Third Base

by Author Stella

  “In all, we have a little over three hundred students between grades nine and twelve. But with our athletic scholarships, we’ve managed to bring in some really bright kids who have an unwavering passion for sports. The last thing we want to do is fail them at a chance to further their talents beyond high school.” He turned to me and squinted against the sun. “I’m sure you understand that, don’t you, son?”

  “Uh…yes, sir. I do.” God, I hoped that was the right answer. It was hard to tell when I stopped paying attention to anything he said as soon he started counting the student body. He could’ve listed them all by name and I would’ve had no clue.

  “I’ve gotta say, kid, when Miss Teller told me about you, I thought she was yankin’ my chain. But it’s a real honor that you’re here. I won’t ask why you agreed to come, but rather settle with being thankful that you did.”

  “Oh, I’m only here because Ellie—”

  As if she hadn’t just jabbed me in my side with her elbow, Ellie smiled and batted her lashes, acting like I hadn’t been in the middle of explaining my presence. I mean, he hadn’t outright asked me, but he kind of did. Although, my dear friend refused to let me speak, picking up where I’d left off, except not completing my sentence the way I had planned.

  “Because I saw an opportunity that’s mutually beneficial for a friend and my school. That’s me…a team player.” Her enthusiasm left me gawking at her, taking serious consideration into the likelihood that she’d turned to drugs in the last ten hours. I’d heard private schools were flooded with them—all those kids with parents who did nothing but throw money at them.

  Then again…aside from right now, I’d never stepped foot in a private school, nor had I ever met anyone who’d match that description. This campus could’ve been overrun by kids who closely resembled me at their age.

  I shrugged off the thought and tried to catch up to what they were talking about.

  “I guess all that’s left to do is have you come in tomorrow during the day to speak with the administrator’s office and get your paperwork squared away. I’m sure they can get you ready to start next week.”

  For a moment, I thought he was talking to Ellie, but when he looked right at me and kept saying “you,” I slowly realized it wasn’t meant as a uniformed “you.” He’d literally meant me. Not a generalized way of speaking about a figurative being.

  “Ellie, my buttery biscuit…” I made sure to use my dramatic voice while keeping a sarcastic smile on my lips, so she couldn’t come back later and say she’d misunderstood my sentiment. Not that anyone could misunderstand being called a dinner roll, but that was beside the point. “May I have a word with you, please?”

  “Oh, don’t let me hold you up. You two are free to go,” the still nameless man dismissed us as if we were his students.

  Ellie waved at him before hauling ass toward a parking lot with only four cars left. I called after her, but she didn’t waste any time ignoring me as she climbed behind the wheel of her sedan. If she thought this was over, she was sorely mistaken.

  And it came right after I pulled into our garage seconds behind her. “Do you plan to explain yourself, El? What was that? You said your car wouldn’t start, yet you didn’t seem to have any issue speeding through town. Then you told me you couldn’t catch a ride with anyone else because everyone had left. I guess Stay Puft back there didn’t count?”

  She continued to walk in front of me, refusing to stop long enough to make eye contact, or at least toss me an answer over her shoulder. Instead, she hightailed it down the hall and into her room. But if she thought I’d stop at the door, she had another thing coming.

  “Ellie…you can’t ignore this forever.” I grabbed her fingers and spun her around to face me while we stood in the middle of her bedroom. “You got me into something, and if you don’t start talking to me, then you better be prepared to talk to the school. I’m sure they’ll want an explanation why I’m not there, and you can’t blame it on me. It’s kind of hard to show up and do something when I’m not even aware of what they’re looking for.”

  “They need an athletics coach. I just so happen to know a guy with plenty of experience who’s in need of a job.” Her eyes brightened with mirth, and it made it so damn hard to stay mad at her.

  “Oh, yeah? I wasn’t aware my dad decided to leave DeArmanville.”

  She cocked her head to the side and smirked at me. “Not your dad. You.”

  “My apologies. I thought you said it was someone with experience.”

  “Yeah. What would you call playing for a Major League team?”

  Realizing how close we stood to one another, I released my grip on her fingers and took a step back. “That’s exactly what it’s called, Ellie—playing. Not coaching. You can’t just offer me to them, con me into showing up like you’d told me what I was there for, and expect me to be on board with it.”

  “Sure I can. This is perfect for you, Coby.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says you.” After watching me gape at her for a few seconds, she decided to continue. “You said yourself how much you miss the game but not the limelight. Here’s your chance to get that back. Your passion and love of the sport were born in that diamond. Maybe not this exact one, but on a mound very similar. Think back to six years ago. Five years ago. Heck, even four years ago. Where were you?”

  I shook my head and retreated one more step until my spine met the wall behind me. I knew where she was going with this, and I didn’t have a leg to stand on in opposition. She’d prove her point one way or another, and by fighting her, I would only delay the inevitable.

