Chapter Twenty-Six
Reed
“A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.”
—Earl Wilson
We only had a few days till we played the Middletown Pistons for our chance to go against the Crowley dynasty.
All I wanted to do was practice, but Coach told us to spend a couple of days away from the field.
And Eliza texted me yesterday asking if I could be there with her when she told her dad about us.
I went back and forth for hours before sending my response. Typing and retyping my answer.
Part of me was thrilled to get this entire thing out in the open. I hated sneaking around like a criminal. Hated feeling like I wasn’t good enough for her.
But the other part of me, maybe a selfish part, didn’t want any more pressure or eyes on me than I already had. I had cracked under the pressure once. Lost total control on the mound. It took me months to get it back, and even now I wasn’t sure I had it.
Would making our relationship public take me back to last summer all over again?
How many more chances would I have if I screwed up this season?
And if I didn’t screw up, if we won the whole thing, what then? Eliza’s family would pack up and move to who knows where. I’d go back home. Would we try the long-distance thing?
Since Ben wasn’t around anymore and wouldn’t have wanted to hear me vent about all of this anyway, I took a long walk with Mickey through the cornfields and talked to him.
Dogs were the best listeners for stuff like this.
They didn’t judge you or interrupt your ranting.
By the time we reached the end of the South Five, my gut told me to fight for what I wanted.
To do the honorable thing. It’s what Dad would do.
Saturday afternoon brought humid heat under a cloudy sky.
I parked on Main Street and walked the rest of the way, eventually making it down the Crowleys’ long driveway.
Classic rock blasted from the garage, where TJ sat facing his bike near a box of tools.
Eliza’s Jeep sat nearby next to her BMW.
I still couldn’t believe she had two cars.
What a waste to have one sitting there most of the year. Unused.
No sooner had I reached their fancy flagstone walkway than the front door opened.
Eliza stepped out onto the porch in a pair of ripped jeans and a fitted The Goonies T-shirt.
Her smile hit me like a hammer to the gut, and heat rose up the back of my neck.
Any second thoughts I had earlier about doing this melted away faster than Nana’s pudding pops on a hot day.
Christ, this girl was something else.
“Thanks for being here.” She skipped down the steps and took my hand.
“Of course.” I fought the urge to kiss her in plain sight of TJ and who knows who else.
One step at a time, Reed.
“Dad’s inside.” She sucked in a deep breath. “You ready?”
Is anyone ever ready for this kind of thing? I swallowed hard. “Yeah, let’s do this.”
As we started walking back up the front porch steps, Mr. Crowley met us at the doorway. He had a pencil stuck behind his ear, and his hair was damp and messy, the way mine looked after a shower.
“Eliza.” His gaze traveled from Eliza to me and then back to her before moving slowly down to our joined hands. “What’s…going on here?”
Her hand started sweating in mine. I squeezed it to remind her I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Daddy, I’d like to invite Reed to the Founder’s Day Tea party tomorrow.” Her voice squeaked with the last word.
“Is that so?” Mr. Crowley moved forward and descended a couple of steps before stopping. “And when did this”—he pulled the pencil out from behind his ear and pointed to the two of us and then to our hands—“begin, exactly?”
At the carnival, when we almost broke a wall in the house of mirrors while having the hottest make-out session. “A few weeks ago.” I stood up straighter. “With your permission, sir, I’d, um, like to come with Eliza to your party.” My stomach knotted, but my chest felt lighter at the same time.
No turning back now.
“Doesn’t this seem a little silly?” he asked.
My shoulders tensed. “Why would it be—”
“You’re only here for the summer, Reed.” Mr. Crowley walked down the rest of the stairs and stood next to me, now of equal height. He looked at Eliza. “What happens after that?”
The doubt came back like a slushie sliding down my throat.
“We’ll figure that out at the end of the summer.” Eliza squeezed my hand and smiled up at me.
“Exactly.” I smiled back at her, but a tiny part of me wished she had said, Long distance. Haven’t you heard of it?
Mr. Crowley tucked the pencil back behind his ear and crossed his arms. “Do you have something dressy-casual to wear, Mr. Fulton?”
What the hell is dressy-casual? A tie over a T-shirt?
“I’ll make sure he does, Dad,” Eliza said.
He pursed his lips. “Then I guess we’ll see you tomorrow. Eleven thirty.”
Eliza let go of my hand, wrapped her arms around her dad’s neck, and said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” while he stared at me with laser eyes over her small shoulders. She then turned back to me. “Come on, I’ll take you shopping for a new shirt. And a new battery for your broken watch.”
