Chapter Fourteen
Reed
“I love it when people doubt me. It makes me work harder to prove them wrong.”
—Derek Jeter
I had never pitched a no-hitter before, but kissing Eliza Crowley felt like what I imagined a no-no would.
I couldn’t talk about it.
But I wanted to.
Couldn’t think about it.
But I needed to.
Because thinking about it and reliving it in my head reminded me that it was real, that it actually happened, and that it was fucking amazing.
And yet I still couldn’t keep another part of my head from screaming, What the hell have you done, Fulton?
This summer was already stressing me out to the max. Kissing Eliza and wanting to do it again and again would definitely not make it any easier.
“You’re quiet this morning,” Ben said from the passenger seat of my truck.
You would be too, if you had not only thrown our pact out the window but also lit it on fire.
To make up for it, I had packed up Granddad’s fishing gear early this morning and taken Ben with me. Ironically, we were heading to the same area where Eliza got her flat tire. Couldn’t escape the girl if I tried.
Not that I wanted to anymore.
“Just a lot on my mind. Sorry,” I said.
“Brett’s got some good ideas about new pranks, but I think you and I could do better—”
“Maybe we should just let it be for now. We’ve got a championship to focus on.” Guilt snaked its way around my stomach and squeezed. I wasn’t sure if I’d said that last part more for him or me.
A sign for Cattail Creek appeared on the right-hand side of the road. I slowed down and pulled the truck into a small gravel parking space.
Ben and I both moved around to the back of the truck for the gear. He opened the tackle box and rummaged through it. “Should we have picked up some crickets?”
“Nah,” I said. “Trout here love PowerBait. We’ll stick with that.”
Ben held up the container of PowerBait balls and frowned. “Pink?”
“Don’t ask me why, but Granddad has sworn by that color for years, and he always comes back with a bucket full of fish.”
Several minutes after walking through the woods, we came to the creek. Fallen trees and moss-covered stones outlined most of the muddy brown water. Upstream, the water rushed around a half-finished dam of sticks and branches.
Ben stretched and groaned. “I should’ve taken your nana up on that extra cup of coffee before we left.”
“Yeah, you should’ve.” Nana’s coffee was known for packing a punch. I only ever needed one cup to feel the jitters, but Ben was a caffeine junkie. He had to drink it all day.
I reached into the tackle box and handed him the container of bait. “No bobbers?” he asked.
“Nope. I mean, you could use them, but when you fish in a place where the water is always moving, like a creek or a river, it’s not really needed. You can’t see it much.” I helped him put the bait on his hook, and then we separated by several yards, Ben upstream.
I stepped into the shallow water. The pebbles pressed through the thin soles of my old sneakers as I cast out. Ben stayed closer to the underbrush than the water. Neither of us spoke for a long while, until Ben yelped about his line.
“I think I got one,” he said as he jumped.
I hurried over. “Did you set the hook?”
“Yeah, I tugged it good.” He began reeling it in, but too fast.
“Slow down. If you go too fast”—the line grew still—“you’ll lose it.”
“Dammit.” Ben finished reeling it in and trudged back to the tackle box for another ball of bait. “So where the hell did you go last night? Brett, Dominic, and I looked for you everywhere after we rode the Scrambler, but you just disappeared. And you didn’t answer your phone.”
Think fast. “The lemonade didn’t sit well after all that spinning, so I called it an early night. Phone was dead, so I just passed out as soon as I got back to the farm.”
“That’s funny, because I called your grandparents and they said you weren’t there.” His eyes narrowed.
Shit.
Ben was the one person I told everything to. But this? How could I tell him I wanted to go back on a pact I insisted we create?
I shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t hear me come in. It’s not like I stopped to chat before hitting the shower.”
“I thought you showered before the carnival.”
“Jesus, Ben. Am I under investigation?” I stepped around a couple of moss-covered rocks, where I propped my pole. “I needed another one. It was humid as hell last night.”
“Whatever.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” Ben slammed the tackle box lid shut and stomped farther downstream now. If he kept that up, we’d never catch anything.
“Dominic apparently got a call from one of the UNC coaches last week.” Ben kept his back to me as he cast his line out. “The guy said he was looking forward to coming out to a couple games.”
“Good for Dom.” I checked the bait on mine and tossed my line out as well.
Ben turned. “ ‘Good for Dom’?” He shook his head and muttered something under his breath.
“What?” I asked, but I already knew where this was going.
“We both need those college scouts to come for us, Reed.” He reeled his line in a little. “After last summer—”
“Would you stop fucking reminding me about last summer? I know I fucked up. Okay?” I tugged on my line a bit. “Want me to tattoo it on my face?”
