Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Olivia POV
G rumbling and on edge, I let myself into my dorm room. “I've got to get that interview somehow. Without Cooper around. But how? I go there at night, he's there. I show up during the day and there he is. Making me want to resort to Storm Cooper violence. Gah!” I sunk down onto the couch and groaned.
“Talking to yourself again?” Cathy's voice came out of nowhere. I practically jumped out of my skin.
I sat up and found her half-hidden by her monitors in the corner of the room. “Only when I need an expert opinion on something.”
She leaned back and came fully into view. “I'd call someone else,” she said with a cocky grin.
“Hey, now.” I stuck my tongue out at her.
“Unless it's about baseball.”
“Or some baseball players.” Hilda shut the door to her room and joined the conversation. She sat on the edge of the couch with her ginormous sippy water bottle.
“Baseball, sure. The players?” I rolled my eyes. “They're as impossible as most men.” Cheap shots are what I expect from reporters. Wah wah wah. Ass.
“That's what I say. But still it's Antonio, Antonio, Antonio. 'you must marry him, es un gran partido . Just es asombroso.”
“No, no, chica. No casada, ma querida. Enterrar la batata.” I rolled my r's in the absolute worst Spanish accent anyone could have the misfortune of hearing.
Hilda tipped her head back and growled at the ceiling—a sure sign I was having the desired effect. The series of knotted lumps inside my chest from my time cooped up with Coop finally loosened.
“You prefer mojar el bizcocho?” I snickered.
“Why did I ever try to teach you Spanish?” Her dark-colored eyes found mine. One eyebrow raised, but her mouth twitched. She wouldn't be able to hold out much longer.
“Because you knew it'd mucho help my street cred in hashtag baseball life.” I tilted my head and grinned.
“I did not teach you these idiotic phrases.” She pointed a finger at me. “Que chingaos.”
“I memorized a Reddit post with dozens of them,” I warned. “Admit you like him.”
“He smiles too big, like nothing ever phases him. I tell him 'never', and he just smiles and says he won't give up. He knows its destiny or some loco bullshit.”
“Cachetear el querubin.”
“Why?” Hilda threw up her hands.
“I have no idea what's happening right now,” Cathy said as she moved to lean against the back of the couch.
“Liv's being an idiot. In two languages.” Hilda stood over me, hands on both hips.
“Echarse un polvo.” I pressed my lips together to hold in my laughter, but I wasn't going to make it. She scowled and I lost it, doubling over into a fit of giggles. Cathy just stared at me.
“Yes, yes, you've had your fun.” Hilda let out a sharp breath and sat down on the floor next to me. “He does have a nice ass.”
“I knew it!”
“What?” Hilda flipped open her textbook, laying it on top of the coffee table. “I have to study anatomy for my major. It's one hundred por ciento a clinical diagnosis.” Her lips curved into a wicked smile.
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Cathy shook her head and went back to her computers and logic.
I narrowed my eyes and pointed at Hilda. “Bailar el mambo horizontal.”
“Livvie!” Hilda stood up. She grabbed and threw a couch pillow at me.
I laughed harder as she picked it up and threw it again. I couldn't deny it, I pretty well deserved it.
A mostly-comfortable silence hovered in the air. Hilda occasionally snapped a page of her textbook as she read. The whir and clickity clack of Cathy's computers and her typing faded into the background of my mind.
“My mother would struggle with feeling shut in.” His deep voice soothed and ached at the same time. I got this weird feeling at that moment, like Breslin Cooper was more than what could be captured with a camera or words on a page. He was like seven-year-old me, lost and terrified, hiding behind shoes and coats, desperate to keep the nightmares from tearing me apart.
“And then the door opens and he goes right back to being an asshat.”
“Don't you have homework or studying or something besides this grumbling and sighing routine?”
I blinked. Hilda looked up and met my gaze. Warm brown eyes with exotic tints of greenish gold gleamed beside her perfect skin. “I need to write my article, but there's a flea ridden guard dog with a bad attitude in my way.”
“They let the old lady keep a dog?”
“Yeah, his name's Cooper. Antonio knows him as Coop.”
“You mean your baseball crush is now a, ah, a menace.”
“Menace, bane of my existence. Somewhere in there.” And then, for no reason at all, my brain recalled my first conversation with Dotty. “No, and I'm such an idiot.” I groaned and threw myself back into a lying position on the couch. “I even told her he was my baseball crush. Why?”
“You told the lady you're supposed to interview and who lives at the senior center where he works, that you have a thing for Coop?” Cathy looked down at me like I was a two-headed fish in an aquarium and sipped at her Star Struck fuel.
“I think I told her I once had, you know, queasiness, sweating. Hot flashes, maybe. You know, like how you feel when you get food poisoning. And she interpreted that as 'I had a thing'. Past tense.”
Cathy shook her head and disappeared from view.
“Be serious, Livia.” Hilda smacked my arm. It stung.
“Ow?” I rolled my head to the side and made an exaggerated mad face.
“I can't help you if I don't understand. I know you think he was some amazing baseball player.”
I sat up. “He still is. Will be.”
“But since coming here, Antonio said you two are about as incompatible as, I dunno, if oil had something it disliked more than water.”
“I like that he's suddenly 'Antonio', now. Not 'that jerk Jimenez'.”
“Stop deflecting.” Hilda huffed and gave me that frown with her mouth tucked up on one side that was one hundred por ciento serious, and just as completely unamused.
I pointed at her. “I'm not deflecting, you're deflecting. And giving me your 'such-a-mom' face.”
“Livia, sometimes you, ach! Me vuelves loca. Yes, I like him. He just grows on me like the mushrooms, and I can't help it. That grin with that annoying dimple and the way he?—”
“It's been terrible, huh?” I picked at my nail polish. “Being treated like royalty whenever he's around.”