Shopping? “I should be getting back to the farm—”
“I promise it’ll be superfast. Let me just grab my wallet and keys.
” She hurried up the steps and disappeared through the front door.
Which left Mr. Crowley and me alone in the most uncomfortable silence I had ever experienced, other than the time I had to sit outside of a dressing room when I was ten while Mom helped Nana find new bras.
I cleared my throat. “Congrats on getting to the championship, sir.”
“Thank you.” He drummed his fingers on his forearms. “Is your team ready to play the Pistons?”
“I think so.”
“That’s a big game. And then the championship?” He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Pressure like that can really get in some people’s heads.”
Translation: “some people,” like me.
“I’ve got my head in the right place, sir.”
“Let’s hope so.”
What the hell did that mean?
“How’s the farm doing this year?” he asked.
“Fine.” My jaw ticked. “It looks like Granddad will have a good crop this year.”
“That’s good to hear.” He raised an eyebrow. “I know they need a good season. Must be hard not having that consistent paycheck. And being behind on payments and such…”
How did he know about that?
The front door banged open. Eliza tucked her wallet under her arm as she threaded her hair through her Yankees hat. “All right, let’s go.” She gave her dad a quick peck on the cheek before taking my hand and tugging me toward the driveway.
“Be back in a couple of hours, Eliza,” Mr. Crowley’s voice warned. “We’ve got a lot of setting up still to do.”
“You got it, Dad,” she said.
“Fulton?” TJ lifted his head from under his bike and sat up. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I just asked Dad if he could come to the Founder’s Day party tomorrow with me.” Eliza unlocked the Jeep and tossed her wallet in the back seat. “We’re going shopping. Wanna come?”
“Ha. Hard pass.” TJ stood and glanced back and forth between us. “He really said you could come, Fulton?”
I shrugged. “More or less.”
“But why would you actually want to?” He flipped his hat around. “I’d give anything not to go.”
I chuckled and nodded toward Eliza. “I’m going for her.”
A slow smirk spread onto his face as he grabbed a drip pan. “Isn’t that sweet.”
Eliza opened the driver’s-side door of her Jeep. “Shut up, TJ.”
“Heard you hit the shit out of that pitcher last night.” I handed him a wrench he didn’t ask for but that I knew he needed for the drain plug. My version of a peace offering for hitting him with a pitch and for the mess we had to clean up at the Fourth celebration.
He took the wrench and nodded. His version of…acceptance? “They had no depth in their bullpen.” He let the oil slowly spill out into a drip pan. “It got worse the more the game went on.”
I grabbed a rag from the top of a toolbox and tossed it to TJ. What would Granddad say if he knew I changed a tire with one Crowley earlier this summer and now I was helping another change out the oil?
“You pitching against Middletown this week?” He wiped his hands on the rag before tucking it into his back pocket.
“Nah. Coach wants to save my arm for the championship.”
TJ smirked. “If you go.”
“When we go.” I chucked another rag at him. “I’ve got a two-seamer with your name on it, Crowley.”
“Bet.”
“All right, all right.” Eliza beeped the horn and stuck her head out the window. “Let’s go, mister. You need a new shirt.”
My eye started twitching. “I did bring some decent clothes from back home, Eliza.”
“Okay, but what’s ‘decent’ to you?” She rested her chin on her forearm. “Is it a button-up?”
“Yes.” I squinched my eyes shut but the left one kept twitching away.
“What color?”
Twitch. “Navy-ish?”
“A dark color in the dead of summer?” She shook her head. “White would be better.”
Twitch. White would also stain super easily, but people like her probably didn’t worry about stains since they could just up and buy a replacement whenever they needed to. “Okay,” I mumbled.
“Come on, it’ll be fun.” She brightened. “I’ll treat us to ice cream after I replace the watch too.”
Twitch. Twitch. Twitch. “I thought we were getting a new battery, not a new watch.” I banged my fist on its face until it blinked back to life.
See? Works just fine.
My phone buzzed, and my stomach dropped when I saw who texted me.
Ben: Got a sec?
Ben: Need to talk to you about something.
“Reed?” Eliza called from the driver’s side. “Come on.”
I sent Ben a quick message back saying I’d call him later and then walked around the Jeep and opened the passenger-side door. “I can treat us to ice cream.”
It’s not like I can’t afford a couple of freaking cones.