Striking Out With The Star Pitcher
How to catch a crush #1
Maggie Dallen
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Saved by the Crush’s Brother
About the Author
1
Simone
* * *
My best friend had bailed on lunch.
Again.
I sighed as I sank into my usual seat at the table in the middle of the cafeteria. At the other end, two guys from the football team were already hunkered over their lunch, and Ryan, the captain of the wrestling team was headed this way. And my best friend Jax, who typically sat right next to me...? Not here, even though his last class was closer to the cafeteria than mine.
He was probably off with his new girlfriend, Rose.
Sure enough, my phone dinged with a text and I was treated to a selfie of Jax and Rose making stupid faces at the camera. “Sorry, S. Running late. Be there soon.”
I stared at the photo for much longer than necessary. Not because I was jealous or anything. I wasn’t. I hated that cliché where every nerdy girl was instantly in love with her hot best friend, because…why? He was there?
Didn’t make sense.
Plus, it was pathetic.
Also, I’d never once been attracted to Jax. But try telling that to my girl friends. Every time Jax and Rose made a scene with their PDA, which was often, I got all kinds of searching or pitying looks from the girls.
The worst part? No matter how much I protested and told them I was happy for Jax, it just ended up sounding like I was protesting too much.
But for the record, I was elated that Jax had finally found love. I was even happier that he’d found it with Rose, a girl I truly admired. Ever since they officially got together two weeks ago, she’d been going out of her way to be my friend, too, and make sure I never felt excluded.
I snuck a peek around me and saw Jax’s empty chair as the other guys who normally ate lunch here filled in the other seats. One of the football players glanced my way and I snapped my gaze back down to my phone like there was something interesting there and not just a photo of Jax making a goofy face and Rose sticking her tongue out over his shoulder.
See, this was the only issue I had with Jax’s new relationship—lunchtime had become a minefield.
For the last few years, I’d sat with Jax at lunch and Jax had sat with his crowd—the cool crowd. The only reason I sat at this table filled with the school’s most popular guys was because Jax was my BFF and everyone knew it. It went without saying that I went where he went.
It was the only reason I was here, and the only reason I went to the cool parties. Without Jax at my side, I didn’t fit in here.
Like, at all.
I was the lone loser in a sea of kings.
Speaking of kings… The empty seat to my right slid out and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andrew sink down into his seat, a tray filled with something too healthy for me to comprehend sitting in front of him.
“Hey, Simone,” he said, his voice so low it could only just be heard over the louder voices around us.
As always, Andrew was the only one to acknowledge my existence. The star pitcher of Lakeview High’s baseball team, Andrew was the nice one. I sort of bobbed my head in response to Andrew’s greeting, not bothering to look over. That would only encourage him.
The only thing more awkward than having everyone ignore me was having Andrew talk to me out of pity.
It probably made me sound petty, but sometimes his niceness drove me nuts because I knew it was born out of charity. I’d bet money that he felt bad for me and my loser situation, and that was supremely irritating. I didn’t care that I was being ignored, so why did he?
The worst part with Andrew was that I couldn’t act annoyed with him because it was impossible to be mean to a guy like him. He had this whole easygoing charm about him—like Josh Lucas in Sweet Home Alabama or Ryan Gosling in just about anything. He didn’t have a Southern accent, necessarily, but he should have. His voice was low and he tended to draw his words out real slow like he had all the time in the world.
Between his niceness and his athletic prowess and his particular brand of charm, Andrew was probably the most beloved guy in this school. Arguably the most popular guy at this table, which was saying something since I was seated at alphahole headquarters.
Actually, that wasn’t fair. Much as I didn’t like the nerdy-girl-in-love-with-her-cool-best-friend trope, I don’t buy into the whole all-jocks-are-jerks cliché either. Some of these guys might have been nice. Maybe all of them were sweethearts, just…not to me.
It wasn’t like they ever picked on me, or anything. For the most part, they just didn’t see me.
I was invisible. Just like I was basically invisible to most of the student body population.
Partly my own fault, I supposed. I was an introvert to the nth degree and had always gone out of my to avoid being the center of attention. My body seemed happy to oblige in that department. I was short, with no killer body to speak of, just an average size with average looks. Brown hair, brown eyes, and the kind of semi-wavy hair that’s not curly but not stick straight. Just sort of…average.
So, no. None of these guys were tripping over themselves to sit next to me now that there was a vacancy in Jax’s usual seat.
Which was fine. It really was. I had no desire to be besties with any of these guys. It just made lunchtime incredibly awkward when Jax was running late.
My reusable lunch sack, which was filled with an apple and Oreos—a lunch of champions, obviously—sat in front of me but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. Not when Jax was still MIA and I had the world’s most awkward silence hanging around me.