“It can't last. You know that, right?” She leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling. “It's an act until I sleep with him, or he gets tired or?—”
I leaned over her until she met my gaze. “Or he's actually serious and will love you until the day we all return to dust. Either by natural causes or zombie apocalypse.”
“Ach, you're the weirdest friend I've ever had.” Her mom face cracked. She rolled her eyes as a smile pulled at her mouth.
“Part of my charm.” I tilted my head and shrugged.
She laughed. “Is that what they call it? Your baseball menace should just accept that he's in over his head when it comes to you.”
“My money's on Liv!” Cathy called out as she walked by. She tossed a snack pack of oreos at me—without warning. It hit me in the cheek and dropped into my lap.
“Who throws cookies?” I complained, but quickly ripped open the small bag. Hilda held out a hand, and I deposited two oreos in her palm.
“Still bad at fielding. You were terrible at softball.”
I chewed my bite of chocolatey and crème yumminess, and swallowed. “Meh. I can pitch.”
“Not underhand.”
“Seemed pointless. Besides, my brother taught me. Who cares about softball?”
She shrugged and stuffed a cookie in her mouth as she moved back to her textbook. She stared at it for a moment, sipped at her water, then looked up at me and frowned. “Why does it bother you that you and Coop don't get along?”
“Going for a psych cert? Should I lay on the couch?” I yawned. “Could go for a nap.”
“Just answer and stop being such a pain in the ass.”
“I don't know, I really don't. I couldn't help but follow his high school career. The same as I followed Tanner's and, oh, oh, that centerfielder from Alterra High, um Robby Gentry. He faded out, moved way down in the rankings his senior year.” I eyed Hilda's second, untouched cookie. My stomach growled.
“I don't remember. There have been so many.”
“And when Ry Hibara came over for that exhibition? Woah. Did my research on him. He was hot .” The poor cookie looked lonely. I was about to ask if I could be its friend when Hilda snagged it, holding it up.
“I never know whether that means they're just good at baseball?” She squinched up one side of her face. “Or if you think he'll be good at, um, you know, using his bat.” She dissected the poor oreo, licking at the crème filling. She paused and gave me a narrowed-eye glance.
“Well, that wasn't a particularly sexy euphemism, but I'll give you an A for effort.”
She threw up her hands. “English is hard!”
“Fair. Just maybe stick to something about bases next time.”
She sighed. “These cookies just made me hungrier.”
“Same.”
“So, you’re not going to admit why Coop bothers you?”
“What am I not admitting? That he’s an amazing baseball player and primo jerkwad wrapped all in one?” I leaned back against the couch cushion and huffed. “Fine, I admit it.”
“Liv, I know you. You didn’t follow his career like all the others. You watched every interview, every at-bat, read every scouting report with his name on it.”
“I read lots of?—”
“You built him up in your head. He must be an amazing guy because he plays good baseball. And then turns out he’s not what you imagined. That’s not on him, that’s on you , chica.” She nudged my knee, and I sat up to look at her.
“No one can live up to your brother,” she said. “I doubt even your brother could live up to who you’ve made him out to be.”
“Sage advice from someone with cookie crumbs on her face.”
“Ach! Liv, why can’t you be serious?” She griped at the ceiling.
“I admired him, ok? Is that what you want to hear? I admired him. And I wanted him to like me.” I closed my eyes and remembered what it felt like to have his arm around me. To be so close I could feel the heat of his body through his shirt. It lit . . . unmentionable places inside me. A shiver started where his palm rested against my back, tiptoeing warm sparkles up my spine. A deep-seated urge took root—to lean into him, rest my head against his chest and believe he could care.
“Didn’t have to be romantic, but just not see me as someone out to hurt him. When I’ve been on his side.”
“She's the one you have to worry about. Reporter. Probably already called her attorney.” His voice sounded flat, his eyes narrowed at me from across the room.
“Do you have any idea how frustrating that man is? I don’t even want to be in the same room, the same building! He makes me so mad I just want to—Ugh, I don’t know. Run a marathon to get far enough away from him. And even that wouldn’t be far enough.”
“You like him.”
I scoffed. “I hate his guts down to the strands of his DNA.”
“Blah blah ‘dost protest too much’ or whatever.” Cathy drew near. “I need something more substantial than cookies.”
“Oh, goodie.” I grumbled. “Let's go play another fun, fruitless round of 'try to find something edible and included on our meal plan'.” I stood and all but vaulted the coffee table to get to the door. I grabbed my bag, turned the knob and found a moment of quiet in the deserted hallway.
How could he change so fast? One minute, he was there, a soothing warmth beside me. And then he was gone. Hard. Distant. “And so cold.”
“I'm not going to make it.” Hilda's voice filtered through the door. “I'd almost take on a second job to get something better. But I can only eat pizza so much.”
I can't change him or what he thinks. I can only change me. I took a deep breath. I held it, then let it out. I leaned my head back against the wall and took another long breath.
I closed my eyes against the darkness. It buzzed in the air like it was alive and trying to crush the air from my lungs. My heart raced. I lowered my forehead to my knees, and tried to calm the panting and gasping. There's air, I can breathe. Nothing here but Coop. It's ok. You're ok.
A surge of panic ripped through me. I held onto my knees and tried to form words. I needed him to talk. When he spoke, his deep voice . . . helped. “What classes will you take?” My voice rasped. “Your first semester?”
And then he was there, a small, steady light in the darkness. Like he was searching for me.
“Hilda's right.” I sighed and shut my eyes against the aching thump in my chest. “It's all in my head.”
But for a moment, he held my heart.