by Pippa Grant
Once again, I’m scrambling for balance. “Stop that meatball!”
He snags me by the collar and yanks. I make a gurgled noise and spin, but he’s got a tight hold. “Hands off the mascots, dude. You don’t want beating up a meatball to be your legacy.”
“She’s stealing the damn costume.”
“Huh.”
I yank myself free, but he leaps between me and the rapidly retreating meatball.
“Get out of my way.” I finish the order with a shove that doesn’t budge him.
“Elliott, man, you really want the meatball to win the mascot contest? Let it go. Fly and be free, meatball, but don’t be the Fireballs’ new mascot, right? Also, you didn’t hear me say that. I promised Lila I liked the meatball best. But I swear, she was going to trade me away if I didn’t.”
My chest is heaving while I glare at him. First, because what the fuck is wrong with him that he wants to play for this team—the guy’s good enough that he could’ve had three championship rings for any other team at this point in his career by now—and second, because I can’t tell him why we have to stop the damn meatball.
Not like I can blurt out the fucking meatball knows my secret, because I don’t talk about the pristine condition of my V-card with anyone.
Which begs the question, how did she know?
How the hell did she know?
I don’t have a lot of practice denying it, because I don’t have a lot of practice being confronted with it. Which means she caught me off-guard, and now I’ve basically confirmed it for her.
Fuck.
If I have nightmares about meatballs, I’m gonna be pissed.
Cooper punches me lightly in the arm, one of those I got you, buddy hits. “Look, we’ll put a pirate eye patch on you and say you got meatball sauce in your eye while you tried to stop it, and you’ll be a hero, plus you’ll only have to sit out maybe two games. No publicity is bad publicity, and a kidnapped mascot? This is like gold for getting more people to talk about the Fireballs.”
This.
This is what I’ve been traded into. We need a meatball-napping to get publicity, because the team’s game sucks so hard.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try some of that deep breathing stuff my brother swears by since he married a nutcase, and I wish for the umpteenth time in the last seventy-two hours that this is all a bad dream.
“Huh.” Cooper glances back at the door. “Knowing Lila, this could be a planned kidnapping.”
Lila. The woman who inherited the Fireballs a few months back, and one of my sister’s best friends. Long story.
“You think Lila set up a meatball kidnapping for publicity?” This is the most insane conversation I’ve ever had, and my brother’s married to a woman who knows over a thousand euphemisms for penis and uses them liberally, and my sister’s autocorrected text messages need their own museum.
He nods. “She definitely set this up. Which means we can both put it out of our minds, and head out to the club.”
At that, I perk up.
A club?
Oh, hell, yes.
The damn meatball was probably right about something else—I should at least be legit attracted to the first woman I bang, and not just getting a hard-on at the idea of the first vagina that signs up for the job.
The meatball was right?
I have issues.
“Point the way,” I tell Cooper.
Out in the parking lot, I hop on my bike and follow Cooper’s truck through the Palm Bay traffic to a less congested area of citrus groves. He turns down a dusty road that feels close to the compound, but I don’t see a club.
All I see is a dilapidated shack with half a dozen cars and trucks parked at it.
Half a dozen sports cars and souped-up trucks that were parked at the ball field a few hours ago.
Dammit.
I’m not getting laid.
I’m getting initiated.
Initiated into the worst team in baseball.
And I’ll do it, because that’s what you do for your team.
It’s not being on a new team that has me pissed. Not the guys. Not the management. Not even moving away from New York and family.
Wait.
Yes, I’m pissed that I’m not playing for New York anymore. It’s my home team. The team I thought I’d retire from. The team so close to home that my family frequently showed up for games, and sometimes joined me for parties afterward.
But the shit icing on the sewage cake of being traded away from my home team is that they didn’t trade me just anywhere.
Nope.
They had to trade me to the worst team in baseball.
Tell me all you want that the new ownership and the new management and the new coaches will make a difference for the Fireballs this year, but there are two things I know for damn certain:
One, curses are real in baseball.
And two, my game goes to shit anytime I get past second base with a woman.
If I’m going to play on a losing team, then why am I going to keep my pants zipped for another year in the name of my game?
My agent tells me I’m stuck. The Fireballs won’t budge on the idea of trading me away as fast as they got me. They want your experience, he keeps saying. Lila knows you’ll be good for the team. She’s probably good for the team too, Elliott. Get your head out of the superstitions and give them a chance.
Says the guy who won’t negotiate a deal without his mango-kale-acai power smoothie in his special smoothie cup sitting by his side, who still carries a lucky rabbit foot on his keychain, and who can’t operate without his monthly psychic readings.
I’d fire him, except he keeps getting me sweet endorsement deals for everything from motorcycles to axes.
He can’t break a curse though. And I’m sorry for Lila that she inherited one, but I’m getting laid.
Be a team player, show up for work, and play a damn good game? Sure. That’s what I always do, because it’s what the job requires. But it’s not my responsibility to give up what every other guy on the team has to try to fight the impossible.
And the Fireballs winning anything?
That’s fucking impossible.
