by Kris Hui Lee
I roll over onto my back and look at her. “Yeah, I know, Mama Bear wants to protect her child. I get it. But I wish you could have at least come to the game.”
“And watch you get run over by a boy twice your weight? That was the first thing Nick told me when he got home.” She squeezes my foot. “Marnie, I am glad that you have found something you’re passionate about and that you’ve followed it through. But until you have your own child, you won’t understand that, to me, nothing is worth you getting hurt.” She sighs again, and I wonder if while I was at the game worrying about pitching, she was worrying about me getting hurt—which wouldn’t have been uncalled for.
“Marnie,” she continues, “I’m sorry you lost. And I’m sorry I didn’t go to the game. And I’m sorry if you’ve felt like I don’t care. I care very much.”
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“Who do you think paid for all those tiny tot baseball camps? All the Little League gear? All the softball gear?” She pulls me upright by the hem of my jersey. “I’d hoped that by now it would be clear that we agree to disagree. But I still support you and whatever you want to do in life.”
I lean in, and she puts her arm around me. “We can agree to disagree about baseball. I just want to know you aren’t disappointed that I’m not more like you.”
“Not disappointed,” she says. “Never disappointed.” She pats my shoulder. “Except maybe for the way you smell right now. Go take a shower.”
I laugh. “Yes, ma’am.” I get off the couch and undo my braid as I go upstairs, thinking that if I was the type of person who ran into traffic blindfolded for fun, Mom would totally be disappointed. Good thing I’m not.
Normally, I’m pretty good at getting in and out of the shower. It’s a defense mechanism—if you take a quick shower, your mind doesn’t have time to spiral into the abyss that is Shower Thoughts. There are scary things down there, and once you’re mind has set up camp, it takes a whole lot of willpower and a shit ton of wasted water to get out.
Well, I’m totally intent on my usual in and out, so I can jump into my bed and fall into dreamless sleep, but then my stupid brain starts thinking about the game, the disappointment, and inevitably, Cody.
Damn you, brain.
I’m tired of thinking about him, tired of worrying about the next time I’ll see him and if I’ll be able to keep my cool.
Great, I’m thinking about Cody. In the shower. While I’m naked. Which makes me think about him naked in the shower—his nice toned body, tanned from all the time he spends outside running and playing baseball, his normally tousled hair, all wet, droplets of water rolling down his face and neck and chest and—
Shit.
Way to be appropriate, brain.
I shut off the water, even though there’s still a little bit of shampoo left in my hair. I grab my towel and pull on my pajamas—a tank top and running shorts. As I blow-dry my hair, I focus on the whir of the hair dryer and nothing else.
When my nighttime routine is over, I dive into bed, pull up the covers, and slam my eyes shut. Go to sleep, Marnie. Go to sleep.
I’m exhausted and expect to fall asleep upon contact with my pillow. Instead, I find myself awake, staring at my ceiling at half past midnight.
This past week keeps playing in my mind—today’s game, the practices, the wedding, first meeting Santino, Joey punching Prescott, even completely random things like one of the purple dresses I saw at Samson’s but didn’t try on.
It’s one of those nights that my mind won’t turn off. My brain lingers mostly on the game. It replays it all over and over, like I’m watching it in HD. The first pitch. The last pitch. Prescott hurdling toward home plate, ramming me like a bull.
Finally, the weight of sleep pulls on my eyes. Thank you.
I drift off to the “good game” high fives. The punch. The bus ride home. The talk with Chizz. Cody giving me a ride. Our detour. Ice cream. The fountain.
Cody.
Cody.
Cody.
I open my eyes again. Dammit.
When he dropped me off tonight, and we were sitting in his car in the dark, with only our garage lights to show me his face, I almost convinced myself to go for it, to screw the equilibrium. Because the equilibrium totally, totally sucks.
But then he said good night, and I said good night, and I grabbed my bag from the back seat and got out, and that was that. He drove home, and I went inside.
My mind is so awake. How I can continually walk away from Cody and let him walk away from me when I know we both want to be together?
What was it Santino said? That we can’t both be scared or nothing will ever happen?
I grab my phone from the nightstand. After getting blinded by the screen light, I blink and send a text.
Are you awake?
I wait and wait and wait.
My phone buzzes.
I am now, thank you.
Sandlot?
Ten seconds pass.
Then thirty.
Then a minute.
Then a minute and a half.
My phone buzzes again.