To stay or to go? That was the question. To sit here much longer staring at a still-packed paisley lunch sack was not an option.
I glanced up at the door. Nope. No sign of Jax or Rose.
“I saw Jax headed this way after class.” Andrew’s voice beside me made me tense.
I glanced over to see him watching me with a hint of a smile, his gaze soft and his eyes this pale shade of blue that was almost gray. I blinked. Was he…?
His lips hitched up higher on one side.
Oh yeah. He was definitely reassuring me.
Gah! What had my life come to that the king jock was trying to make me feel better. I had other friends, thank you very much. It wasn’t like I was some leper and Jax was the only person who would sit next to me. I shifted away from Andrew. I only sat with Jax out of habit, that was all.
But Andrew’s pitying remark had me gripping my bag of food and reaching for the satchel I used in lieu of a backpack. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” I mumbled. “But I’m just gonna, um…”
And then I was gone, sentence unfinished and my presence likely forgotten before I’d even walked away.
I searched the cafeteria and it didn’t take me long to find the girls.
‘The girls’ was what Jax called them, like he didn’t know their names. He did, they just never ranked high on his priorities since they didn’t move in his social circle. They, like me, didn’t really move in any social circles.
I wouldn’t say we were outcasts, necessarily, we were just…in between. Most of
them were either involved in the art department or took AP classes with me, which was how I’d gotten close with them.
Avery spotted me first and her mouth widened into this beaming smile that on anyone else would look ridiculous, but she was just sweet enough to pull it off.
She shifted closer to Maxine to make room for me. Maxine, who we all called Max for short, was Avery’s best friend who worked on the newspaper. I sat between Avery and Charlotte, a quiet brunette and one of the smartest people I knew.
“What happened? Did you get booted from hottie island or something?” Maxine asked, a smirk on her face as she looked up from her burger.
I laughed. “Not booted, just…forgotten.”
Max rolled her eyes. “Jax still living it up in la la land with Rose?”
I nodded. “They are still smitten kittens.”
Avery sighed. “I think it’s sweet.” Her eyes lit with genuine happiness at the new couple’s bliss and her smile was the ridiculously sweet kind one normally only saw on Disney princesses. With her long blonde hair and big blue eyes she could totally pass for one, too. All she was missing were some talking animals who did her bidding.
“It’s gross is what it is,” Maxine scoffed, swiping her long dirty-blonde braid over her shoulder as she took another bite.
Charlotte nudged me with her shoulder, her voice soft as a whisper as she said, “Well, you know you’re always welcome here with us.”
“Absolutely,” Avery said. “Join the club.”
“Thanks, guys, but you know what they say…” I tipped my head down and made my voice nasally. “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
I got three blank stares.
“Groucho Marx?” I prompted, looking from one to another. “No?”
Silence.
Okay then. I shoved my apple into my mouth to keep from blurting out any other random impersonations.
Jax would have laughed, I assured myself.
Well, maybe not laughed. He probably would have rolled his eyes, but he would have been grudgingly amused.
Well, maybe not grudgingly amused. But he would have at least recognized the famous quote.
“I wasn’t even aware we had a club,” Max said.
“Of course we do,” a harried looking Hazel plopped down at the end of the table, Emma and Lulu taking the seats on either side of her.
And now it was complete. The six girls I hung out with when I wasn’t with my bestie were all here.
“Why are you guys so late?” Max asked.
Lulu answered, her long red hair falling into her face as she leaned over to grab her lunch out of her book bag. “We had a bio quiz. It ran over.”
“But more importantly, what’s this club talk about?” Emma asked, already smiling. Short and curvy, with a heart-shaped face, Emma had the kind of personality that made it seem like she was forever on the verge of laughter, she was just looking for an excuse.
Hazel, the only athletic one in the group, was her best friend, but also Emma’s opposite. She was tall, thin, and far more serious. “The smart girls club,” she said, reaching for the drink she’d set down.
Emma groaned. “Really? What kind of lame club is that?”
I laughed as the two of them bickered over what our ‘club’ could be called.
“The lonely hearts club.” Avery interrupted them with that announcement and we all looked over to see her giving a sheepish little grin. “What? It’s true.”
I arched a brow and looked around the table. Every one of us was single, and as far as I knew, we always had been. She wasn’t wrong…
Charlotte laughed softly and I knew she was thinking what I was thinking. The title totally fit.
Max shrugged. “So we’re single. That doesn’t mean we’re lonely.”
Not one of us responded right away and a weird silence fell over the table.
“There’s nothing wrong with being single,” Hazel added abruptly.
“Of course not,” Lulu added.
Silence fell again.
“It only sucks if you like someone and they don’t like you back,” Avery said. She still wore a smile, but it held a tinge of sadness.
Emma winced. “No progress with lover boy, I take it?”
