Out of My League

by Sarah Sutton

  He had a point, of course. I could just imagine Scott’s mocking laughter now, ringing in my ears.

  “You can always dump me a week later,” Walsh suggested. “Just long enough to make it believable.”

  I glanced back toward the house. The shadows blended together, smoke billowing high from the fire.

  Maybe it doesn’t have to be so bad, a voice whispered in my head. Use it to your advantage.

  Could I do it?

  Walsh seemed to think so. “It wouldn’t have to be much. Just in public, we’d act like a couple. Hand-holding and things like that.”

  My fingers curled into fists as if he’d already started reaching. “Hand-holding?”

  “Uh, yeah. What kind of couple doesn’t hold hands? You and Scott held hands, right?”

  “Of course we did!” Sometimes.

  “Well, that’s what we need to do,” Walsh said. He had an enchanting smile on his face now, like we’d already signed our fake relationship contract. “Hold hands. Hug. Kiss. Do couple-y stuff.”

  Ha. Ha-ha. I was in over my head and we hadn’t even started yet.

  “Don’t worry, I’m good at couple-y stuff. You can just sit back and enjoy.”

  I stared at his mouth, his full lips, the idea of kissing him filling my mind’s eye. A sharp sensation flipped my stomach, akin to the feeling one got before puking, and I swallowed hard. “No, no kissing, Walsh.” To reiterate that fact, I stepped back. “That’s a rule. No kissing.”

  Walsh’s lips twitched as he fought a grin. “Fine. But the other stuff—pretend I’m Scott.”

  Pretend Walsh is Scott. I wasn’t sure I could. “When are we even in public together?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest. “How long are you thinking, anyway? Until my article is done?”

  If that was the case, I’d be working on it ASAP.

  Walsh, though, probably knew what I was thinking. “It needs to be believable. Let’s say until the final baseball game of the season.”

  “The middle of July?” I demanded, my voice echoing. “You want to keep this going for a month?”

  “I’m not that bad, sheesh. A month would make it more believable.”

  A month. One whole month, fake dating Mr. Perfect. A month sounded like forever, but really, would it be that bad? It wasn’t like we’d be hanging out every day. And besides, I might need that long to get my article written and perfected.

  I looked away from him, everything running through my mind. So many things about the situation felt wrong. We were lying to others by faking our relationship and I would be lying to him to get inside information.

  In all actuality, there was no choice. I needed to nail this article. And Walsh represented the very essence of baseball, even down to the pretty bleachers. He could survive this article; I couldn’t survive without it.

  I was dooming myself, but I took in a deep breath. “I’ll do it. For one month, and then I’m done.”

  “Well, don’t sound so enthusiastic. I like it when a girl plays hard to get.”

  Yeah, this is a bad, bad idea. I already wanted to smack him.

  “I’d love to be your girlfriend, Walsh Hunter.” The words were filled to the brim with sarcasm, and I added an eye roll to help punctuate my annoyance. “Yes. A thousand times, yes.”

  Walsh grinned—the sort of grin that lights the stars in the sky—and it was clear that the twisted game we’d both agreed to had just begun. “That’s more like it.”

  Chapter Five

  At first, I didn’t know what woke me up.

  It could’ve been sunlight, blinding and intrusive, my own personal alarm clock. Or it could’ve been the headache stamping into my brain, about to crack open my skull.

  But after a moment of lying still, nearly falling back to sleep, I heard it.

  “Amber, come on. You’re mad because I didn’t make you breakfast. You didn’t make me any!”

  “The wife never makes the husband breakfast!”

  “What? Who made up that rule?”

  I pressed my face into my pillow, groaning into the fabric. The warmth of sleep was quickly fading, the sharpness of lucidity shaking it away.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Walk away, just like you always do!” I heard my dad say. A door slammed in answer.

  Since I was awake and I had to hear them arguing, I made the choice to do it with orange juice from the kitchen. My head felt stuffed full of cotton, everything foggy and clouded. Pushing up into a sitting position, I glanced around my room. It wasn’t very messy, though pencils and pens were scattered all across my desk. Just above my desk were several realistic-looking butterflies painted on the walls, still there from when Mom decorated the room as my nursery.