Okay.
• • •
Even though I live a couple of yards farther from the park than Cody, I get there first. I sit out in left field in my pajama shorts and tank top and listen to the quiet sounds of the breeze rustling the leaves as I wait. When five minutes pass, I wonder if he fell back asleep, but then I hear his footsteps in the grass.
My heart unexpectedly lurches at the sight of him walking toward me under the moonlight. This guy I’ve known since I was six. Who I have seen day after day. How can I have known him for so long and suddenly feel so different about him?
Or maybe this is what it is to finally allow myself to feel. Because sometimes your worst enemy is not your childhood nemesis or your sports rival, but yourself—your pride, your shame and fear and unrelenting belief that you are always right. Sometimes you need to give yourself a good mental kick and admit: I was wrong.
When Cody sits down next to me, every nerve in my body excites at the closeness of him, sending a shiver down my spine that I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong to keep myself from him. Wrong to deny how much I want him. Wrong to deny him the truth of how I feel.
“You know, I’m perfectly happy hanging out during normal hours of human activity,” he says. “Just because you’re an insomniac doesn’t mean you have to try and convert me.”
I find his light brown eyes. They’re so bright and awake despite it being so late.
“So what’s up?” he asks.
Like he doesn’t know. He must know. After everything that has happened this week between us, he must know why I have brought him here, to this specific place, in the middle of the night.
When I don’t say anything, he says, “Marnie, you’re sort of freaking me out. Maybe you should see a doctor tomorrow in case you really did get a concussion.”
“I don’t have a concussion.”
“Then are you okay?”
I nod.
He waits expectantly.
“I just…” I take a deep breath like I’m on the mound, ready to pitch another inning. “Can you close your eyes?”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t.
“Just do it.”
“The last time you told me to close my eyes, I’m pretty sure you doused me with a hose.”
“Does it look like I have a hose right now?”
He laughs. “Okay, okay.” He closes his eyes. “Just don’t do anything idiotic.”
Define idiotic.
Gently, as if I might break him with a touch, I turn his chin toward me, and before he can open his eyes and ask what the hell I’m doing, I lean in and brush my lips against his.
His eyes fly open, but he doesn’t move away. Our noses touch, barely, as he looks at me, his ey
es burning with a question that I answer by kissing him again, deeper this time, fuller, unafraid. His whole body tenses, and I wonder if I’ve made a horrible mistake. But then he relaxes and responds with ease, sliding his uninjured arm around my waist and pulling me close.
He lies back, pulling me with him onto the grass. I settle on top of him, running my hand through his hair as I kiss him harder. I always knew we would be good at this. How could I have ever thought it could be any other way?
Cody runs his hand down my back and over my side, over the bruise from my collision with Prescott. I draw in a sharp breath.
He pulls away slightly. “Did I hurt you, or do you just get turned on really fast?”
“Maybe a little of both,” I mumble against his mouth. “I have a bruise on my right hip.”
He pushes us up into a sitting position and moves his hand away from my bruise as he kisses me, holding nothing back, his gentleness turning to hunger. He drags his lips to my jaw and down my neck. We have so much lost time to make up for.
I press myself against him, even though we can’t get closer. He lets out a small moan, and I slide my hand under his shirt, dragging a finger down his stomach and over the button of his jeans.
He grabs my hand and withdraws his face from my neck.
“We are in the middle of a park,” he breathes.
“The perks of choosing abnormal hours of human activity to make out.” I lean in to kiss him again.
When I start pulling off his shirt, he stops me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
He laughs quietly as he slides a finger against my jaw. “I have a fractured ulna. You have bruises and possibly a concussion. One wrong move, and we will both be screaming, and not in a good way.”
I smile, resting my forehead against his.
“Another day,” he whispers. “When I can use both my hands.”
“I can think of plenty of things you can do with one hand. Or no hands, come to think of it.”
“Shit, Marnie.”
“It turns out I’m very attracted to you. I thought you should know.”
He laughs again and kisses me one more time. Then we untangle ourselves from each other and lie back in the grass. I rest my head on his chest and drape my arm over his stomach. It’s brand-new—all of this—but at the same time, it feels completely normal, like we’ve done it a million times. It makes me want to kick myself for being afraid of something that, in the end, wasn’t scary at all.
“You know this is the first step down the path on which all friendships die, right?”
