by J. Sterling
Anytime I broke protocol and asked her something even remotely personal, she’d chastise me and refuse to answer.
“That’s a question for friends. And we’re not friends, according to you, remember?”
I knew she wanted me to change my mind on that front, but I didn’t know how to be her friend when all I wanted to do was bend her over the table and make her sorry for accepting this tutoring job in the first place. And I hated myself for it. All of this was new to me. Wanting her. Feeling this way about someone I shouldn’t have any feelings for in the first place. I’d never been in a position where I didn’t like the person I was becoming. I was a good guy who didn’t fuck around and who rarely did anything he needed to apologize for.
Unlike most guys my age, I thought about the consequences of my actions. Whatever science said about our frontal lobes not being formed yet didn’t matter in the Carter household. I had been raised to be aware of my choices and what could come from them. So, yeah, thinking about being inside Danika until we broke through the fucking wall didn’t sit well in my mind. It sat perfectly fine in every other part of my body, but I needed to do my thinking with the right head, not the one in my pants.
I knew it was wrong, wanting her, but it wasn’t going away. I thought that being cold and unfriendly would help me pull it together, but it only seemed to make it worse. The more I tried to avoid her, the more I found myself wanting her. Which was some pretty fucked up mental shit, if you asked me.
“Chance, are you even listening?” Her voice filled the space between us, and I shot my head up to look her dead in the eyes.
“I’m listening,” I lied. My first test was coming up next week, and I felt seriously unprepared.
“Repeat what I just said then.” She cocked her head and snapped her gum as I forced myself not to stare at her lips. “At least pay attention while we’re in here, okay? You don’t have to like me, but I really do want to help you pass the class.”
She thought I didn’t like her. If only she knew the truth. I rearranged some papers with questions and mock problems written all over them for me to figure out and attempt to understand. Who had decided to make letters stand for numbers anyway, and more importantly, whyyyyyyyy?
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said before sitting up straighter and grabbing my pencil. “What were you saying?”
“I was trying to explain about graphing linear equations,” she said the words simply, like she wasn’t speaking a completely foreign language.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and instead of silencing it, I reached for it. I looked from the screen to Danika before saying, “It’s my mom,” and answering.
“Hey, Mom. Is everything okay?”
I listened as my mom informed me that I needed to come home for dinner and that she wasn’t hanging up until I said that I’d be there. Then, she threatened to keep calling me back if I tried to hang up on her.
“I actually have an extra tutoring session that night,” I tried to inform her, but she was relentless, refusing to take no for an answer.
“Um”—I looked at Danika, who was watching me intently as my mom continued dishing out commands that I knew I’d obey—“we’ll see. I’m not sure. Listen, I’ve gotta go, Mom. I’ll call you later, I promise. Okay. Bye. Love you too,” I said before ending the call and pocketing my phone.
“You and your mom are close,” Danika announced like it was a foregone conclusion instead of a question she was wondering the answer to.
“Yeah. She’s the best. Harasses me like crazy, but all moms do that, right?”
“Only if they like you.” She offered a half-smile, but it felt like she was hiding something. “Is everything okay?” Danika asked, and I knew we were venturing back into friend-like territory.
I could have been a dick and reminded her that we were no longer friends, but it would have been bullshit. And my mom had put a solid crack in my armor when she insisted that I come home this weekend.
“She was threatening my life if I didn’t come to dinner on Sunday night.”
“But we have tutoring Sunday. You have your first test on Monday morning.”
“I know. She told me to bring you.”
Danika started choking. “She … what?”
“She said that you should come, too, and we could study there. I don’t make the rules. I just have to follow hers.”
“Chance, obviously, I can’t come home with you.” Danika fidgeted like crazy, her body restless.
“I tried to tell her the same thing, but she insisted.”
“I have a boyfriend,” she announced like I wasn’t aware of that fact. “This isn’t appropriate.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I adjusted the bill of my baseball cap before pressing back in my chair, lifting two of the legs into the air and balancing on the back two. “Look, I need the extra help before the test, but I promised my mom I’d come home. Just come with me, please. It will be painless, I assure you. My family is awesome, and my mom’s a great cook.” I gave her my best sales pitch because I honestly didn’t see a way out of this. I could have blown off Danika and gone home without her, but I really needed the extra study session. Failing my test on Monday was not an option. I refused to start this semester off with an F.
She groaned and stared at her feet, her lips pressing together in a straight line. “This is a really bad idea. But fine.”
“You’ll do it?” I found myself getting a little more excited than I had any right to be.
She nodded. “I’ll go … on one condition.”
My jaw clenched, and I wondered what she was going to ask of me. I leaned forward, my chair hitting the floor with a screech. “What is it?”
“We have to be friends, Chance. This”—she waved a finger between us—“up-and-down, emotional craziness between us has to stop.”
“I know,” I admitted before apologizing, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just be normal.”
“I’ll try,” I said, and I meant it.
I had no idea how to be normal around her. She made me question what normal even meant. She made me feel things I didn’t want to feel.
“I’m going to need your number.”