  I looked away from them, rubbing my eyes.

  I must’ve slept like a rock last night, because I couldn’t pinpoint my last memory, at least not clearly. Did I even take my makeup off? Had Edith gotten a chance to hang out with Zach? Had I found—

  Scott.

  I froze, breath stalling with me. I had found Scott. Holding that girl in the middle of the party. Scott broke up with me. He told me I wasn’t fun enough, that he couldn’t fix me.

  He dumped me.

  And then—oh. Oh, gosh. Walsh.

  I looked over at Shiba, the gray cat that sat on the edge of my window seat, giving me judge-y eyes. Granted, judge-y eyes were the only kind she had, but they did nothing to help me feel better.

  “You’re lucky you’re a cat,” I told her, swallowing hard. “Don’t have to deal with stupid boys.”

  She just blinked at me, and when I slipped from the room, she didn’t follow.

  The TV was on in the living room again, but instead of Mom’s soaps, a sports anchor spoke quickly. No one even sat around to watch it. Dad was too busy sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to be engrossed in his newspaper, but I knew better. He didn’t have his reading glasses on.

  I stumbled past him, trying to catch the headline of the paper as I did so.

  “You’re up early,” he greeted, not looking. The lower half of his face was obscured by the paper. “I would’ve thought the first day of summer you’d be sleeping in. Especially since you were out late last night.”

  I made a soft noise in response, finally giving up trying to read the headline, making my way to the fridge. Yeah, out late. After the nightmare that was Walsh’s party, I went back to Edith’s place and we spent the time drowning ourselves in ice cream. She took pity on me, though, and didn’t say a word about the party, about Walsh or Scott, or her conversation with Zach. We just ate our ice cream.

  “Did Mom go to her room?”

  “No, she went to the studio.”

  Mom rented out a studio downtown, where she held morning and afternoon yoga classes. Every moment she could, she was there. Her clients probably saw her more than I did.

  I downed my drink fast, enjoying the sting that the OJ gave, and thanked the stars Mom remembered to buy pulp-free this time. “Well, I’m going to go shower. Save the paper for me, okay?”

  “Don’t forget to clean Shiba’s litter box,” Dad spoke to the pages. “It’s getting full again.”

  Right. Shiba and her full litter box.

  I groaned as I walked past him, pressing my fingers to my forehead, hating that my thoughts went back to last night. Try as I might, there was no shutting out the gory details of the stupid party.

  It was official. Last night had truly been from my nightmares. I found out I’d been cheated on just before I got dumped, and then the school’s most desirable bachelor declared his love for me in front of the entire county of high schoolers. And instead of just leaving it at that, Walsh proposed a fake dating scheme, to which I so stupidly accepted.

  I was never leaving the house.

  * * *

  Edith had this strange habit of claiming my bed whenever she came over. She laid stomach-down on my bedspread later that afternoon, desperately trying to push her dark hair from her face with the back of her hand. Her we
t nails prevented her from holding it back for long. “I just still can’t believe everything that happened last night. I mean, Scott’s a jerk, but what Walsh said? I couldn’t believe my own ears.”

  I frowned at her, my desk chair squeaking as I turned. Our unspoken agreement of not talking about the party must’ve reached its expiration date because it was all she could talk about now. “Can you at least be mad at Walsh with me? Him stepping in was…ugh. Annoying.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “It was chivalrous.”

  Ha. Sure.

  “So are you going to do it?” Edith asked as she blew on her nails, kicking her heels together. “Fake date Walsh Hunter? I vote yes. The opportunity to date the most popular guy in school only comes once in a lifetime.”

  I’d told her everything, of course. Though the idea crossed my mind to keep it a secret from everyone—to minimize the utter humiliation of anyone finding out the truth—there was no way I could keep this secret from my best friend.

