Chapter Eight #2
“Shit. Right.” Ben grabbed a bottle of water from nearby and took a long swig. “What’s she doing here, anyway?”
“Well, it is Crowley field. And we’re playing her dad’s team today.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t need to come to the pen. Unless…”
“Unless what?” I took the ball from him.
He raised his eyebrows and batted his eyelashes.
“Ha!” I opened the gate, and the two of us started walking across the blazing hot outfield toward our dugout. “Eliza Crowley hates me.”
Granted, neither of us killed the other one yesterday, but she did look like she wanted to punch me more than once while I was there.
“The way you two are with each other…” Ben mumbled. “Seems like the opposite of enemies.”
“Trust me, it’s not.” I mean, she practically threw herself off a catwalk and a railcar just to avoid me, for Christ’s sake.
“Wonder if she wore her pearls when she cleaned the statues.” Ben chuckled.
“She doesn’t dress like that anymore.”
Ben stopped walking and made a face.
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Uh-huh…”
“What I meant is that she doesn’t need the pearls to play the part of a princess.” Then again, princesses didn’t work in light booths or sit on railcars.
Maybe I was wrong before.
Maybe she wasn’t the princess I thought she was.
An hour later, I stood on the mound surrounded by a sold-out crowd and a scalding sun. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have a summer league play games in the middle of the day needed to choke on my fastball.
Even with sweat in my eyes, I knew when TJ Crowley took the plate before he was announced. He’d gained a good fifty to seventy pounds in muscle, but he still had the same strut and same dumbass smirk. For years, I’d waited for this—to face him on the field. To be the one in control.
Here, he couldn’t shove me down the bank at Potter’s Creek. Or let the air out of my bike tires. Or add salt to my frozen lemonade (couldn’t get the taste of that out of my mouth for days).
On the mound, I called the shots.
The one running away with his tail between his legs today would be him.
It turned out he was just as predictable as any other asshat who took the plate.
He kicked some dirt.
Spat.
Swung the bat a few times.
A second after he looked ready, he asked the ump for a last-minute time-out and stepped outside the box.
In the end, though, it didn’t matter. Five pitches later, I struck him out with my fastball.
Payback’s a bitch, Crowley.
Ben laughed and waved at TJ as he stomped across the plate and chucked his bat into the dugout. Coach Crowley yelled something at him before pulling his hat lower and staring at me. I smiled.
Worried, King Crowley?
The heat continued to bear down on me like a twenty-pound wet blanket for the next few innings. By the bottom of the sixth, my jersey was soaked through. Every muscle hurt, and I needed an oxygen mask since the air around me weighed as much as soup.
TJ took the plate for the third time, and despite feeling like hell, I smiled because he looked pissed.
I’d be too if I were 0–2.
Ben signaled my fastball. A good call. So far, TJ couldn’t touch it. I shook my sweaty hand loose and prayed my shoulder would hold out for one more inning, maybe two. After a deep and difficult breath in, I released the ball.
TJ swung and missed.
But he wasn’t done with me yet.
Two minutes later, he had me backed into a corner with a full count. And as the smart-ass stepped into the box for the sixth pitch, he winked. My ears pounded in anger, and the memory of the last time he’d done that swarmed around my head.
I was twelve, and it was one of the hottest days in July on record, so Mom had taken me to the pool at the rec center. Half the town was there and swimming, including TJ. I had kept my distance and my eyes on him, but when Mom called me over to the wall to grab a quick drink, I lost him.
Two minutes later, while I swam underwater, he appeared out of nowhere and yanked off my trunks. Before I could get them back, he tossed them out of the pool and onto the umbrella where the lifeguard sat. She blew her whistle and yelled at me.
Me!
She chucked my suit at me, and everyone laughed as I slid them back on under the water. I wanted to kill TJ, but he was twice my size back then. And he knew it.
Because TJ didn’t laugh when I was humiliated.
He winked.
“Reed!” Ben yelled. He now stood with his mask tipped back.
Shit. How long had he been standing there calling me?
“You good, man?” he asked.
I motioned for him to get back into position.
I hated throwing high and away, but TJ kept crowding the damn plate. He might’ve been a Crowley, but I couldn’t hit another batter. Not after last summer.
Hitting one meant I could hit more.
I couldn’t lose control.
I wouldn’t lose control.
Not again.
