Chapter 12 #2
“It looks expensive.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” Liam mutters to his bag.
I absolutely do not believe him. This boy pinches pennies more than Zara and I pinch pennies.
He gets a telltale expression when he’s stressed about money.
His eyebrows draw in and his mouth twists sideways.
It’s the same look I saw when he checked the cost of a steak he wanted one night.
He pulls out a dirt-stained baseball. Only when he starts to rise do I notice, at long last, his baseball pants with closed elastic hems by his ankles. His thighs strain against the fabric.
Focus! On! The glove!
I slip my fingers into each hole, surprised at the lack of stiffness. The leather is supple.
“Are you sure this is new?” I ask.
He flicks his eyes over. “I broke it in for you. Warm water, rubber bands, mallet, the whole thing.”
He comes to me and pushes the ball into my glove.
“Grip it,” he murmurs, voice focused and low in his throat. I form a fist around the ball. “Tighter. Good, now release. One more time. Grip, release.”
My mind is spiraling, but I do the thing, counting his eyelashes as his focus holds tight to my catching hand.
“Does it feel okay?”
I make a noise that is not a grammatically correct word. Then: “Feels good.”
“Good fit, I think.” Liam pinches the leather at the top of my glove’s middle finger. He catches the tip of my actual finger underneath, wiggling it.
My heart swells at the thoroughness with which he’s prepared me to play a simple game of catch. My learning baseball was part of our friendship pact. But this feels intentional in a way I wasn’t expecting.
“On your day off, you wanted to play more baseball?” I ask.
Liam’s eyes sweep up to mine as he drops his hand away from my glove. “Of course. I love baseball.”
“Is baseball in you?”
“Baseball is in all of us.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It’s America’s pastime.”
“So because I’m American, baseball is in me?”
Liam nods, hands on his hips.
“I don’t even know the rules,” I warn him.
“Me either.” He grins. “I just stand on the pitcher’s mound and throw the ball in the same direction over and over until they tell me to start batting.”
I grab the ball out of my glove and toss it high into the humid air between us. I try to catch it, but the ball lands at my feet and bounces once. Liam snorts.
“There was a sun glare.”
He scoops up the ball in his glove and jogs several yards away. “I’ll face the sun.”
Underhanded, he tosses it. This time, the ball glides snugly into my glove.
“Ooh!” I exclaim, and Liam laughs outright this time.
I toss it back to him, underhanded as well. He catches it and takes a step backward. “Want to play a game?”
“Of baseball?” I ask. “America’s pastime?”
His eyes might have rolled, I can’t tell. “Every time we complete a pass, I’ll take a step backward. We try to see how far apart we can get before messing up.”
“Do you do this during practice with your teammates?” I ask.
More amusement. “No, Paige, I do this coaching peewee.”
“You coach peewee?”
“I did in high school. Less talking, more throwing.”
We play in silence for a few minutes, tossing the ball back and forth underhanded with success. But eventually, Liam starts having to step forward to catch my passes, which fall short due to my lack of arm power. That’s when I decide to switch to overhand.
I attempt a throw that goes forty-five degrees west of his body, which I am one hundred percent convinced is a goner. Somehow, though, Liam darts over—like a human magnet to the moving ball—and stoops low, catching it just milliseconds before the ball would’ve hit the ground.
“Wow,” I whisper under my breath. That was the grandest display of athleticism I’ve seen from him yet and he wasn’t even trying.
He jogs over. “Okay, let’s work on that.” His glove lands with a thud on the grass beside me. Liam circles behind my body. “Can I touch you a little bit?”
“Yes,” I say, embarrassingly quickly.
Two clicks of a metronome pass. “First of all,” he says, still not touching me, “you want the opposite foot forward of the arm you throw with.”
I swap out my stance, pushing my left foot forward and my right foot back.
Liam presses the ball into my right hand. “Raise your hand like you’re about to throw it,” he murmurs.
I do what he says, lifting my arm in an imitation of a pitch.
“The reason the ball went wide is because your elbow is out here.” Finally, he touches me.
Liam’s fingers dance along my elbow, and he pulls it down a bit, then more in line with my back.
