by McKayla Box
I frown at her. “That’s not what I mean.”
She laughs. “I know.”
“I shouldn’t have kissed him,” I say. “It screwed everything up. Like, it almost felt like we were getting to a place where it was going to work. He was actually talking to me. Not at me. And he was sincere.”
“About what?”
“Just about something I’ve been pestering him about,” I tell her, hoping I don’t sound too evasive. “He finally gave me an honest answer.” I shake my head. “And then we kissed and it all went to shit.”
Shea raises an eyebrow. “Sounds like the cop is what made it go to shit.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I really don’t know.”
And I really don’t. About anything. What we did, how he reacted to me when he dropped me off, and what to do about the story.
“What would’ve happened if the cop hadn’t interrupted you guys?” Shea asks, setting her empty bowl on the coffee table.
“I don’t know.” I feel like I’m on repeat here, the same words being dubbed over and over again. “I mean, I know what was about to happen. For both of us. But I have no idea if it would’ve gone further or stopped or what.”
“Did you want to?” she asks. “I mean, did you want to keep going?”
“In the moment?” I nod. “Yeah, definitely. I mean…shit. Yes, I totally did.”
“You haven’t had sex in forever,” she says.
I glare at her. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“I’m just saying.” She winks at me and continues. “Sometimes you just need to get off one way or another.”
I laugh. “Right. I mean, that was absolutely going to happen. I think it was more a question of what was going to happen after that.”
Shea thinks for a moment. “Houston totally seems like the kind of guy who can go for a second round immediately.”
“Stop.”
“That’s my professional opinion,” she says. “I’m pretty sure he would’ve been capable of fucking you after you jerked him off.”
“Oh my god stop,” I tell her, holding up my hands.
“Why are you embarrassed?” she asks. “You made out with the hottest guy on campus and a guy who’s going to be worth a million bucks some day and famous? Why in the world would you be embarrassed that you got a little down and dirty with him?”
“I’m not embarrassed.” I grab a lock of hair and begin to twirl it around my fingers. “It’s just…I don’t know what it is. I’m trying to write a story about the guy, he finally opens up to me, and we damn nearly do it in his truck. That isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”
“But it did,” she says matter-of-factly. “You can’t walk that back.”
I know she’s right. I’m just not sure what to do about it. In the moment, it felt exactly right. Better than that, even.
But the way it ended?
That just proved to me that it was a mistake.
For a bunch of reasons.
“He made it pretty clear he was done,” I tell her. “When he dropped me off, he basically said he didn’t give a shit about what happened and to get out of his truck. I tried to shatter the window when I slammed the door.”
“So then move on,” she says with a shrug.
“Move on?”
“Yeah, move on.” She reaches for the fleece blanket draped across the back of the chair and covers herself with it “Let him go. Write your story. Be done with him and it.”
She says it like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.
I’m just not sure how to do any of it.
Chapter 35
HOUSTON
“You got in late last night,” Beck says, tossing me the ball.
I catch it. “You my mother now?”
“Just an observation.”
It’s Friday afternoon and we’re finishing a light workout. It’s our last one before the opener tomorrow. Nothing heavy, just some easy toss and guys taking batting practice. It’s more to shake out the nerves than to get any real work done.
Which is a good thing, because I’m having a hard time getting dialed in.
I toss the ball back to him. “Yeah, I got in late. No big deal.”
The ball thuds into his mitt and he walks toward me, his hat on backward, squinting into the sun. It’s warm today, the slightest of breezes, a few puffy clouds in the sky to occasionally temper the sun’s rays. Perfect baseball weather.
Beck glances toward the fence near the dugout. “Lila wasn’t here today.”
“So?”
“So just making another observation.”
“You’re full of that shit today, I guess.”
“Guess so.”
I turn and look at the field, watching the other guys work. Most of the team seems loose. That’s a good sign. It means they’ll be ready to play tomorrow. Which means I need to be ready to pitch my ass off for them.
“What’s going on, Houston?” Beck asks. “And don’t blow me off, dude.”
I walk over to the fence and lean against it, watching our teammates. “I told her.”
“Told her what?”
“About the suspension.”
“The truth?”
I nod.
He sets his hands on his hips. “Okay. How’d that go?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I just told her. She listened.”
“Why’d you tell her?”
“Because she called my mom and I didn’t think she was going to let it go, so I wanted her to hear it from me.”
He nods. “Makes sense to me. She gonna write about it?”
“No clue,” I tell him. “Probably.”
“Then nothing you can do,” he says. “Done deal. Let it go.”
I toe the grass with my cleat. “Yeah, I guess.”
We stand there in silence for a few seconds.
“What else?” he asks.
“What do you mean what else?”
He frowns at me. “Dude, how many times do we have to do this? I know you like you know yourself. I can tell something else is going on. It’s kinda my job.”
“Right,” I say. “Okay. We sort of…hooked up.”