  But really, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of dating Walsh Hunter? Yeah, I totally wanted to pass. “We didn’t even exchange phone numbers. I doubt anything’s going to come from it.”

  “Did you tell him about the article?”

  My fingers rose to my lips to hold the truth inside. “Uh, well, you see—”

  “Sophia! You can’t use him to get information on the article and not tell him.”

  “Hey, he knows! I told him about it.” You know, well, kind of. “You had no problem of me doing it with Scott.”

  One of her dark eyebrows raised as she gave me a look. “That’s because Scott’s a jerk.”

  It wasn’t like I didn’t feel guilty for not telling Walsh the actual topic of the article. The feeling ate through the lining of my stomach, but I needed to get used to it. I’m sure all the major reporters didn’t let the guilt get to them when they reported on juicy stuff. Conflicted emotions came over me at the thought. On the one hand, I didn’t want to go lying to everyone, but I couldn’t deny that Walsh would definitely make my article that much more interesting.

  At the very least, I’d sell more copies by name-dropping him.

  “How are you feeling about that, anyway?” Edith asked, her tone falling to a more serious note, looking into my eyes. “About Scott? I know that must’ve been horrible. I’m so sorry he did all that in public.”

  I gritted my teeth at the wave of anger that passed over me, the heat creeping into my cheeks. Thinking about Scott elicited all those not-so-fun emotions and brought back every ounce of humiliation I’d felt. “I don’t even want to think about him ever again,” I said, stubborn and hurt.

  She capped the nail polish bottle, rising up onto her knees. “Good riddance.”

  “Whatever happened with Zach?” I asked, trying to change the subject without being obvious about it. Probably a fail. “How did talking to him go last night? Hopefully your conversation improved once I left.”

  She bobbed her head slowly, up and down. “We’re hanging out tomorrow.”

  “Like, as in a date?”

  “I don’t know.” Her teeth worried at her lip. “Maybe?”

  “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” This new development made me feel a little bit more at ease. She’d have something fun to keep her mind away from sports for a little while, but her expression wasn’t as excited. “Why are you frowning?”

  Edith let out a sharp sigh. “A part of me thinks he’s still dating Celia Lemons. He brought her up last night. I can’t tell if he sees this as a date or just as friends.”

  Celia Lemons was another girl in our grade, a girl who was also on the volleyball team. I wouldn’t have gone as far as to say that she was Edith’s archenemy—that title belonged to Eloise—but Edith and Celia didn’t see eye to eye often.

  “It’ll work out,” I said, turning my gaze to the ceiling. “Just take it one step at a time.”

  A noise filtered from downstairs, something that sounded like footsteps, and both Edith and I stilled. Her eyes lifted to mine. “I thought you said your parents were gone?”

  “They are.” Dad was out with a buddy playing golf and Mom was down at the studio. Neither one of them should’ve been home.

  I pushed up from my desk chair and went over to the window, pinching the curtains to pry them apart. Mom’s silver car sat in the driveway, headlights still on.

  “It’s just my mom,” I told Edith, trying to figure out why she would’ve been home. It wasn’t even one o’clock yet. “I’ll be right back.”

  She flapped her hand around. “I’ll be here, waiting for this polish to dry. You should’ve bought the quick-dry kind.”

  From the top of the staircase, I had a straight-shot view of the front door, and how it was cracked open. Mom’s bedroom door was also swung wide, the glow emanating into the hallway. Shiba sat on one of the steps on the staircase, tail swishing back and forth, and I ran my foot across her side gently.

  Part of me wanted to go and see what was going on, what Mom was doing home so early, but I held back for a moment. How many times had she chosen to keep watching her TV shows instead of checking on me? Why should I intervene now?

  A rattling sound had me moving, though, forward enough to push open her bedroom door as wide as the hinges allowed.

  “Mom?” I called hesitantly, immediately taking in her figure facing the closet. She still wore her yoga pants and had her hair knotted into a bun. “What are you doing home?”

  Mom turned around, the lines by her mouth seeming deeper than normal as she pressed her features into an epic frown. “Have you seen your father today?”