The skin-to-skin contact feels shimmering and heavy, but it doesn’t last long enough to warrant the way my chest tightens.
“You have to think of your body like a windup toy,” he goes on. “There’s a string connecting your elbow to the back of your hip, and when that string loosens, your arm can only go up in a straight line, not out.”
I mimic the motion he’s describing, following through until my arm is in front of my body, pointed away from us.
“Exactly,” Liam says.
“Better than the peewees?”
“On par with the peewees.”
“Did you just break out a golf pun during baseball practice?”
“I’ve got a lot of respect for golf. It’s also long and boring.”
I burst into laughter, turning to face him. “I worried for a minute no one had told you.”
His eyes sparkle as he jogs away. “Show me your pitch!”
“Did you just say show me your tits?” I call back, well aware I’m flirting.
“Obviously not. You’re from Bristol, not Talladega!”
My smile widens in direct correlation to the number of feet between us.
When Liam is too far away to hear, I let out a giggle and then get into position.
Left foot forward, right elbow tucked in.
When I let the ball fly, it goes straight ahead but too high.
Still, Liam runs the handful of steps forward to catch it and manages, no problem.
We go back and forth a few more times until I miss one of his passes. It lands in my glove, then bounces out of it.
“You have to grip harder!” he calls out.
“But I meant to do that!”
Liam laughs and runs back to me. I follow his limbs with a mesmerized gaze. “Let’s have a beer and then switch to batting practice.”
“Do you always have a beer before batting?” I ask.
“Only when I’m practicing my switch-hitting.”
“That,” I say, walking alongside him toward home plate, “sounds filthy.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Bristol. It only means I’m great at using both of my hands to get to third base.”
“Oh my God!” I shriek, laughing. “That was impressively horrific.”
Liam smirks as he drops his glove onto his bat bag and bends in half to unzip his cooler. He fishes out two beers and hands one to me.
“How’d you get these?” I ask, popping the tab.
He takes a sip. “I turned twenty-one last weekend.”
My beer pauses halfway to my lips. “And you didn’t tell me?”
Liam shrugs. “I’m not a birthday person. Also, I was in Mississippi playing a game that day.”
“Still. I wish I’d known.”
Liam’s lips hitch up softly. His eyes are fond as he watches me. “Well, then, I’m sorry I didn’t mention it.”
“My birthday is next month,” I tell him. “May twenty-first.”
He nods. “I won’t forget.”
We sit side by side on that bench, dirt gathering around our ankles.
Liam tells me about the grungy bar he and his teammates went to for his birthday in Hattiesburg, and I tell him about my crazy customers at the restaurant.
I count the inches between our legs. Two, maybe three.
It feels like less. Halfway through my beer, I stoop to examine the bag that was left behind.
“Catcher’s gear,” Liam tells me when I unpack it. “Somebody must’ve forgotten it.”
A sparkling idea crystallizes.
“I can’t do it,” Liam says.
“You can, Liam.”
“I’m going to hurt you.”
“I’m literally wearing a helmet, a chest guard, and kneepads.”
“That doesn’t mean you won’t bruise,” he says. “And your arms and upper thighs are completely exposed.”
“What are you, a cranky youth pastor? Have a little faith in me.”
“Bristol, I’m half a beer deep. I don’t have faith in me.”
Watching him through the grate of this helmet is somewhat comical. I’m sure I look ridiculous, and it is a little big for my head, but I’m set on this.
I fiddle with the pocket radar Liam keeps in his own bag, turning it on and propping it on the bench. He trails behind me, repositioning it to his liking, even as he continues to proclaim he won’t throw me a proper pitch.
I go back to home plate and squat. “Like this?”
He grins, tossing the ball into his glove on repeat. “Put the knee down on the opposite side of your catching hand.” I do as told. “That’s how you keep your stability right before you catch the ball.”
“Noted.” I pop the knee back up. “I’m ready. And if that thing isn’t going ninety miles per hour, I’ll know you’re cheating.”
“Paige.”
“Liam.”
“What if we did literally anything else?” he asks. “We could go find Evan and ask for a wine recommendation. We could sneak into an accounting night class.”
