chapter 22
Pregame, batting practice. I didn’t know what idiot created the standard baseball uniform, but they were terrible.
Almost canvas in their thickness. Stiff with starch.
Scratchy. Hot, even in our mild summers.
I leaned forward, resting one hand on a knee, and wished, for the thousandth time in my life, for a pair of loose cotton shorts.
The batter swung, and I jerked left, sprinting for his ball, my glove reaching out and falling a few inches short.
I bent, scooping up the ball as I ran, and threw it in.
“Distracted?” Lucas, one of our outfielders, asked with a wink.
“You think you could have got that?” I shot back with a smile.
He scoffed, clapping a fist into his glove. “All day long, baby.”
I stabbed the grass with my cleat and let out a controlled breath, my fingers flexing in the sweaty confines of my glove, a new form walking slowly up our dugout steps, the sun glowing off his white uniform, his arms flexing as he worked a hand into a batting glove.
I had decided, that morning, that I would hate him. Based it on the cockiness in his tone when he’d spoken to me. The way he didn’t bother to cover himself when standing before me. The laughter that had been in his eyes.
Hating him would make everything easier. Cleaner.
But I couldn’t. I stood there, lost in far left field, and watched him reach for a bat. Watched him run his hands along its length. I watched him step up to the bag and push the batting helmet hard onto his perfect head.
And before he even tightened his grip, before that first swing that cracked open our future and sent the ball high over my head…
I was already done for.