“How’s this go?” I ask Cooper while we walk to the shack. “Strip me naked and leave me to find my way through the trees to the compound? Or are we getting drunk?”
He barks out a laugh. “You’ve been playing for the wrong team.”
He swings the door open, and there’s half the team hunched around a table that’s as rickety as this whole tinderbox.
“Welcome to a new era, gentlemen,” Max Cole says while Luca Rossi—a fellow new guy on the team this year who was with New York for his rookie season a few years back—gives me a help! look from the corner. “We have work to do.”
Work.
Not partying.
Not drinking.
Not getting laid.
“What kind of work?”
Darren Greene flashes a bright white grin, his dark eyes lighting up like he hasn’t played for the worst team in baseball for the last three years. He leans back so I can see the spread on the table. There’s a baseball, a voodoo doll, a pack of cards, a matchbox, and—is that a dildo with the Fireballs logo on it?
He points to a hand-knitted orange and yellow bat cover, which is as strange as you think it is. “I promised Tanesha our baby wouldn’t be born to losers. We’re breaking curses, because we’re gonna fucking win this year.”
Win.
Right.
Darren would have better luck keeping that promise by asking to get traded.
But I scrub a hand over my face and dig deep to find my team spirit, because this is the team we have.
Sure.
Win.
I’ll humor them, even though I know that the Fireballs are where baseball players go for their careers to die.
I hope I’m wrong.
I hope the new ownership is going to make a difference.
But when a team has this
much talent, and still sets records three years in a row for progressively worse seasons, without going to the play-offs in forever, it’s hard to have hope.
Especially at the price of my blue balls.
3
Mackenzie
The next afternoon sees me at the ballpark for another afternoon of eating popcorn—two handfuls between innings, and one kernel at a time while the Fireballs are batting.
“Are you sure you don’t want a hamburger?” Sarah Dempsey, my best friend in the entire universe, asks me as our home team heads into the dugout for the bottom of the eighth inning. She flew in from Copper Valley to join me for a few games, because we’ve always done games together, even if this is our first spring training.
I shake my head. “It’s time to turn over a new leaf. All of last year’s habits and superstitions didn’t do squat. We finished with a record I can’t even think about without crying. So I’m turning over a new leaf and trying some new things.” I gesture to the field. “Like attending spring training to get the team off to a good start.”
And like anonymously texting the Fireballs’ owners video of Meaty the Meatball waving goodbye from a dolphin cruise boat this morning.
Sarah’s boyfriend, Beck, is good friends with Tripp and Lila, the team’s new owners, and I’ve spent hours and hours having in-depth conversations with them about everything the Fireballs need to do to improve, which means I do feel guilty about stealing the mascot.
But it had to be done.
They weren’t listening to reason, and it’s completely unreasonable to replace Fiery the Dragon with a flaming meatball.
“Do I still have to go to the bathroom when we have runners in scoring position?” Sarah asks.
“It worked the last two times today, didn’t it?” I sent her to the bathroom for both the second inning, when Darren Greene was on second and Cooper Rock hit him in, and then again in the seventh, when Brooks hit a home run, which means he didn’t go out and get laid last night after I made my getaway.
Phew.
I was pretty certain Cooper would make sure he got back to the compound where the players are staying, because Cooper loves this team as much as I do, maybe more, but Cooper’s also a total horndog, and to the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t know Brooks needs his virginity to hit home runs, so there was that bit of doubt.
Like they might’ve gone out and had an orgy or something, which I really don’t want to think about, since even though I can’t talk to Cooper, I’ve started thinking about him like a brother I never had.
Sarah laughs about the bathroom superstition, and I smile at her. She’s adorable, with dark hair and dark eyes and a bright smile. She glows without any makeup at all, which is basically the opposite of me. We bonded in college because we both got the socially awkward gene. I cover my awkwardness with makeup. She used to cover hers by hiding from the world, but now she owns who she is, which is what completely and totally charmed her boyfriend into bending over backwards to win her over.
Beck’s an international fashion mogul and recovering underwear model who got his start in the Copper Valley-based boy band Bro Code. While Sarah and I are hanging in the bleachers, he’s up in the owners’ suite with Tripp—also formerly of Bro Code—and Lila.
Basically, Sarah was my in with the Fireballs higher-ups. She’s also my in with the players I’ve met, if you can call it meeting when I simply sit there and gape at them, since Beck is also friends with like all of Copper Valley, which includes the pro sports athletes.
I haven’t told her what I did to Meaty, because she’d probably tell on me, and I don’t want to make things awkward for her.
“Look! The mascots are up. I didn’t think we were going to see them this game.” She points to the field, where the firefly, the duck, and the echidna are scratching their heads and looking around.
Glow the Firefly, has this huge round glowing ball behind his butt, because that’s what makes him a firefly. His wings are awesome, and he’d make a great mascot.
For another team. Not for the Fireballs.
Firequacker, the duck with attitude, is here because a family of horny ducks invaded Duggan Field back home, and so when Tripp was tormenting Lila over an encounter they apparently had with the amorous creatures, Firequacker ended up on the finalist list.
