Full Count (The Catcher Series Book 1)

by Bri Izzo

  Buzz Ferrari: I’ll catch a ride to school with the enemy tomorrow.

  Quickly I dial her and await her answer, but all her phone does is ring and ring and ring. What the fuck? She just texted me. Answer your damn phone, Buzz! I hang up and try again, and after the third ring her chipper voice appears in my ear.

  “Hello, my hero,” she greets me with a girly giggle.

  I let out a small chuckle out of appreciation for my new label for shoving it to Leah in honor of Buzz. “Hi, sweetheart,” I reply.

  “Are you asleep already?” she wonders.

  “Already? What time is it?” I question, glancing across my room to my alarm clock that reads 10:14 p.m. Wow, that’s fucking pathetic.

  “10:14,” she answers me. I have to smile that she always accounts for every minute of every single day. She doesn’t round up to the next half hour or five minute mark. She appreciates every minute.

  “Is it too late for you to come over?” I inquire, hoping it isn’t. I just want to lay with her for a while before the new school week starts. It’s always so easy and carefree with her, completely unlike the halls of high school. And now we’re together, so it’ll be so much better.

  Her voice doesn’t sound, but I hear a bunch of rummaging around on her end of the phone. A few seconds later she replies, “I’ll be right over.”

  Since I fell asleep so early, I’m still in regular clothes for when I go to meet her outside on my porch. I’m not too fucking thrilled that she didn’t give me the opportunity to pick her up. She only lives eight houses down and across the street, so I can see her as she locks up her front door and heads down her driveway towards the sidewalk.

  When she makes it to me she has a fake frown on her otherwise gorgeous face.

  “What?” I ask her, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “You met me out here. I wanted to scale your tree and climb through your window,” she whines with a childish grin. She’s so fucking cute.

  “My parents cut the tree down after the third time you did that,” I laugh, unfolding my arms so I can drape one around her shoulders as we walk inside my house.

  She looks like she’s already ready for bed with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and the rest of her in a t-shirt and a pair of my old athletic shorts. I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and when I re-enter my room, Buzz is already tucked in under my blue and red comforter pretending to be asleep facing away from me. I slither in next to her and feel my hand around for her waist and detour to her apparently completely bare leg. Jesus Christ.

  On pure instinct, I throw the comforter off of her and onto the floor as I discover the absolutely fucking hottest lace trim underwear being the only thing she has on below the waist. The backside of them reads, “Take me home,” with a Cubs logo and rhinestones. I grab her hip and pull her close to my arousal so she can feel how she’s affecting me.

  “How many of these fucking sexual innuendo panties do you own?” I sigh, trying to contain my attraction to her.

  “I’ll let you keep track of that,” she teases with a giggle.

  “Is this why you wanted to come over?” I ask. I fucking love when she sleeps in my bed with me, but I don’t want her thinking that now that we’re together all I’m thinking about is fucking her. I mean, yeah I think about it because I can already tell she’s fucking amazing in bed just like in every other aspect of her life. I also just like being with her. And I fucking respect her.

  “To tease you? Yes,” she smirks. After waiting a moment to see if I’m going to roll my eyes or play along, she rolls underneath my arms to face me and drape a leg over my body. Her hand presses onto my shoulder and pushes it to flatten against my bed so she’s completely on top of me. She looks so fucking good on me.

  Buzz begins working her lips up my neck and eventually begins playing with my ear; licking it and biting it. Holy fuck. I let out a deep breath and feel her smile against my cheek like she knows she’s that good. Did I win the jackpot, or what?

  “We’re not fucking tonight,” I blurt out, completely changing the mood in the room. But I have to be upfront and say it before I just let it happen because I want her so fucking badly. We’ve only officially been together for twenty-four hours even though we’ve known each other our entire lives; yeah, we’re definitely not fucking tonight.

  “What? Why not?” she questions me, mirroring my serious mood. She stops kissing me and props herself up with her hands on either side of my head. I can imagine her boobs freely hanging underneath her t-shirt like I saw for the first time last night, and I want to play with them all over again; ugh but I have to fucking stop. This isn’t how it’s going to happen.