Avery wrinkled her nose and shook her head. ‘Lover boy’ was what we’d all been calling Alex Luven since he’d transferred to our school freshman year and poor Avery had fallen in love at first sight. Now she was a senior and still just as smitten.
Alex didn’t seem to have noticed.
“I’m glad I don’t have a crush,” Emma said, reaching over to hand Avery a Hershey’s kiss. “It looks horrible.”
Avery sighed. “It’s not exactly fun.”
That was about as negative as Avery got. Not exactly fun.
“It’s demoralizing.” Charlotte’s voice was little more than a whisper but when Charlotte spoke we all listened because it was such a rare occurrence.
“One day Robert will see what’s right in front of his face,” Lulu said, reaching over to pat Charlotte’s hand.
Lulu was kind of like a mom like that. She had a maternal instinct like you wouldn’t believe.
“What about you, Simone?” Hazel asked.
I blinked in surprise, my half-eaten bite of apple sitting there in my mouth as I temporarily forgot how to chew.
I must have looked like a deer in headlights because Avery leaned over with a grin. “Come on, you can tell us who you’re crushing on. We won’t tell anyone.”
“Who would we tell?” Max added in a dry voice.
“I’m not—I don’t—” I started to protest out of…what? Habit? Not really. It wasn’t like anyone was grilling me on a regular basis about who I liked. Jax was the only person I spent a ton of time with outside of school and he seemed to take it for granted that I wasn’t into boys and dating.
This wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t want to burst his bubble. He saw me as a sister and while it was all fine and good for us to talk about his lady friends and his feelings for Rose, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell him that I had a crush of my own.
Probably because my crush...? It was one of his friends, the bass player for his band.
It wasn’t that I thought Jax would disapprove, I just didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when I told him. Because he would know, just like I did, that it was useless.
Tony, like every other hot guy in the universe, didn’t even know I existed.
The girls were staring at me, but no one said a word as they waited for me to stop stumbling through my protests and just answer the question.
“I have a crush, but no one knows,” I said.
There. Was that so hard?
Avery craned her neck like she could guess my crush just by looking.
“Who is it?” Emma asked, all eager excitement.
“He goes to Fairmont,” I said. That was the public school on the other side of town, where Jax and I both lived. Lakeview was a private school and way outside our parents’ pay grade but we’d both been lucky enough to be accepted on scholarships.
That was one of the reasons Jax and I were so close. We’d grown up on the same block and existed in this weird limbo together where we went to school with the rich kids and lived amongst the not-so-rich. We had lives on both sides of the divide, and Tony… He fell on the Fairmont side. He lived on our side of town but I knew him because of Jax’s band that rehearsed in his garage.
I explained all that to the girls, and that information was met with way too much excitement. “Ooh, a musician,” Avery said.
“A fellow artist,” Lulu said with an approving nod. “That’s fitting.”
Lulu and I partnered up a lot in art class so she knew better than anyone how important that was to me. “One would think…” I said.
Max narrowed her eyes. “Does he know you’re an artist?”
“Not exactly,” I said, my attention on the apple as if it was the most interesting piece of fr
uit I’d ever seen. “That would require that he know who I am.”
“Ahh,” Hazel said in a sage tone at the end of the table.
“Ouch,” Max muttered.
“Maybe he does,” Avery offered.
“That sucks,” Lulu said.
“He’s an idiot,” Emma said.
Charlotte just sighed and leaned against my arm for a second in commiseration.
“Yeah, well…not a big deal,” I said. I’d gotten used to crushing on Tony from a distance. As Jax’s best friend it was understood that I’d be at a lot of their band practices. I usually sat on the sidelines and did homework or worked on a sketch.
It was fine.
Totally fine.
“Maybe Jax could say something,” Avery said.
“Mmm,” I shook my head with a grimace. I so did not want Jax getting involved. First of all, it was humiliating. And second, it was hopeless.
“Even if he did, it wouldn’t do any good,” I said.
“Why not?” Max asked.
“Because even if he knew I was alive, I wouldn’t know how to talk to him.”
Every single girl at the table gave a little sigh, because…yeah. I was pretty sure that despite our different personalities and backgrounds, we all shared that one common denominator.
We had no idea how to score a date. We didn’t know how to flirt and entice, or whatever it was other girls did to get the attention of the male species.
Silence descended and it lasted so long I sort of forgot that we were talking about me and my pathetic love life.
Shockingly, it was sweet, shy Charlotte who broke the silence. “Maybe we should learn.”
Everyone stared at her, including me. “What did you say?”
She shrugged, her cheeks turning pink under the group’s undivided attention. “We’re smart,” she said. “We’re not horrid looking or smelly or anything…”
Max snickered a bit at that. “Wow, thanks for the compliments.”
Striking Out With The Star Pitcher: How to catch a crush #1 Page 1