Chapter 6 #4
T-shirt. Emmy blinked in the split second he was fully extended with his right arm out behind him, ball gripped in his hand,
and legs nearly in the splits, shamelessly storing the image in a part of her brain she did not know craved such a view of
him until that exact second. Before she knew what happened, the ball sailed past and landed with a sharp smack in Pedro’s
glove.
“Shit,” she hissed as Gabe cackled.
“You know, Jameson, you might want to swing if you’re hoping to hit the ball. Strike one!” he called.
Emmy forcibly snapped out of the haze watching him had put her in and reminded herself she had a job to do. “Shut up and throw
it again,” she demanded as Pedro threw the ball back to him.
“As you wish.”
He went into his windup again, but this time she was prepared. Braced for the mesmerizing motion of watching him hurtle a
ball with laser precision like his body was a perfectly tuned instrument. He planted his front foot into his wide stance,
stretching his limbs as far as they could go, and rocketed the ball at her. The pitch sailed by with just as much speed as
the first but sank hard at the last second. She swung, but it was embarrassingly late.
“Strike two! Trying to send that one to Mexico, Jameson?” Gabe roared with laughter. He bent over and slapped his knees. “Might
as well hand me the job now.”
Pedro stood from his crouch to throw the ball back and whispered, “Dude, I thought we had a deal. Beat him , Jameson!”
“I’m trying !” she said back.
“He’s probably going to go tight on the inside,” Pedro muttered. “Belt high.”
“Hey! What’s all the whispering?” Gabe called. “No conspiring at the plate.”
“We’re not conspiring!” Pedro called. “We’re discussing who’s going to take care of the ficus when Jameson moves into her
new office.”
“Isn’t that tree fake?” Gabe said.
Pedro squatted back down and clapped his glove a few times. “All right, batter up, batter up! Two strikes, here we go!”
Gabe rolled his eyes and worked his shoulder again.
He bent over and let his arm dangle like a pitcher on TV.
His open jersey loosely flapped at his sides; his T-shirt offered the slightest peep of his collarbone at the neck hole given the angle.
Emmy thought she saw a slight wince when he straightened to start his windup again, but she couldn’t be sure from so far away.
She lasered her eyes on the ball, shaking off all distraction, and could tell from the way it left his hand this time that
it was a four-seam fastball. Inside, belt high. Just like Pedro said. In the blink of an eye, she adjusted and angled her
hips. She started swinging a split second sooner than last time, and when the ball cracked off the bat and went flying out
into right field, she could have done a backflip.
“YES!” Pedro hollered. “Well done, Jameson!” He clapped her on the back and shook her shoulder with a squeeze.
Gabe leaned over with his hands on his knees, staring out into right field as if he couldn’t believe what he’d seen.
Silas popped up from where he’d been canoodling with his friend to retrieve the ball and toss it back in. Gabe caught it,
still in shock.
“Welp, we’ll miss you, Jameson. Promise you’ll come back and visit from your new office,” Pedro said.
Emmy watched Gabe out on the mound looking stung and stunned. They’d had a bet, and she’d won, but she knew if he took himself
out of the running, she’d never live down that she only got the job because he’d given it up, and she wasn’t about to stand
for it.
She swung the bat back up onto her shoulder. “How about a second wager?”
Gabe’s head snapped up to look at her.
She started walking out toward him on the mound. “How about if you get a hit off me , then our first bet is void, and we go back to normal.”
He tilted his head and the stunned look morphed into a sly, cocky grin she knew well as he watched her approach. “Are you
sure you want to make that bet, Jameson? I’m pretty sure I could get a hit off you with my eyes closed.”
She glared at him and shoved the bat at his chest. “Yes, I’m sure. I want to beat you on merit, not the swing of a bat, because
I deserve that job.”
He flinched at the force of the bat pressing up against him, but he took it with another smug smile. “All right, let’s do it.” He removed his glove with the ball cupped inside and handed it to her.
They swapped places, Gabe taking a few swings as Emmy threw a few pitches to Pedro. She definitely couldn’t throw as hard
as Gabe; he had at least thirty pounds of muscle on her. And sixty feet, six inches—the distance from the pitcher’s mound
to home plate—was a hell of a distance once she was staring it down. But she could throw as accurately. The ball landed smack
in Pedro’s glove every time, even if it was getting there at a fraction of the speed Gabe had thrown it.
“Not bad, Jameson,” Gabe said. “How about we make it interesting, and you have to buy another round when I hit one of these
lobs out of the park?”