His hand slides into my hair. “Marnie, our friendship has endured way too much to ever die. It’s made of Teflon.” He kisses the side of my head. “We’re invincible.”
Invincible. I like the sound of that.
“What changed your mind?” he asks.
“I didn’t change my mind. I moved a giant block of denial.” Maybe one day I’ll make him a list of all his qualities that make it impossible to just be friends, that made our daring leap unavoidable. It’ll be a really long list to rival Dickens and Tolstoy and Hugo. His godlike skills on the baseball field, his sense of humor that is so compatible with mine, his perfectly crooked grin…
For a long while, we lie there in silence, maybe wondering if we’re dreaming and if we will wake up in our own rooms at any second.
We’re silent for so long, I check to see if he’s fallen asleep. But when I tilt my head, his eyes are open, and he’s staring up at the sky.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask.
He smiles. “You. And today. And how this morning when I woke up I was thinking about what I’d eat for breakfast and how nervous I was for the team to play. The last thing I expected to happen was all of this.”
I suppose I should take this as a romantic statement, but at the mention of the game, the crushing weight of disappointment falls on me again.
“What’s wrong?”
I let go of him. “I’m sorry we lost.”
He props himself up on his good arm. “Don’t be sorry.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. But I am sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“If you had been pitching, maybe we would have won.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I wasn’t pitching, and you were, and you played your best and kicked some serious ass—just like I knew you would. Who knows? Even if I had played, we still could have lost. Maybe in some other parallel universe we did win.”
He’s right, of course, but I so badly wish we could have won, even if it meant the stress of playing at state.
Cody reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “By the way, I heard what Chizz said about playing on the team next year.”
I grin a little.
“Don’t even think about it,” he says. “I’m pitching next year. You can be my relief.”
“If I decide to try out, I won’t go easy on you.”
“You go easy on me?” he says incredulously. “It’s definitely the other way around.”
I scoff. “Sure, okay. Whatever you say.”
“Do we need to have a pitching contest? There’s probably a ball we could fish out of the pond.”
I sidle up to him and burrow my face in his shoulder. “You know what else I’m sorry for? I’m sorry that we had to wait this long for this to happen because I’m a stubborn-assed chicken.”
“Marnie—”
“I mean, how many moments like this could we have already had if I wasn’t such a dum-dum.”
“Marnie, stop it,” he says. “We were both chickens. It’s both our faults. But I would not trade anything that has happened to get us here for a few extra kisses. All the stupid shit we’ve done, all our pointless arguments, all the nights we’ve spent together doing everything but kissing—that’s what makes us us, and I wouldn’t wish for anything different.” He nudges my foot with his. “Would you?”
I lean over him. “I would…not.” I slowly lift the hem of his shirt. “Here is a good place to be.”
He pulls me closer and whispers against my lips, “Here is my favorite place.”
And I tell him, though I’m sure he already knows, “Mine too.”
Acknowledgments
Sometimes I think about this book, and I am utterly in awe of how it is actually a thing. I started writing about Marnie when I was eleven. Back then, it was a never-ending plotless story about the silly things Marnie and her friends did. Every few years, I would revisit Marnie, rewrite the story from the beginning, and then forget about it without ever finishing. Until 2015, when Pitch Wars, hosted by Brenda Drake, came along, and it gave me that much-needed push to finish the story.
So I thank you, Brenda, and everyone else at Pitch Wars, for all you do for the online writing community. You motivate us and bring us together, and you are the starting point for so many writers’ dreams, including mine.
You also introduced me to two amazing mentors, Chelsea Bobulski and Lori Goldstein. YOU GUYS ROCK! You made this story 9,238,475,923 times better, and you helped me cross the bridge into this crazy world of publishing.
Thank you to this crazy world that includes the badass Courtney Miller-Callihan! I wish I could insert all my favorite thank-you GIFs here. I don’t know how you do it, but you make things happen, and you always know the answer to everything. You are the BOMB DOT COM.
And thanks to Annette and everyone else at Sourcebooks for also making Out of Left Field 9,238,475,923 times better.
To the parental unit and siblings—I know you guys don’t really understand why I’m always pounding at my keyboard, but you let me do it, and you let me be the weirdo that I am. Here is the product of that weirdness, so thanks for embracing it with me.
About the Author
Kris Hui Lee is a contemporary YA
author who also doubles as a graphic designer. When not writing or designing, she can be found cuddling with a doggo on the floor. Learn more at krishuilee.tumblr.com.
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