His right brow arches. “You and Lila?”
I nod.
“Damn,” he says, laughing. “Alright.”
“Why the fuck are you laughing?”
“I mean, I could sort of see it coming a mile away.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughs again. “Man, you’ve been so locked on her this week. You weren’t fooling me.”
“She was with me for the story,” I say. “I had to talk to her.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Beck says. “I saw you looking at her. Kissing her at the bar. Oh, and I know. You did that to help her out.” He frowns. “Bullshit, dude. You wanted to kiss her. I know she’s been a pain in your ass, but don’t lie to me and tell me you haven’t been thinking about hooking up with her. Because obviously you were.”
“It wasn’t obvious.”
He grins at me. “Obvious like a fastball over the middle of the plate.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Whatever.”
“Whatever is right,” he says. “So what happened?”
“I was just telling her about the suspension and my mom,” I tell him. “We were in the hospital parking lot. And it just sort of happened.”
“You guys had sex in the parking lot?”
“We were in my truck and we didn’t get that far,” I say. “Close. A cop interrupted.”
“A cop?”
“It was late and he saw us parked there,” I say. “Just basically told us to leave. But we were…in the middle of it.”
He lets out a whistle and shakes his head. “Wow. So is that cop-blocked or cock-blocked?”
I smack him in the shoulder. “Shut the fuck up.”
He laughs. “So then what happened?”
I think for a second. “So then she went right back to talking about the su
spension and I got pissed and dropped her off and she slammed the door and I bailed. End of story.”
“Is it, though?”
I shrug. “She got what she wanted.”
That damn eyebrow of his goes up again. “Did she?”
“Shut up, dude.”
“I’m serious,” Beck says. “Not like that. I’m just saying that maybe she wants more than a hookup in the parking lot.”
“I don’t think so,” I tell him, shaking my head. “She was right back on the suspension after we left. So I was like okay. Adios.”
Truth is, I was surprised that she jumped back to the suspension thing so fast. I made the mistake of thinking she was there for something other than the story, but she cleared that up right away. Which was fine.
I don’t need that shit starting the season.
No distractions.
Focus.
She was making it easy on me.
“You sure you’re good with that?” Beck asks.
For a second, I flash back to being in the truck with her. What she felt like. What she tasted like. How badly I wanted her right there in the truck.
But I need to let that shit go.
I tap Beck’s chest with my glove. “More than good. Time for us to start winning games.” I nod. “So I’m more than good with being done with Lila Oakley.”
Chapter 36
LILA
I’m sipping my coffee, staring at a blank screen.
Again.
Because all I can see is his face.
It’s Saturday morning. Shea’s still asleep and I’m trying to get caught up on schoolwork and do something about this article that has taken over my life.
Except I still can’t come up with a single word for the stupid thing.
I’ve been rattled ever since Houston dropped me off. He took everything I said the wrong way. I know he thinks all I care about is the suspension and the story, but he’s wrong.
I brought up the damn suspension because I had no idea what else to say to him.
It freaked me out.
But then it pissed me off that he just tore off and I haven’t heard a word from him since.
I know he’s getting ready for the game today, but still. I texted him last night to ask if we could talk and you know what I got?
Absolutely nothing.
So it should be easy to sit here and write something.
But it’s not.
And I have no clue why.
I drink some more of the coffee and Shea shuffles out of her room, her eyes only half-open, her feet encased in fluffy white slippers.
“Are you doing homework?” she asks, groggily. “On a Saturday?”
I nod. “Yeah. There’s still coffee in the pot if you want it.”
She grunts and heads into the kitchen. She pulls a mug from the cupboard and pours herself a cup, adding cream from the carton of half and half on the counter. She shuffles back to me, holding the mug to her lips., squinting at my laptop. “There’s nothing on the screen.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
She shrugs and sits down on the couch. “Aren’t you supposed to be at a baseball game or something?”
“It’s nine in the morning.”
She takes a careful sip of her coffee. “Don’t they play baseball in the morning?”
I roll my eyes. “The game’s this afternoon. I don’t have to be there yet.”
“Are you going to talk to him?”
“Who?”
“Babe Ruth,” she says, then frowns. “Who do you think I mean?”
“I’m not talking to Houston,” I tell her. “And he clearly doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“I texted him last night. He didn’t answer.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Gross.”
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “I think I expected it.”
“You don’t have to talk to him at the game? Since you’re covering it?”
“I mean, I will, probably,” I admit. “But it won’t just be me and him. There will be others around. It’ll be fine and it’ll just be about baseball.”
“How romantic,” she deadpans.
“It’s not supposed to be romantic,” I remind her. “I’m reporting on the game.”
“Hmm,” she says, then takes a sip from the mug, a longer one this time. “If you say so.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you moped around all day yesterday and you’re up on a Saturday morning, pretending to work, when all that really means is you couldn’t sleep,” she says. “It means that boy is in your head.”