  “I’ll tell you. You were on a field with a ball in your hand, the toe of your cleat kicking into the clay. In front of you, there was a boy with a bat—different jersey, a student at a different school, but at the end of the day, he was a boy just like you. Off to the side stood a man, but not just any man. He was your hero, your coach…your father. The same man who’d handed you your very first ball, who’d stood beside you every day while you chucked it at a fencepost. He was the one who taught you how to wind up your arm, where to hold your fingers, and when to let it go. The only people watching you were on the bleachers. Not at home or sitting at a bar, yelling at a TV screen. That was where you fell in love with baseball.”

  “Are you trying to send me back in time, hoping I’ll relive it like a horrible rendition of 17 Again? I’m not Zac Efron. And I believe he played basketball in that movie, not baseball. If you think this will somehow rewrite history, you’re wrong.”

  “I would never try to alter the path that has led you here.”

  “Then why set me up like that today?”

  “Because if I’d asked you first, you wouldn’t have gone for it.”

  “And somehow blindsiding me with it seemed like a stellar alternative?”

  She shrugged and quirked her top lip, making an obvious show of what little—if any—remorse she felt about it. “Think about it, Coby. Really take a step back and look at the opportunity in front of you. Here’s your chance to mold kids into the best players they can be. You’ll have some who only come to play because they love it. Whether they’re great or they need a lot of work, they’re there, on that field, in their uniform every day because they want to be. No matter the outcome of any given game, you’ll never doubt if they gave you their whole heart.

  “Then there will be the kids who participate and work hard because baseball is their only chance at a scholarship. Without it, they won’t be able to attend college. And you’ll know that they’ll show up and give you a hundred and fifty percent of themselves because their futures ride on it. There’ll be others who strive to be the next Coby Kyler or Gage Nix. They have a thirst for it. And who better to coach them than you?”

  I didn’t have an argument for her. The thought of coaching not only a high school team but at the same school where Ellie taught felt like a dream. The only reason I fought her was because I didn’t like the way she went about
it. Then again, she made a very valid point—had she asked me about it, I likely would’ve told her no. Not because it was a bad idea, but because I wouldn’t have been able to differentiate this level of playing versus the League. In fact, it wasn’t until Ellie had pointed it out and made me realize the kinds of players I’d be coaching that I’d finally understood the difference.

  “I’m only doing this for you.” Such a lie. I was doing it for me—no one else. Well, maybe the kids at St. Michael’s, too. They needed someone who would be on their side and not see the dollar signs. Oh, and maybe even a little for Ellie. The poor woman clearly missed me during the day and wanted me closer to her.

  Chapter 13

  Coby

  “Coby! Come on!” Ellie yelled from the kitchen, sounding far more impatient than the last three times she’d called for me.

  A week into my new coaching job, the school had offered me the boys’ phys-ed position. I had accepted before the offer was even out of Michelin Man’s mouth. Ellie had laughed at me when I told her about it, saying I wasn’t doing a very good job of pretending to be against her idea to coach. I told her I was only doing it for her.

  Now, we rode together to the school most days. On the days I had practice after school, she stayed behind and graded papers or whatnot. Occasionally, we would drive ourselves, but even on those mornings, we still followed one another the twenty-minute drive to the school.

  “I’m coming!” I yelled back while walking out of my room.

  “That’s what she said.” She couldn’t even say it without giggling. “If you make me late, I’m gonna kick your butt.”

  “Whatever, let’s just go.”

  “What took you so long to get ready this morning?” she asked after backing out of the driveway. “Trying to look good for Melissa Mills?”

  Melissa, or Missy as she liked to be called, was the girls’ PE teacher. This wasn’t the first time Ellie had mentioned her, but no matter how many times I’d asked about her odd obsession over the woman, she never gave me an answer, choosing to brush me off.

  “Why would I want to look good for her?”

  She started to wave me off, but when I grabbed her hand and held it on the console between us, it seemed to force her to answer. “It’s obvious to everyone she’s into you.”

  Well, that shocked the crap out of me. “You’re insane.”

  “Coby, the woman flirts with you all the time.”

  I released her hand and turned in my seat to face her, not caring that she hadn’t taken her eyes off the road in front of us. There was no way she couldn’t feel the holes my stare burned into her head. “I think I would know if someone was flirting with me. You seem to forget the level of experience I have in that department.”

  I may not have been skilled with women, but I did know a thing or two about flirting.

  “You can’t possibly think hussies throwing themselves at you is considered normal. Heck, it’s not even flirting. In the real world, when two people flirt, they do so without getting naked in the first five seconds.”

  I laughed at her. “E.T., I’m telling you…I would know. She isn’t interested in me. Missy’s just a nice person. She talks to you the same way she talks to me. Same way she interacts with everyone at the school.”

  “I’d say you’re blind, but that’s not a secret.”

  I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “Am not.”

  “Whatever. Why can’t you just admit she likes you? It’s not a big deal.”

  “Then why are you making it one?”

