Chapter 25
Alex
Three days later, I’m pacing the Virginia Beach boardwalk when Mags video calls me.
Exhaling a deep breath, I tilt my eyes skyward in a silent prayer.
Then, I turn my body so the wall of hotels—and not the shoreline—is the only thing in my phone’s camera frame before answering.
Maybe if I get lucky, she won’t hear the black-tipped gulls squawking overhead.
“Hi, Mags!”
I muster more enthusiasm than I should be capable of after the craziness of the last few days.
“Hey, Spitfire.”
The mischievous grin on my grandmother’s face, in addition to her use of my childhood nickname, makes a cold sweat break out over my already chilled body.
I’m not feeling very fiery or strong today as my old moniker would suggest. In fact, I’m two seconds from hanging up on my grandmother and running inland until I can’t smell the ocean anymore.
“What—” Noticing my sagging lips on my screen, I push them into my on-camera smile. “What’s up?”
“I finally caught up on your reports over the last week. Very interesting stuff about your boyfriend.”
My shoulders sag with relief that we’re talking about Mags’s—and half of America’s—favorite topic: Tenny. Since my grandmother has been on a Caribbean cruise with her book club for the last week and doesn’t believe in buying on-ship Wi-Fi, Mags has been in the dark.
“You’re doing a good job sniffing them off the case.” She beams, eyes twinkling.
“What?”
“You know. Sniffing them off the case. Throwing people for a loop. Keeping ‘em guessing. One day, you accuse Tenny of being a womanizer, and then report on his grand slam with breathy enthusiasm the next night.”
I nearly let my face fall into my palm. Mags’s observation isn’t a result of knowing me well.
In the interview with Tenny after his win in Atlanta, I’m dripping with admiration.
I’m supposed to keep a modicum of journalistic objectivity, but nope.
Footage doesn’t lie. While he’s describing his grand slam, I have poster-sized hearts in my eyes and look like I’m one second away from asking him to sign my press badge.
I’m actually surprised Tenny didn’t bring it up when we met to discuss our tentative truce a few days later. Normally, he’d have a jokey comment after our segments air, but maybe Tenny’s not watching anymore? The sudden whip of disappointment tightening my throat is completely unfair.
I can’t ridicule him publicly and then expect him to keep watching the show. I should be grateful that Tenny even answered my texts that night, that he agreed to meet me. There’s no denying that the whole seagull debacle was madness, but it was what happened afterward that was far more dangerous.
The way Tenny couldn’t seem to stop himself from taking care of me nearly dismantled all my defenses. When I found him scrubbing my kitchen like his life depended on it after he’d been so patient with me when I couldn’t quite ask for help…something inside me snapped.
At first, I’d been irritated that he hadn’t thought about his wound. I’d just spent entirely too long cleaning it, after all. But what really bothered me was how Tenny never seems to think about himself.
I’d been furious and confused and ridiculously attracted, and then…then he had the gall to see right through me. Tenny knew how much that patio meant to me, and before I knew what I was doing, I was hugging him.
I’d told him to stop, but not what.
I wanted it all to stop—the warmth, the charm, the endless caring.
I needed Tenny to stop making me fall for him.
“How’d he take the loss last night? I didn’t see any footage.”
My neck pinches at the memory of Tenny shaking his head the second Daphne and I entered the Waves clubhouse. It’d been the end of a seven-game winning streak, so only Patrick was open for an interview.
“It was disappointing for the whole team, but that’s baseball. No one wins them all. Only the best teams win more than half. The Waves are one of those teams, but I think everyone was hoping they’d get a longer run at the start of the season.”
“The Admirals are tough.”
The Waves had won against the Seattle Admirals in last year’s World Series, though they’d gone all the way to game seven.
“Yeah,” I agree, subtly checking the time on my phone screen.
My pulse ticks up. Tenny should be here any minute, and I really don’t want to be on the phone with my grandmother when he arrives. I’m already trying to establish clear boundaries with Tenny—and my unruly heart—and the last thing I need right now is to have to pretend to be his girlfriend.
“Hey, I was in the middle of a run. Can I call you later?”
The lie makes my stomach twist, but I remind myself that I’ve been lying to my grandmother for months. What’s one more?
“Oh, sure. Talk to you soon.”
I hang up, closing my eyes for a brief, settling inhale. When I turn back toward the metal railing that separates the cement boardwalk from the beach, I nearly get clipped by an oblivious rollerblader.
“Hey! Watch where—”
The words die in my gaping mouth when I catch sight of Tenny.
He’s striding up the boardwalk, hair ruffled by the ever-present ocean breeze.
This time, it isn’t Tenny’s confident gait that’s rendered me speechless.
What pulls my mouth into an unbridled smile is the inflatable dinosaur inner tube around his waist, the full snorkel gear over his face, and the hot-pink floaties banded around his forearms. All of this is layered over sweats and a hoodie since it’s sixty degrees outside.
“Who’s ready for a swim?” he asks through his snorkel, the words muffled slightly.
My face hurts from my gargantuan grin.
“We can’t swim today, you goofball.”
Tenny spits out the mouthpiece, smiling like a lunatic. “It never hurts to be prepared.”
The water is a chilly forty-three degrees, which means mandatory 6/5 wetsuits for both of us.
Ideally, we’d start my part of the bargain in June, when the ocean temps get up to seventy, but Tenny was unrelenting in insisting we meet up today since he started working on his superstitions two days ago.
At the first home game, I helped Tenny tackle his Sour Patch superstition, having him eat a yellow and brown M&M instead.
Beyond the mental work of dismantling a superstition, I found that doing the opposite helped prove to myself that the ritual doesn’t matter.
Tenny’s first game against the Admirals and even yesterday’s loss—where he played flawlessly—proved to him that the method can work.
In exchange, I reluctantly agreed to walk near the water’s edge today. Baby steps and hypothermia prevention seemed reasonable on this chilly spring morning.
Tenny tugs the floaties higher before they pop off his corded forearms. With his hoodie sleeves pushed up to his elbow, he probably has no idea how distracting this unassuming part of his body is—especially when Tenny extends a floatie-clad arm my way.
“Shall we?”