A small flock of sparrows shot out of the trees across from us, and the air grew heavier.
Ben reeled his line all the way in and propped his pole on his shoulder. “Is this because of the princess?”
Seriously?
My jaw tensed. “Her name is Eliza. And no, this has nothing to do with her.”
“Are you two hooking up?”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“Are you?” he repeated.
Like a fucking coward, I just stared at my line floating in the water. “I met up with her at the carnival…after I told you and the guys I was going home. It wasn’t planned, I swear. It just sort of happened.”
“I knew it. I fucking knew it.” He kicked the water.
“It doesn’t change anything though. Really.” I reeled my line in haphazardly. “She knows what’s at stake. She knows why I came here—”
Ben cackled. “And you really think she won’t get in your head? Screw you up like what happened last summer?”
“Last summer was on me. I…” I stopped, unsure of how to name what had really been twisting around in my gut since this tournament had started. “When I was at UNC, at the showcase, it just didn’t feel right.”
Ben frowned. “What didn’t?”
“Pitching. All those eyes on me. The pressure.”
“But you’ve played in tons of high-pressure situations before without issues.”
I swallowed a huge lump in my throat. “I know. But I think that’s why I fucked up so much. Why I hit those batters. It was like I…I forgot why I played the game.”
“We play to win.”
“No.” I flipped my hat backward. “I mean, yeah, we do now, but that’s not why I started.”
The wind moved across the creek and through several redbuds. Their seedpods spun free and skidded over the water and stones.
“Look, Reed.” Ben started walking toward me. “I don’t know why you started, and honestly, it doesn’t matter, because whether you like it or not, we were brought here to win.”
“I know.”
“And I think”—he paused and rubbed the back of his neck—“I think maybe if you spent a little less time worrying about what Erin—sorry—Eliza is doing, then maybe your head would be more in the game.”
“I already told you, this has nothing to do with her—”
“You’re wrong. You’ve been distracted since the moment she knocked that crown off your head.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”
“What the hell are you—”
“Girls like Eliza and Erin.” He exhaled loudly through his nose and tapped his temple. “They get in here and screw with you and throw you away the moment something shinier comes along—”
“Oh my God, will you stop comparing her to Erin?” It was a good thing my hat was on, or I’d start pulling my hair out. “She is nothing like her. You have to let that shit go, Ben. Move on.”
“ ‘Move on’?” He chucked his pole toward the bank. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“What—”
“Wake up, Fulton. Your family’s farm is going under, and that stadium—this tournament—could be the one thing that saves them.
But it’s like you’ve already moved on from that.
Like you don’t give a shit that we all came here this summer for you.
For them. Like I didn’t give up everything to be here. ”
“Give up everything”? My head started to spin. “Ben, what the fuck are you talking about?”
He sighed, and his entire body sagged from the shoulders down. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” Everything suddenly felt so heavy and tiring, like wet sand weighing me down.
“I was invited back to the UNC showcase this summer.”
Wait. What?
He brought his head up, and his eyes were filled with sadness. “At first I thought it would be good to get away from everything with…after everything that had happened with her, but then your granddad called you up, and I knew you needed me more.”
Shit.
I took my hat off. “Ben—”
“But seeing you here in this town with your family. With…her. You’ve changed. You’re…different.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe me going to Chapel Hill would’ve been better for both of us.”
“Don’t say that.” My throat squeezed as I stepped out of the water. “You’re my family.”
“And you were mine. You’re all I got left, man.” He looked past me.
“That’s not true. You’ve still got your mom, and…” Reality hit me like a line drive to the face.
Ben really didn’t have much anymore. It had been the two of us and baseball for a long time. And I felt like I was losing both somehow.
“I think I should go.” Ben started toward the shoreline.
“No, wait.” I grabbed his arm. “You can’t walk home from here.”
“I’m not going home.” He stopped. “This isn’t my home. I don’t belong here with these people.”
“These people”?
He shook my hand loose. “Rubbing elbows and whatever else with the rich may be your thing now, but—”
“I don’t rub elbows with the rich.” I sighed. “I’m not like them. You know that.”
“I’m not so sure anymore, man.” He shook his head. “I’ll text Brett and ask him if I can bunk with his host family for the rest of the season.”
Something cold uncoiled itself in my chest. “No, come on, Ben. Don’t do that.”
“It’s like you said. You’ve got enough on your plate this summer.
” He looked into the trees and ran a hand over his face.
“You clearly don’t give a shit about the pact, so I won’t either.
But I will stick around to help your family win, because that promise wasn’t just for you.
It may not be a Rolex, but for some of us, a promise means a lot more.
” The water splashed as he left me and walked away toward the truck.