  She turned quiet for a moment and shrugged. “I’m not. Just pointing out the obvious.”

  This was such odd behavior for Ellie. I’d never seen her act this way before—about anything. But rather than question it, I decided to leave it alone. Although, it only seemed to get worse once we pulled into the teacher parking lot…right next to Missy Mills.

  “Morning!” She was so cheerful. Always. It didn’t matter the time of day. She always came to work with a cup of coffee in her hand and a bright, wide smile on her pink lips. I swear, I wondered if it was permanently etched there.

  I closed the car door and turned to greet her, but the sound of Ellie’s groan made me pause. I took one look at my friend and pinched my brow together in silent question, wondering where her sudden frustration had come from.

  “I just remembered I forgot something at home,” she answered with a flick of her wrist. She locked the car and forced a smile to her lips while facing Missy. “Morning, Melissa.” And then she turned around and headed inside.

  I glanced at Missy, then at my retreating friend, then back at the smiling blonde in front of me. For whatever reason, it seemed like Ellie refused to call her Missy, always using her full name, and I couldn’t figure out why. The whole thing was odd and awkward.

  “You ready for today?” Missy asked as she sidled up next to me, dismissing whatever had just happened with Ellie.

  “Today? What’s going on? What do I need to be ready for?”

  She giggled and playfully smacked my shoulder. “We’re sharing the field for the freshmen classes. Did you forget already? We just talked about it on Friday. I should’ve sent you a text this weekend to remind you.”

  “Why didn’t you?” We walked next to each other into the gym on our way to our office so we could put down our things. “You have my number, right?”

  Her grin widened. “Yeah, it’s on my phone.”

  “Oh, then you should’ve sent me a text. I mean, not that I needed to be reminded about sharing a field with the girls. I don’t really have to be prepared to see you throughout the day, but you can text or call whenever you want.”

  Her cheeks turned pink, matching her lips. “I wasn’t sure if Ellie would mind.”

  I grabbed the whistle from the top drawer on the desk and slipped it over my head while giving her a blank stare. “Why would she care?”

  Missy shrugged while tying her blond hair back.

  When she turned to leave, I reached out and held her elbow to stop her retreat, making her turn toward me again. “No. Don’t do that. Everyone here seems so interested in my relationship with Ellie, and now you’re acting strange. I get that I’m the new guy on campus, but it would be great if someone would say something in front of me so I knew what was going on.”

  “Everyone’s confused about what your relationship is. I mean, you guys come to work together most days, leave together, yet you don’t actually act like a couple. So I guess we’re all a little baffled as to what’s going on between you two.”

  “We’re friends, Missy. Always have been, and always will be. We grew up together. And we drive each other to and from work most days because we live in the same house, so it doesn’t make sense to take both cars to and from the same place.”

  Her dark eyes softened, and a hint of a smile ghosted her lips. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you like you’re her knight in shining armor.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “We’re best friends. That’s it.” For some reason, the thought of Ellie looking at me differently made my heart speed up and thunder against my sternum. I shook it off, realizing I had no right to feel that way toward Ellie.

  “If you say so,” she sang with her grin widening, flashing her perfectly straight teeth.

  “I do. End of story.” I wagged my brows at her and left the room.

  She trailed behind me, her giggles following me like background music. “Don’t hog the field today. Got it?”

  “And if I do?” I glanced at her over my shoulder.

  She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and squinted just enough to look sexy, confusing me even more than I was about my thoughts regarding Ellie. This time, my bewilderment was directed toward another female, and I began to wonder when my life had become so complicated.

  “I’ll hide your equipment,” she teased.

  “That’s okay. I have my own balls.” When her eyes went round, her mouth parting just enough to let the softe
st gasp pass through, I realized my blunder. “No. That’s not what I meant. Oh, shit—I mean, crap. Fu—udge ruckers.”

  As if I hadn’t just talked about my testicles, and then cursed in the middle of a Catholic school, her laughter bellowed down the gym corridor. “Relax, Coby. It took me a little while to find my filter here, too. Not that I curse often, but when I’m blindsided, it slips out from time to time. Trust me, I’m the last person you have to worry about ratting you out.”

  My shoulders fell forward with relief. “Thanks, Missy.”

  “Anytime, Coby.” And then she was gone.

  I’d just dismissed the basketball players after practice ended when Ellie showed up in the gym. Her contagious grin faltered when she noticed Missy helping me rack the balls, and had I not been drowning in the sight of her, I would’ve missed it in the split second before she corrected herself, plastering on a fake grin in place of the real thing.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were done. I can just wait out in the car,” Ellie said while wringing her hands around her purse strap.

  “I am done. Just putting these away, but that’ll only take a second.”

  Missy took the cart and wheeled it away from me. “I’ve got this. You go ahead.”

  “You sure?”

  She glanced between Ellie and me before winking in my direction. “Yeah. I’m sure. Go. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Just before I left the gym, she called out, “And don’t hog the field again.”