Ben called the next pitch, and I did what Dad had taught me years ago—made the crowd fade away in the background, underexposed. Put them in shadow. Out of sight, his voice whispered inside my head. Focus your breathing. Slow and steady, Reed.
Slow and steady. Slow and…
But one person still stayed bright when everyone else went dark.
Eliza stood alone outside the press box. Her arms crossed in front of her. Ponytail fluttering in the breeze. Eyes staring directly at me.
Did she have nothing better to do?
TJ stepped back out of the box—of course—so I used the quick break to turn around and take off my hat. Sweat beaded on my eyebrows. My arm throbbed.
“Do not pay attention to her,” I mumbled. “That’s what she wants. To distract you. Get you back for bothering her yesterday. Don’t let her.”
I rolled my shoulders. After another deep breath in, I faced home plate again and ignored Eliza, who still stood by the press box. I leaned forward and focused solely on Ben’s glove.
“You got this, Fulton!” Brent yelled from second.
I straightened up and pulled my arm back to throw what should’ve been my slider.
But it went right to TJ’s left shin.
Oh, fuck.
Ben jumped up and ripped off his mask.
TJ threw down his bat, hopped around a few times, and charged me. Coach Crowley ran out of the dugout and yelled at him to stop.
Ha. TJ Crowley never stopped for anything or anyone.
Ben dropped his glove and sprinted after him, reaching him a second before he could throw a punch.
My heart hammered so loudly that my teeth numbed. I took a few steps toward him with clenched fists, but Brett’s arms wound around me and tugged me backward toward the mound.
None of them understood. This was about so much more than baseball.
I wanted TJ to hit me. If he did, I could finally push back like I should’ve all those years ago. I wasn’t a scrawny coward anymore.
TJ shrugged off Ben and stormed away to first. Coach Monaco then called a time and jogged out to the mound.
My stomach clenched, and my mouth tasted grittier than the dirt under my cleats. It was embarrassing enough to know when you were done. But having a coach come out to tell you so in front of hundreds of people only made it worse.
“You tryin’ to get your teeth knocked in, Fulton?” he asked me with a glint in his eye.
I rubbed the back of my now sunburned neck. “Just trying to finish out the game.”
He spat a sunflower shell to his left.
Coach Monaco translation: I was done.
Dammit.
“You threw a great game,” he said.
Must’ve been a really great game if I’m out after one mistake.
Coach spat another seed. “Tom’s ready to come in and finish it.”
I sighed and handed Coach the ball. Dad always told me to never drop my head when a coach took me out, so I kept my eyes on him and said what Dad always told me to say in this situation: “Thank you, sir.”
When I was on the mound, the cheers, boos, and heckling blended into white noise most of the time. But the jog from the mound to the dugout made that white noise sharper. Clearer.
“He had it comin’, Fulton!” one kid yelled.
Damn right, he did.
“Why don’t you go back to the farm you came from?” another cackled.
Screw you.
“Another summer, another year of Fultons losing to Crowleys!” a third one spat.
We’re winning, you moron.
I threw my glove against the wall behind the bench and sat next to it, fumbling with Dad’s tags under my jersey. Several minutes later, Tom finished the inning. We’d probably pull out a win today, but it still felt like I lost.
Ben took off his hat as he joined me in the dugout. “Did you mean to hit him?”
“What do you think?” I said.
But even as I sat next to him on the bench, I wasn’t so sure.
Yes, I wanted to hurt and humiliate him for all the times he had done so to me, but that wasn’t the way I’d wanted it to happen. I was better than that. I had to be—especially this summer.
Ben dumped some sunflower seeds into his hand. “You were on point all game, dude. You could’ve taken him.”
I know. I took a long drink of Gatorade.
“You can’t afford to have a repeat of last summer.” He put a hand on my arm. “You gotta keep your shit together—”
“I know!” Who the hell was he? My warden? I shook him off and walked to the other end of the dugout.
I had played the game for over ten years, worked my ass off to become as close to the ace pitcher my father was—did his workouts, learned his tricks, his pitches, all of it.
This summer was supposed to be all baseball. But playing against that family, with a bet that could save or sink my granddad’s farm, gave this season a hell of a lot more complications than I expected.
Granddad had a lot of sayings when it came to the Crowleys and this town. I usually rolled my eyes and chuckled at most of them, but one always struck true:
Nothing was fair in Fairfield.