“If you hit this out of the park, I will buy you a new car, Olson,” she said, and stepped back for her windup.
“ Ooh , deal. Cherry red is my favorite color.”
Emmy gave him one final glare and hurled the ball as hard as she could.
Of course he made contact on the first swing. Except it wasn’t a mile-high home run. It was a line drive. Straight into her
thigh.
She couldn’t even blink between the time the ball left her hand, when it hit the bat, and when it smashed straight back into
her leg. It was like the fastest pinball ricochet of all time except ten times the size and flying at a hundred miles an hour.
A moment of stunned silence passed before the pain set in. Emmy looked down in slow motion and saw a furious red imprint the
shape of a baseball stamped into her thigh just below her dress. And then she fell back on her butt and thought she might
die.
“ Emmy! Oh my god, are you okay?!” someone shouted into the night.
She wasn’t sure who since none of them ever called her by her first name.
The sound of hurried footsteps thundered toward her.
She was going to get trampled by the stampede where she lay flat on her back.
She couldn’t tell what hurt more: her leg, her butt from hitting the ground, or her pride.
Her leg. It was definitely her leg.
“Emmy! Emmy, I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”
There was the sound of her name again. Who was saying it? She didn’t put two and two together until Gabe’s face was hovering
over her, creased in concern and framed by the night sky.
“Holy shit, Olson, you nailed her!” Pedro cried. “I didn’t think you’d resort to physical violence to take out the competition.”
“Shut up, Torres,” Gabe snapped at him.
Emmy tried to sit up. Her thigh had burst into flames, she was sure of it. The whole limb was dead weight, too stunned to
receive signals from her brain to move.
“Don’t get up yet,” Gabe said, and gently pressed his hand to her shoulder.
Two more faces appeared above her: Silas and the girl with the pink hair.
“Did you hit your head?” Pink Hair spoke the first words Emmy had ever heard her say.
Emmy shook her head and tried to sit up again. “No. Just my butt when I fell. Ouch!” she cried when Pink Hair touched her
leg.
“Dude, you can, like, see the imprint of the ball’s stitching,” Pedro said.
“Not helping, Torres,” Gabe muttered.
“What are you doing?” Emmy asked Pink Hair as she probed her leg. “Who are you?”
“This is my girlfriend, Mae,” Silas said.
“You have a girlfriend?” Pedro asked as Mae pushed him out of the way.
Apparently, Emmy wasn’t the only one who didn’t talk about her personal life at work.
“Yes. She’s an EMT,” Silas said.
Emmy winced with another gasp of pain when Mae squeezed her thigh. “I doubt anything is broken, but you might want to get an X-ray just in case. Otherwise, it will bruise like hell but heal in time,” Mae said.
Emmy risked a glance at her leg that was already turning purple. She had a particularly nasty comment ready to hurl at Gabe,
but when she looked up and saw the pure anguish on his face, the utter remorse, she swallowed it.
“Jeez, Olson. You look like you’re the one who just took a line drive to the leg,” she said.
“Emmy, I am so sorry. That was a total accident, you have to believe me.”
There was her first name again. The sound of it on his lips did something funny to her chest that she might have spent more
time thinking about if it weren’t for the flaming pain radiating out from her thigh into every cell.
She snorted as Mae scooped her hands under her arms and helped her to sit. “Yeah, I know it was an accident. Like you have
that good of aim.”
She expected him to smirk, but the concerned crease folding his brow wouldn’t budge.
“Here, let’s help her up,” Mae said. “Do you think you can walk?” Emmy felt the other woman’s strong arms boost her off the
ground. Surely Mae was accustomed to maneuvering bodies as an EMT, but a second set of hands grabbed her and finished the
job with far less effort.
“I got her,” Gabe said, and suddenly, Emmy was vertical, feeling blood fight its way to her head and trying to balance on
one leg. “Give me your arm.” He looped her arm over his shoulders and had to stoop over to support her given their height
difference. It was all very awkward and inefficient, but it occurred to Emmy that other than a handshake the day they’d met
and the occasional and accidental arm or knee graze, she’d never really touched Gabe Olson before.
The heat of his firm body was a welcome balm in the night that had grown cool and foggy.
She could feel tiny calluses on his palm where he gripped her wrist on the arm looped over his shoulders.
Their hips kept bumping off each other like buoys with every delicate step.
They were making far less progress than the struggle was worth, but Emmy found herself unwilling to move out of his grip.