“I’m asking you to throw me one pitch.”
“That’s not the proper terminology, which tells me you aren’t seasoned enough for this.”
“Next you’ll demand I name five Def Leppard songs.” I rip off the helmet, fling off my glove. Liam’s face is greedy as I approach him. He hooks a finger into the side of my chest guard, pushing his lips together in amusement. “Please?” I ask, dropping my voice, batting my eyelashes.
I don’t know why I want this so much. I just do. I want to watch his body work, see the ball fly at me, try to catch it.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “What’ll you give me if I do?”
My body incinerates. “Would you settle for one kiss, without the promise of another?”
“Settle?” He tuts, eyes falling to my lips, his face hungry. “Paige, that’s definitely a privilege.”
Already, I find my head tipping up, my body leaning in. The more time I spend with Liam, the less it makes any sense at all why Maisy’s singular date with him a year and a half ago should be such a holdout for me.
Or even for her, given how thoroughly she’s moved on since Liam.
Maybe she just wants to make sure he doesn’t hurt me?
What’s the harm in one kiss?
I pull away and say “Deal” before reaching for the helmet. Liam grins, helping me adjust it, his fingers in the grates. He walks away, and I slide my glove back onto my hand.
From the pitcher’s mound, he instructs me to lift the glove higher. Then he rolls out his neck. Bends his knee. Draws back his hand.
Falters.
Does it all again.
Falters.
I crouch patiently, realizing that whether he does this or not, it’ll change everything.
Eventually, Liam drops his glove, his ball, and walks back to me. I stand, and Liam pulls the helmet off my head, pushing back my hair, his eyes desperate. His whole body bends over mine like a second guard, a bigger shield.
“I can’t do it, Bristol,” he admits, voice like gravel. “Not without a little more practice. I can’t risk hurting you. I would die if I hurt you.”
I step into him, onto home plate, and plant my mouth on his.
His lips are pillow soft, damp, late-afternoon warm.
When I break from him quickly, all nerves, Liam inhales, then chases me down, locking our mouths together and tasting back.
He traces my bottom lip with his tongue, pulls it between his teeth, and pinches softly.
I gasp in miniature, and he pinches harder.
Our mouths slide against each other, all fumbling, distracting exploration, while sparks shoot down my spine.
At some point, Liam lifts the chest guard over my head and tosses it carelessly. His hands move to my neck, into my hair. The slight but firm tug sends a bolt of feeling to my core. My lips go swollen under his heavy attention, fattened and too sensitive.
Change. Everything.
Finally, Liam rests his forehead against mine, both his hands still tangled in my hair. I pull back to watch his eyes as he pants, fascinated by the drastic change in his irises, the bitten look of his red lips. A sense of possession I’ve never experienced, not ever, sweeps over me.
He rubs his lips together and cups my cheeks, head rocking. “I want this so bad.”
“This?” I pant.
“Us,” he clarifies in a rasp. “I tried to be your friend. I really do promise that I tried, that my intentions were honest when I suggested it. But you dumped your boyfriend, and I stopped talking to other girls the same night I saw you at that party, and I think it’s because we knew.”
“Knew what?” I ask softly.
“That this,” he says, thumb coasting over my cheekbone, “was it. But I need you to tell me what you’re feeling, because—”
“Scared,” I say. “I’m scared the minute I give in, you’ll change your mind.”
Complete bafflement steals his expression. “Change my mind? I am obsessed with you, Paige. You’re the only girl I’ve ever met I want to be around all the time.”
He kisses me again, wildly, and mumbles against my lips, “My mind isn’t changing. It can be good, Paige, I promise, I swear.” His lips trail over my cheek, toward my ear. “Let’s see what happens if we just let it be this good. Do you want to try? Try it with me?”
He sucks on the side of my neck, and I feel like I’m unraveling.
“We can try it,” I say weakly.
“Yeah.” His voice is gruff, almost a groan as he noses along my throat. “We can and we will, and it’ll work. We’re going to work.”
The intensity in his voice, and the hope in his eyes, has me actually considering that whatever this is might even last longer than being friends did.