Her face went blank. “What?”
“Your phone number, Danika. Type it in,” I said as I shoved my phone into her hands.
She frantically punched at the keys, adding her name and number in what seemed like record time before she handed it back to me like it was on fire.
“I’ll call you when I’m on my way to pick you up on Sunday.”
She looked nervous, and I knew that she was struggling internally the same way that I was. There was no way in hell these feelings were only one-sided. She felt them too.
“Okay.”
“It’s all good, Danika. Friends eat dinner together, right?”
“Sure.” She shrugged with one arm. “They just don’t usually do it at their parents’ house.”
“Why not?” I was being a smart-ass, but toying with her this way was fun. Seeing Danika flustered and knowing it was because of me gave me an ego boost I’d never known I needed.
She glared at me before answering, “Because meeting the parents is relationship material. Not friend material.”
“Says who?” I pushed again.
“Society? Everyone? I don’t know.” She was rattled, and it was cute as hell.
“Let’s break the rules then. Be different.”
“I already said I’d go with you.”
“Just don’t want you backing out. Getting cold feet or anything.”
Her back grew rigid, and I watched as her features steeled. I’d pushed her a little too far.
“This isn’t a date, Chance. No cold feet required.” She suddenly rose to her perfectly warm feet, and I followed suit, hovering over her frame.
“I’ll see you Sunday,” I said as I looked down at her, but her eyes kept moving from my face to the door behind me. My eyes stayed focus on o
ne thing—hers.
“Yep. See you then.” She sounded unsure, and I couldn’t have her changing her mind.
“I really need to pass that test.”
“I know you do,” she said before walking out the door, no doubt wanting to be the first one of us to leave the room.
I knew in my guts that it took everything in her not to turn around and look at me one last time before she disappeared out of view. Little Spitfire. I’d let her have this small victory, but Sunday was mine … whatever the hell that meant.
I must have had a weird expression on my face because Mac called me out during dinner at the baseball house.
“Why do you look like a cartoon villain who just got away with something bad?”
My fork dropped to my plate with a clang. “Pretty sure I don’t look like a cartoon anything, dick.”
“You look”—Mac narrowed his eyes and tilted his head as he studied me, drawing way too much attention even if it was only from my teammates—“like you’re up to something.”
“He isn’t wrong, Carter,” Colin added from the other end of the table.
He was our starting shortstop, and before I could snap at him the same way I’d snapped at Mac, Dayton, one of our pitchers, chimed in as well.
“What are you up to, Chance?” he asked, dragging out the word are.
“You three are annoying. I’m not up to anything. What the hell would I be up to anyway?” I tried to argue, but Mac’s face lit up like a damn kid on Christmas morning.
“Something happened with Tutor Girl,” he said, looking at Colin and Dayton instead of at me.
Dayton let out a whistle. “I’d pay good money to have something happen with Tutor Girl,” he teased. Or maybe he wasn’t teasing because my blood started to boil in defense of his accusation.
“Don’t start,” I demanded, and he grinned.
“It’s not our fault your tutor is fucking hot,” Colin added, and I wondered if they all had death wishes. “But why the all black, all the time? Is she sad?”
“No, she’s not sad,” I bit out, defending her against his idiotic question. “And she’s not available, so stay away from her.”
“Because you’re banging her?” Colin asked.
I actually fucking growled. It was embarrassing but too late to take it back.
“Because she has a boyfriend. And I don’t need any of you guys messing with the one person who is going to help me stay eligible this season.”
That shut them up. Momentarily.
“You do know that if I fail this class, I can’t play this year, right?”
They all nodded in unison.
“So, stay away from her,” I instructed before tossing my dirty dish in the sink and stomping toward my room like a five-year-old.
I didn’t get more than a few steps away before I heard them bust out laughing, saying I had it bad for Danika and how they’d never seen me this way before. The last thing I needed was to stay hanging around them and prove them all right. She was a problem. Hell, she’d been a problem, and now, I was going to bring her home to meet my damn parents.
What was I thinking?
Before I could psychoanalyze myself to death, someone knocked on my door. Without saying a word, it pushed open, and Mac’s head poked through.
“Surprise, surprise.” I grimaced as he walked into my room, uninvited, and closed the door behind him.
“What’s up with you?”
“Why do you worry about me like you birthed me?” I asked because, sometimes, Mac acted like an overly concerned parent, and it was annoying. I mean, didn’t he have enough of his own girl issues to be worried about without thinking about mine?
“ ’Cause we’re friends. That’s what friends do.” He moved toward the desk in my room and sat down in the chair.
Apparently, he planned on staying.
“Don’t friends take a hint when you want to be alone instead of interrogated?” I knew I was being a jerk, but I didn’t want to talk about this anymore, and he wasn’t going to leave until I did.
“Nope. They don’t,” Mac said, completely unfazed. “You really did look like shit at dinner. I just want to know what’s up and make sure you’re okay.” I went to open my mouth in response, but he cut me off, waving a finger in the air. “And before you say anything else, you’d do the same for me if the roles were reversed, and you know it.” He was right. And it shut me up. “So, are you going to tell me what happened?”