I’m seriously worried the Fireballs will end up with a duck as a mascot, because the ducks back home became real celebrities over the winter.
As for Spike the Echidna, I have no idea why he’s an option. I’m running a website and social media pages to bring back Fiery, and every single day, people ask what an echidna even is. Apparently it’s some kind of fireproof spiny anteater from Australia, but all I know is that he’s not Fiery, and that’s the important part.
The three mascots stop at home plate, silently trash-talking each other before the base-running contest that the announcer is talking about, Glow shaking his big firefly butt—and yes, I know he’s Sarah’s choice, since he’s a firefly, and that’s her favorite canceled TV show—and Firequacker thrusting his hips and Spike wiggling his claws.
Then they all stop and look to an empty space beside them, because there’s a mascot conspicuously missing.
My face flushes, and I have to try hard not to squirm in my seat.
Sarah frowns at home plate. “Where’s the meatball?”
The video screen over center field suddenly flickers, and oh my god.
It’s the video.
The video I sent of the meatball waving as he headed out to sea.
Sarah bursts into laughter.
So does the entire stadium.
The other mascots look at each other and start gesticulating wildly, and it’s like they’re saying why didn’t I think of that?
“This fan re-engagement campaign is really working.” Sarah’s beaming as the mascots do their mascot thing, clearly debating if they’re going to run the bases while Meaty’s abandoned them. “I mean, everything Tripp and Lila are doing is working, but the mascot competition is really taking it up a notch.”
I seal my lips together to keep from blurting out my question about why Tripp and Lila aren’t concerned that their meatball was kidnapped, and how could they betray their team by turning Meaty leaving into a promo opportunity for the mascot?
Because now everyone will be talking about the mascot that ran away.
And what if someone starts a Save Meaty campaign?
What then?
I channel that inner peace that my dads are always talking about, breathe deeply through my diaphragm, and go back to concentrating on my popcorn while my brain spins about what the hell I’m supposed to do with the mascot costume now.
That’s a problem for later.
After we win this baseball game. Which means I need to get back to eating one kernel of popcorn at a time, because the Fireballs are up to bat.
Sarah nudges me. “Tripp told Beck that your bring back Fiery campaign is driving a ton of fan mail to the home office with write-in votes.”
I mean, duh. That’s the point. But I still give her the surprised eyes. “Seriously?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you. Tripp’s worried you’ll do something extreme if you think your efforts are working.”
Uh-oh. I dive for my water bottle to cover my reaction to how very, very close to the truth she’s getting. After a big gulp, I yank my Fireballs hat lower over my eyes and stare out at the field. “Like he doesn’t want Fiery to come back too.”
“Like he’d tell Lila no for anything these days,” she counters. “By the way, were you planning on telling me about the picketers you’re gathering for the home opener next month?”
“I don’t want to make anything weird for you. Like, making you pick between me and your boyfriend’s best friends.”
“Mackenzie, there aren’t sides. All of us want the Fireballs to win and find their fans again. Family doesn’t abandon family just because we don’t always see eye-to-eye about how to reach a common
goal. Plus, it’s fun to watch Tripp squirm when Beck points out that Lila’s totally wrong about the Fireballs needing a new mascot.”
“He is not giving Tripp trouble.” Beck’s the nicest man on the entire planet. He’d never intentionally make anyone uncomfortable.
But Sarah’s smile is turning devious. “I wish you could’ve made it to lunch. He was hilarious.” She drops her voice an octave to imitate her boyfriend. “Lila, are you putting all of the mascots on a pension plan? Like, what happens if it turns out Spike develops a heart murmur caused by all the anxiety over people not knowing what an echidna is? Or if that bird protection group puts Firequacker on an endangered species list and needs to use him for genetic and fertility testing? I hear that doesn’t pay well. And a baseball can do some serious damage to a real firefly. I’m talking SMUSH, you know? Can the Fireballs really afford to be the team with multiple failed mascots? Fiery can be rehabbed. He can get back to eating right and exercising and meditating, and he can come back. You have to BELIEVE.”
I tip my head back and laugh. “He is such a nut.”
“We’re both firmly on Team Fiery. Oh, I almost forgot. Cooper invited Beck to the compound for a little get-together tonight. You should come with us. I’ll bet you can rally some of the players to give testimonials about Fiery too.”
Almost forgot. No, she didn’t.
I slide her a side eye while Francisco Lopez does that thing he does where he plucks his uniform at both his shoulders, then grabs his crotch before squaring up to the plate after tipping a foul ball for strike two, and I force myself to remember that she doesn’t know I actually talked to Brooks Elliott last night. “You mean so I can go catatonic in the presence of that many gods?”
“You know how we’re trying new habits and tactics for good luck for the Fireballs? Maybe they need you to talk to them.”
I gasp.
She arches a dark brow.
“You did not go there,” I whisper.
The crowds around us erupt in booing, and I whip my head around to see Lopez kick the grass and throw his bat as he marches back to the dugout.
“Oh, come on,” Sarah yells as we watch the replay on the jumbotron. “That wasn’t a strike!”