  “Let me ask you something,” I decide, stroking her bare thighs with my fingertips.

  “Okay,” she agrees, and I have to hide my thrill of seeing how I affect her. She’s trying so fucking hard to just breathe normally, but my fingers on her skin are such a distraction. I like that something so minuscule can rattle her.

  “You’ve imagined having sex before, right?” I assume. Every teenager pretty much thinks the same common things; having sex is just one of the cliche teenage desires.

  “Yes,” she confidently confesses.

  “And when you’ve imagined having sex before, were you in a bed?” I question. This girl has always been so crazy and daring before her accident, so I know her fantasies are elsewhere.

  “Not often,” she guiltily grins.

  “Where were you?” I wonder. Please say a baseball field.

  “In the dugout of a baseball field, or on home plate, or against the backstop,” she lists off.

  Fuck me.

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying so hard to stop picturing me fucking her in all of those places that are way more specific than I was thinking she would give me. Clearly she’s fucking thought about it before. A lot. In depth. And it’s fucking hot.

  “There’s other non baseball places, too, like a pool, the train, in a locker room, in your Jeep-” she continues, but she needs to fucking stop. I’m so fucking turned on that I actually think about taking her right here in my bed. Obviously that isn’t what she imagined for her first time. She thinks like I do. I want to fuck her anywhere and everywhere, and I’m determined to do so. I don’t want to start somewhere as boring as a bed. And we can’t leave my house this late on a school night without getting caught and grounded. Then I’d have to wait at least a week to even see her. I can’t do it. We aren’t quite ready yet anyways.

  I press the back of her head towards me, so our lips connect and sexual fantasies stop pouring out of her mouth as fast as the blood can pump through me. We kiss for a minute while I calm down a little, her every pucker soothing me to the core.

  Eventually she pulls away but stays close, our noses almost touching. “So why exactly are we not fucking tonight?”

  “Because I want your first time to be as good as you imagined, and I want us to be ready as a couple,” I tell her. “So I’ll tell you what…” I lightly push her off me and head for my closet where I keep my unopened box of condoms. I unseal the box and rip one from the line and walk over to my dresser where my wallet lies. “I’ll keep one with me at all times, so whenever we’re somewhere I’ll be prepared.”

  “You’re going to need more than one in there,” she taunts me. Breathe, Skyler.

  “I’ll restock,” I chuckle. I slide the condom in its own pocket in my wallet and rejoin Buzz in my bed. We’re both still severely turned on, so I add, “For now, I’ll have to find other ways to pleasure you.”

  “Ooh, yes please,” she smiles and then bites her lip to try to be cute. She doesn’t need to try, but I love it anyways.

  “I just need you to promise me two things tonight. And these promises will last forever, okay?” I demand as I climb on top of her lying on her back. She nods and joins me in being serious for a moment while we make our vows. “Number one: if you ever get dizzy or your head fucking hurts even a little bit, you have
to fucking tell me so we stop immediately. I don’t care how good it feels in other places. If your head hurts, we stop.”

  “Okay,” she obliges. “And number two?”

  “If I ever do something you don’t like or I’m hurting you, tell me,” I adds.

  “Okay,” she agrees, and her face softens again. “I promise.”

  “Thank you,” I say sternly and then give her a forehead kiss. I feel better with her knowing she can be as honest and vulnerable with me as she wants or needs. The last thing I want for her to do is pass out or have a brain aneurysm because she’s trying to play it cool with me. “So… where were we?” I joke, reaching my hand down the front of her panties and feeling her wetness. She’s soaked. Holy fuck do I want to be all the way inside of her and not just use my hand, but I just vowed to live up to her imagination for her first time, so I have to stick to it.