“She’s coming to dinner at my parents’ house on Sunday. And I thought it was a brilliant idea until I got away from her and started wondering what the hell I was thinking by pushing her into it. I mean”—I glanced up at Mac’s amused expression—“I was not going to let her say no.”
“Of course you weren’t.”
“And now, she’s meeting my parents?” I said it like a question before shaking my head and rubbing at my eyes. “Girls don’t meet my parents.”
“I’m aware. How did this even happen?”
I filled him in on the phone call from my mom, and he smiled the whole time.
“Please stop smiling.”
“It’s cute.” He started swiveling back and forth in my chair.
“Don’t say shit like that.”
“You like her.”
“Mac.” I was going to argue but knew it was useless.
“At least admit it. You’re allowed to like a girl, Chance.”
I blew out a long, annoyed breath as his swiveling came to a halt, and he pinned me with a stare.
“I can’t like her,” I emphasized.
“But you do.”
“I might.”
“So, what are we going to do about it?” he asked, his face lighting up with a grin.
“Nothing. Not while she has a boyfriend at least. That’s a hard line I won’t cross,” I said the words and wondered who I was trying to convince because I knew that if Danika wanted anything from me, there was no way in hell I’d have the strength to say no.
Dinner with the Fam
Chance
I’d been on edge all weekend. Even going to the cages and taking extra hitting practice hadn’t helped. I tried yoga, meditation, and even Pilates—that shit was awful—but nothing kept my mind from the upcoming dinner or the fact that I had Danika’s number in my phone, but I felt like I wasn’t allowed to use it.
I stared at her number at least a hundred times, tempted to send her a message but never did.
It. Was. Torture.
Knowing that Danika was only a simple text away but refusing to give in.
What if she was with her boyfriend when I reached out? I wouldn’t be able to handle that. Knowing that he was with her when I wasn’t. Touching her when I couldn’t.
My dad didn’t help matters when he cornered me after practice. “Heard you’re bringing a girl home for dinner.”
I glanced around, making sure none of my teammates were in a position to overhear our conversation. The only person who knew that Danika was going home with me was Mac, and I knew he’d never tell anyone else.
“It’s not a girl, Dad. It’s my tutor.”
“Your mom thinks it’s more. She’s got Jacey all riled up.”
“What? Please make her stop, or I won’t come.” I dropped my catcher’s helmet to the ground.
My dad stiffened. “You wouldn’t dare disappoint your mom like that. Would you?”
I gave him a look before huffing out, “No.”
“I’m just kidding about your mom and sister.”
I punched his arm. “Why would you do that to me?”
He laughed. “ ’Cause you should have seen the look on your face. I couldn’t resist.”
“Don’t make this a thing.”
“Is it a thing?”
“She has a boyfriend.”
“Minor detail.” My dad grinned, and I shook my head.
“Dad.”
“What?” He shrugged before taking his ball cap off and putting it on backward. “Is her b
oyfriend on the team?”
I quickly spat out, “No,” like the idea of poaching a teammate’s girlfriend made me physically ill or something. “I’m not Logan,” I said, referencing my ex-teammate who had tried to take another teammate’s girl last season. It was a complete shitshow and could have torn us all apart. Thank God it hadn’t.
“Like I said then”—he paused, and I had no idea if he was joking or not—“minor detail.”
“That’s not cool.” I shook my head.
“I’m just messing around, Chance. It’s the first time a girl’s gotten under your skin.”
“She’s not under my …” I started to argue, but he gave me a look that told me he knew better, and I shut up instead.
My dad turned to walk off the field when I realized that my entire body was locked up tight with tension.
“Dad, wait.”
He stopped and turned to face me.
“No one else will be there, right? Mom’s not having the whole family there or anything?” I asked because if my Uncle Dean, Aunt Melissa, Gran, and Gramps were there, it would be way too much. Danika would tell me to turn around and take her right back home the second we walked through the front door.
“No. It’s just us, kid.”
“Okay. See you Sunday.”
I’d continued spending my time staring at Danika’s number in my cell phone, looking for an excuse to text her. I knew that once I opened that door, there would be no closing it, and I wanted to be better than that, so I held out. No matter how badly I’d wanted to shoot her a message, I had waited and sent my first text when I was heading over to pick her up.
She responded right away.
DANIKA: Who is this? I don’t have this number in my phone.
CHANCE: Very funny.
DANIKA: I thought so.
CHANCE: Be there in 10.
DANIKA: I’ll be out front.
CHANCE: In all black, I bet.
DANIKA: I do own other colors, you know.
CHANCE: Actually, I don’t know.
DANIKA: Well, now, you do.
I’d learned two things in that brief exchange. One: Danika owned something other than black, although I still doubted it. And two: she didn’t want me to come inside her apartment. It was probably for the best, but it still somehow felt like a slap in the face. Even though I tried not to take it personally, when I navigated my dad’s old Bronco into the parking lot and saw her waiting for me on the sidewalk—in all black, mind you—I felt a pang of disappointment rip through me.