I want to tell her she’s wrong, but she’s not.
Houston is in my head.
And I’m dreading going to the game.
Because I will have to talk to him. It won’t matter how he pitches. I’ll need to talk to him after the game because I cover the team and that’s part of the job. You talk to the guys that play. Given that it’s the first game of the season and all of the hype around both him and the team, it’s hard to see a way to avoid it.
And I’m not looking forward to it.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Shea asks.
“No.”
She peers at me over the top of the mug.
“Maybe a little,” I concede, reaching for my own coffee. “But it’s just because I’m thinking about the game and the stupid article. He’s a part of all that.”
She takes her time answering. “Right.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’re in denial,” she says. “And let me be clear. That boy is astounding looking, and if I’d been the one in his truck, giving him a hand job and didn’t get to finish, I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it, either.”
“You really aren’t any help.”
“I don’t blame you,” she says, as if she hasn’t even heard me. “At all. I’d be distracted, too. And a little nervous. But you’re forgetting one thing.”
I frown. “And what’s that?”
She stands up and walks toward the kitchen with her mug. “That boy doesn’t let anyone get close to him. Unless he wants them close.” She stops and looks at me. “He opened the door to you. That wasn’t by mistake, Lila. Whatever you’re feeling about him?” She lifts her mug up and points it in my direction. “He’s feeling it, too.”
Chapter 37
HOUSTON
I feel good.
I’m loose.
There’s sweat on my neck, my arm is warm, and there’s a tiny knot in my gut.
And that’s exactly how it should be on game day.
Beck and I have finished our warm-up session down in the pen. I pull on my jacket to keep my arm warm, even though the sun is out and it’s going to be a hot day. The stands are already packed. Guys are running sprints in the outfield, trying to burn off that nervous energy.
The Clearwater guys are on their side of the field in their visiting yellow uniforms, doing the same things we are. Stretching, sprinting, getting loose.
All of it makes me feel comfortable.
I’m in my element.
This is where I belong.
Beck fiddles with the straps of his mask as we walk toward the dugout. “You had pretty good pop out there. Don’t shake me off the first time through the order. I’ve got these guys locked down and I know what you need to throw.”
“Got it.”
“I know your adrenaline is firing right now, but we’re gonna find you a nice rhythm,” he says. “Not too fast, not too slow. Wanna make sure you don’t rush. You don’t like something, step off, and we’ll figure it out. You’re in charge out there. Don’t let anyone else dictate the tempo.”
I nod. He says mostly the same thing before every game and he should. I need to be reminded and I like the routine. It puts me in the right head space to go out and pitch.
Music pours over the loudspeakers. There’s a buzz, an energy to everything that
can’t really be replicated anywhere else. I’ve missed games and I’m ready to go.
Guys trickle back to the dugout, slapping each other on the back, encouraging one another. They stow their gear in the usual spots, check their bats, and make sure their cleats are laced up perfectly.
We step out to the first base line and line up for the anthem. I don’t hear much of it. I’m already visualizing what my pitches will look like, how I want to grip the ball, and going through the mental notes in my head about their hitters. Beck and I have been studying their lineup for days and I know each of them by heart, just like he does. I know their strengths and weaknesses, and I know how we’ll attack each guy.
The anthem ends and we head back into the dugout. Guys do their hype thing, but I stay out of it. No one but Beck talks to me on days I’m pitching. I don’t want anything breaking my focus and concentration. I pull my glove on and tug my cap down as low as I can get it. I take a deep breath.
Focus.
“And now here come your Baymont Bombers!” the announcer cries over the speakers.
The crowd erupts and music blares from the speakers again. Most of the guys run out of the dugout to their spots on the field. I take my time and walk slowly to the mound. Someone once told me that the pitcher should take his time getting to the hill because it’s like you’re a rock star and you want make sure everyone gets a look. I liked that. So I’m always the last one out and I soak it all in as I get to the mound.
I immediately go to work on the pitching rubber, using my spikes to rough up the dirt in front of the white strip, making sure I’m able to really leverage my foot against it to push off and throw. When I’m satisfied, I look at Beck and he tosses me the ball. I rotate it in my fingers, then go through our warm up tosses. I focus on his glove and I’m oblivious to everything else going on around me. I know the guys behind me are tossing a ball around, but I’m working on finding that tunnel vision I need to throw as well as I can.
When I’m ready, I nod at Beck and step off the mound. He fires the ball down to second and I circle to the back of the mound until Cash tosses me the ball. I hear the music thumping in the speakers and the crowd gets on its feet for the first pitch. I tuck my glove under my arm and rub the ball with both hands, making sure it’s as dry as possible so I can grip it tightly. I get my glove back on and drop the ball into the pocket. I readjust my cap, take a deep breath, and take a long look at the stands from right to left. Again, it was something that someone taught me years ago. Take it all in so that you know where you’re at and what you’re there to do.