  “Mmmmm,” she moans as I push a finger inside her, followed by a second one. She leans forward so our lips can meet, but she can barely catch her breath enough to purse hers. I feel like I’m high. The adrenaline pumping through my body is being produced from her pleasured moans. I work my fingers in her, paying careful attention to what motions make her form more satisfying noises while I kiss a line up from her collarbone to her ear. Her breath is way too inconsistent to continue kissing me, which is fucking fine by me. Listening to her get off is the best thing she can ever fucking give me.

  After a few minutes her breath quickens, her fingers grasp onto my shoulder and hair, and her muscles pulse around my fingers as she soaks me in her pleasure. She reaches her lips up to mine again and we exchange tongues as I hold my fingers on the edge of her until the pulsing completely stops. She’s fierce, and I can feel her high at every place that we touch. It takes well over two minutes for her to calm down to a normal resting pace.

  I pull my fingers out and make sure to not touch her with that hand. “You okay?” I hope, looking down as I kneel over her.

  Closing her eyes, she nods and bites on her lip again to keep her smile from taking over her entire face. She’s totally fucking rewinding and replaying what just happened. I get as much pleasure from watching her be that giddy as she does from her orgasm. That is until her eyes reopen and she suddenly drops her lips into a frown.

  “Sky?” she starts.

  “Yeah, B. What’s up?” I worry, rubbing her leg with my dry hand. Her mood abruptly changed on me, and I need to know what she’s fucking thinking.

  “I need you to promise me something now,” Buzz commands.

  I don’t like the sound of this.

  I don’t answer her. I can’t. I can’t guarantee that I can promise her whatever she’s about to ask me. It sounds like she’s going to say “promise me this will never happen again” or “promise me you’ll let me get you off now” because I don’t want either of those things to happen.

  “Promise me that you won’t ask if I’m okay every single time we do something,” she sighs, and I let out the breath I have been using to suffocate myself. To me, it’s kind of a dumb promise. I’m going to fucking worry about her every day regardless if we’re together or not, but I can see how she might feel about it. If something is wrong, she will fucking tell me, so why do I have to ask? Also, she just said every single time, meaning that I can ask sometimes, just not every time.

  “Okay. I promise,” I finally tell her. “I only do that because I love you, B.”

  Oh God. I didn’t mean for that to escape. I mean, it’s true, but fuck we’ve been together less than a day and I’ve already dropped the “L” bomb on her. Damn hormones.

  She immediately scooches her way into a sitting position on top of one of my pillows at the head of the bed where she was just lying. The Cubs logo on the panties she’s wearing is level with my eyes for a moment until I move back to let her breathe. I think I can hear her heart banging to get out of her chest right now. “Sky…” her voice trails off as she slowly tries to catch her breath. Somehow I caught her completely off guard, kind of like I did myself. It still isn’t the reaction I would expect from this confession at all.

  “Buzz,” I acknowledge her, still holding onto her bare thigh.

  “You love me… like… really love me?” she questions with slightly moistened eyes. There is so much disbelief in her voice that it actually fucking hurts me. She should already know. It shouldn’t be a big surprise. I’d like to think we aren’t so desperate to have sex that we would do it just “because.” I guess it’s a good thing I stopped us for the night; I want her to really be ready when the time comes for us to connect on that level.

  “Yes. Of course I fucking love you,” I declare. “And I’m in love with you.”

  Then she lunges forward and wraps her arms around me as I lose my balance and fall back onto the bed with her on top of me. For a moment her hair is in my face and she digs her chin into my shoulder, but then she leans back and whispers, “I love you, Sky.”

  Now I understand her overwhelmed reaction a moment ago. I pretty much knew how she felt, but hearing it for the first time strengthens that bond. Nothing can feel this good, not even a true grand slam in a championship game or in the bedroom.

  It’s all too fucking perfect. Seriously. We fall asleep tangled in each other’s arms and legs while we face each other after just professing our love for each other for the first time. I purchased a body pillow to go across the head of my bed so there isn’t an awkward canyon between our faces from the individual pillows, and her nose rests just below mine. I feel her warm breath on the skin of my bare chest. We’re like jagged pieces of glass that broke apart, but, with time and patience, actually fit flawlessly together.