  “Not since this morning.” I folded my arms across my chest, bracing myself for whatever her response would be. “Not since he went golfing.”

  She folded her hands over her heart, and her eyes were shaded, glassy. “Do you think he left us, Sophia?”

  My brow furrowed immediately, and I blinked at the sudden question. “Left us? Why would he have left us, Mom?”

  Though not a frequent play in her book, Mom did fret about their separation more than once. Not so much worrying to me directly, but in mutterings that would resonate through the walls and floorboards, or during conversations over the phone with her friends. She was afraid that one day her nagging would send him over the edge.

  Today, as she pressed her hand to her lips, I’d never seen her so dejected. “I checked his closet, and it’s missing clothing, Sophia. Do you think he’s grabbed his stuff and left? I know we argued this morning, but you don’t think he’d leave, do you?”

  I glanced back down the hallway toward where Shiba sat on the stairs. Her eyes gleamed with sympathy. “I’m sure he hasn’t left us, Mom. He just went to play golf; he does that every Saturday. As for the clothes, maybe he’s just doing laundry.”

  Mom’s cell phone in the pocket of her leggings rang, causing her to jump. She fished it out immediately, posture sagging in relief as she looked at the screen. Quickly, she raised it to her ear. “Richard,” she exhaled, lips twitching into an almost-smile. “Yeah, it’s me. Hi. How’s golf?”

  Clenching my jaw, I backed out of Mom’s bedroom before I could hear more. When I moved to pass Shiba on my way upstairs, I paused, looking down at her. “Why am I the only sane one?”

  Shiba blinked at me, as if replying, “You’re the one speaking to a cat.”

  Chapter Six

  My bike groaned as I pedaled up the Main Street hill Sunday morning, the sun burning into my back. I was hoping a change in scenery would help this giant block clogging my emotional toilet. Yesterday was so unproductive. I hadn’t left my bedroom all day, and no new information was hiding underneath my pillows.

  To get that information, I had to get out of the house and face Walsh Hunter, who I hadn’t seen since the party. A fake couple had to get together sometime.

  Or maybe all that was done now and what I’d told Edith was true—this would all fall on the wayside.

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about tha
t. Yes, it probably would’ve been for the best, but my future in journalism at the Blade would’ve been nonexistent. Then again, I didn’t know if it was a good idea to place the fate of my journalism career into the hands of Walsh Hunter. Probably not.

  As I continued down Main, I rode past the baseball field, spotting bodies moving around the diamond. My sneakers crunched against the gravel as I dragged to a stop, squinting against the sun. A figure in uniform and baseball hat stood at the pitcher’s mound, not seeming too interested in the practice itself. He ran his feet through the dirt while his teammates tossed the ball around them.

  When the player lifted his head, I saw that it was Walsh.

  His baseball cap was turned around backward, completely ignoring the benefits of wearing it like a normal person.

  And as much as I hated to admit it—and I never ever would’ve admitted it aloud—his uniform looked good on him.

  Scott stood out on the field too, leaning into a squat. Something inside of me sharpened when I saw him, to the point where drawing in a breath hurt. It didn’t feel much like heartbreak—what was that even supposed to feel like?—but something more like unease.

  I tried not to let myself grow angry, but it was hard. All I could remember was how he made me feel at the party. It just felt nerve-wracking to be so close to him after everything that happened not even forty-eight hours ago, to be so public after the whole story from the party had, no doubt, spread like wildfire. Everyone had to know by now.

  Focus, Sophia, I told myself sternly, swallowing hard.

  I’d shown up at the baseball field at the perfect time, because the coach called in the players to the dugout, ready to end practice. Even from this distance, I could hear his reprimanding voice. “If you idiots play that pitifully tomorrow, we can kiss that championship goodbye. And do we want to kiss that championship goodbye? Do we want to throw away four years of wins?”

  “No, sir,” came a chorus of low-toned replies.

  “Didn’t think so. Now get your sorry faces off my field. Walsh, stay behind.”