He takes a swig of his beer. "He would always sing in the locker room. I have a video of him singing No Scrubs from when we went to the World Series."

"No way," she scoffs. "Y'all went to the World Series?"

Jackson frowns at her and nods. "We won the damn thing back in '01."

Katherine scoffs again. "The little shit never told me that."

Jackson smiles, looking out at the fire pit. "That guy would've been the best catcher in the whole damn league if he stayed in."

Katherine leans against the wall. She gestures outside with her thumb. "That guy."

He smiles. "Made my shittiest pitches look like they were..." Jackson shakes his head, suddenly looking rather sad. "I know it's, like, dumb and shit to dwell on your college days, but Russ was somethin' else. I was good, but...Russell was great, you know?"

"If he was so good then why'd he leave?"

Jackson purses his lips and shakes his head. "It's not my thing to tell."

Katherine sighs. "Can you just let me be nosy?"

He grins at her. "You can be nosy, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna gossip."

"So you'd tell me every song he sang in the locker room, but you're not going to tell me why he stopped playing baseball?"

"You're correct."

Jack and Katherine haven't spoken to many other people outside of themselves. Russell is positive no one else noticed this, but he has.

It's not even in a jealous way, he doesn't think. He's very calm about it. He just likes watching her. Watching her smile, watching her move, swing her legs from the bar stool.

She's been more human tonight than she has in the two months she's been here. It's a nice thing to see, even if it's with someone else.

"You're pretty quiet." Paula sits next to him on the swing. Pat put it up a few weeks after Katherine came to stay. Sometimes Russell would come home form work to find her passed out on it, sunburned but still unable to leave it behind.

"Just thinkin'," Russell hums. "Thanks for throwing this." She smiles at him, warm still, but not like she usually does. "It's been real nice having everyone together."

"I even made a rule that when they leave they have to take five pieces of trash with them."

Russell chuckles at her pride in it, the upturned nose and smirk. "Save me the cleanup duty, huh?"

"Somethin' like that," she murmurs.

Russell looks back to the house, eyes immediately finding Katherine's silhouette. Like a magnet. She and Jackson are walking out towards the fire, both of them having put on light jackets. They're already so comfortable with each other. Russell can't hear with they're saying by any means, but it's like they're having a regular conversation about regular things.

Russell wonders if she could ever talk to him that way.

Paula leans back on the swing. "You've been looking at her all night," she whispers. Russell's head swings towards her. He doesn't know what to say to that. "I used to think you were just this really nice guy...and you are, but...I just feel like she's here not just because you're a nice guy...do you know what I mean?" She doesn't look at him, and Russell doesn't say anything still. "I just...this summer, I've just felt like I'm wasting my time."

"Paula—"

"Do you love her?"

Russell's jaw snaps shut. No freakin' way. There's no way. Love. It just feels wrong, makes his clothes feel uncomfortable. When he thinks love, he thinks Heather. He sees Heather.

But Katherine is there, too.

God, he feels nauseas. Guilty. Content.

It must be true then, right?

Paula slides over to him and sighs, turning her eyes to Katherine at the fire pit. She chews on her lower lip. "I'm not mad," she whispers.

"Paula..." Russell shakes his head. He doesn't know what comes after it.

"It's okay." She smiles at him, all kind and warm. It doesn't feel fair. "When you called me today, I heard it in your voice. You were...you were so scared, and it reminded me of when you brought her into the hospital that night." Her voice cracks and goes quiet. "You look at her the way you looked at Heather, but you never looked at me that way."

Russell feels wounded, and he doesn't know why. Paula offers him a small, fleeting smile, brown eyes filled with tears, and she kisses his bad cheek before she leaves.