  That is until the middle of the night when I wake up and reach out for her and suddenly feel nothing but air and twisted sheets where she once lay. I look over at the connecting Jack-and-Jill bathroom door that has the light shining underneath it. No sounds of hurling can be heard, which I immediately assume is a good thing.

  God am I fucking wrong.

  After lightly knocking on the door, I listen closely for an answer. I wait a moment but hear nothing, not even her feet sliding across the tile floor. So I try again a little harder in case she didn’t hear me the first time.

  “Buzz?” I ask in a normal voice. I don’t care that it’s the actual middle of the night anymore. She’s scaring me. How did I not fucking hear or feel her wake up? I knock for a last time and reach for the door handle. I’m worried I’ll be walking in on her and completely invading her privacy and violating every fucking boyfriend code in the world, but I have a bad feeling that something’s happened to her. “B, I’m coming in,” I announce, wincing before opening the door all the way. When I see her, I stop breathing and actually take a step back to catch my balance.

  There’s puke and blood covering the tile floor underneath her as she appears to have collapsed on it and hit her head.

  It’s just a nightmare. Wake up, Sky! Just wake up!

  But then a voice comes from my bedroom alerting me that this is real. It’s so fucking real.

  “Skyler, is everything okay?” my mom whispers, appearing in the doorway to the bathroom. Her eyes squint at the light, and I know she hasn’t seen Buzz yet.

  “No,” I realize, the panic starting to set in on my chest. “Go start the car. We need to get her to the fucking hospital.”

  After my mom leaves to get dressed quickly and start the car, I try to determine the severity of this situation. “Buzz,” I call to her, but she doesn’t even flinch. “Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.

  After running to my closet to get a pair of my shorts for her since she’s just in her adorable Cubs panties, I slide them on her sprawled out legs and check her for a pulse. It’s weak, but I get one and then pick her up underneath her knees and behind her back.

  “Come on, B. Stay here. Don’t leave me,” I plead. At least on the day of her accident I knew what fucking happened. Walking into that bathroom I’m clueless and therefore just
as scared that her life is in danger again.

  Unlike the day of her wake-boarding accident on the lake, Buzz isn’t conscious at all during the process of me finding her, carrying her, or driving her to the hospital. My mom drives us as I hold Buzz in my arms in the backseat, praying for another miracle. The back of her head stops bleeding a few minutes after I prop her up so her head is above her heart. Fishing through the seaweed of her hair allows me to see that the cut is minor, and she probably won’t even need stitches. But however she hit her head after, or while, throwing up made her go unconscious and she is still completely unresponsive. I hate seeing her this still. The girl never stops looking for the next adventure. Going to the hospital doesn’t count.

  Somehow she still has a pulse by the time my mom and I get her to the Hinsdale hospital. I honestly don’t fucking know how because it’s been roughly twenty minutes since I found her on the floor.

  After the paramedics take Buzz out of my arms and bobsled her down the hallway on a rollaway bed, my mom wraps her arms around me to try to comfort me. I want to fucking slither away into a hole and die, but there are no shovels in sight. I let my mom feel like she’s doing something to help me even though she isn’t even close to doing so. I just need for Buzz to be getting better and not having these incidents on a regular basis. It isn’t often that I’m scared of something, but every time she throws up or passes out or bleeds I’m sent into another panic.

  “She’s going to be okay,” my mom attempts. As much as I love her, it isn’t going to convince me of anything. No one sees how severe Buzz’s condition is like I do. With her brain trauma, some days are good, some are bad, and some are worse. This is clearly a worse one.

  I don’t respond to my mom; I just hug her back for a moment and then take a seat in the waiting room. It’s killing me to not know what is going on with Buzz, but I have to be patient, something I’ll never master.

  I spend an hour staring at my fucking shoes. The number of people being wheeled into the emergency room is making my stomach churn. After seeing the first guy with a nail sticking out of the side of his head I vow to not see any more blood than what I saw on the floor in my bathroom from my girl. It’s more than enough.