Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
COOPER
“ C ome again?”
It’s been over an hour at this point. I’m not hungry or thirsty, but I kind of need to pee. Not that I’ll tell Liesel that anytime soon.
We’re both bundled up in our huge winter coats. The idling car is keeping us warm, but it alternates between feeling too warm—like I’m sweating in my coat—and downright frosty.
Of course, that could be the mixed signals I’m getting from Liesel, too.
I get that she’d be mad about me getting her brothers traded if I’d done that. But I’ve thought about that conversation with Kayla over and over. I wasn’t trying to get Liesel’s brothers off the team. I wasn’t thinking about them at all. I was thinking about Liesel and how hot she looked in that black dress.
But now that the cat’s out of the bag, I can’t deny that her brothers bug me. We met last year during Spring Training. The Firebirds’ farm teams—minor league affiliates—trained at the Pinnacle Peak Stadium where the Firebirds train for two weeks. I didn’t interact with the players much, but their coach wanted to get them some tougher practice.
Lucas threw one right at me.
I assume, at any rate. Either that, or he has crappy control. Or he was nervous. But when I got out of the way and held my hands out in the universal “what the heck, bro?” gesture, he shrugged. Didn’t even apologize. Just shrugged .
I sent one into the cheap seats. He threw his hat in the grass.
When it was his brother’s turn, Logan tried a trick pitch—he throws a decent knuckleball—but I could tell something was coming, and I hit it to the warning track.
Most minor leaguers are excited to play against a major league player. Every other guy I encountered from their team was cool. I’m not saying Liesel’s brothers should have been deferential, but we’re part of the same organization. They should have at least been cool.
I talked to them after and said, “You guys have some real power.” I’m the major leaguer, so I was determined to be the bigger man.
Do you know what those punks said? “Next time you step in the box against us, you’re going down.”
“Then it’s a good thing you two are so predictable,” I said. “Stop telegraphing your pitches, you amateurs.”
Not gonna lie, I felt pretty good about that then.
Now? Honestly, still pretty good. Except the whole Liesel part.
Speaking of Liesel, she hasn’t answered me yet. Not a word of explanation. She’s sending what looks like a series of furious texts, judging by how fast and hard her thumbs are flying.
“Those arrogant, overprotective butt nuggets,” she mumbles. She puts her phone down, looking fiery enough to melt the snow. “Tell me exactly what happened with my brothers.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
So I tell her everything from the near miss to the trick pitch. I tell her about their threat, too.
“They really said they’d drop you next time they faced you at the plate?” she asks.
“Yup.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them that would never happen because they suck at disguising their pitches. And I may have called them amateurs.”
To my utter shock and delight, Liesel laughs. “They had that coming.”
“I kind of thought so,” I say. “Any idea why they had it out for me?”
“I have a pretty solid working theory,” she says. But instead of giving that theory, she climbs into the back of the car, pulls down the middle seat that separates the front of the car from the trunk, and the next thing I know, she’s pulling out a couple of waters and protein bars. She hands me one of each.
I take both, but I only open the protein bar.
“You should drink, you know. Even though it’s cold, you can still get dehydrated.”
“I know. But … I don’t want to drink anything yet.”
“Why? Do you have to pee?” She snorts. I don’t answer. “Oh no, you have to pee? What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to wait until I’m ready to die, and then I’ll run outside and pee.”
“Ew.”
“It’s coming for you, too. Let’s be honest.”
“I peed before we left. I’m fine.”
“Wait until that water catches up with you.”
She takes a sip and screws the lid back on. “Good point.”
We both open our protein bars. “Not so mad at Nate now, are you?” I ask.
“You really can’t help saying the dumbest thing that pops into your head, can you?”
I laugh and take a bite. Each chew sends a pulse of pain into my head, and I realize I’m getting a headache. “What’s the point of constantly censoring yourself?”
“Being polite.”
“Overrated.”
“You don’t actually think that, do you?”
I chew. The bar is decent—it’s a puffy, chewy bar that tastes a little too good to be that healthy. “I used to. I’ve had some experiences lately that have made me second guess my theory, though.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “I certainly hope so.”
“Do you still hate me?”
“I’m not positive yet. You still haven’t explained the Colt Spencer thing.”
I pull up the video and show it to her. “Jake sent this to me a couple weeks ago.”
She watches. And then winces. “He broke his hand?”
“And just had surgery. I sent the video to Doug. He may not even be healthy till the end of Spring Training, and then he could be rehabbing for a while in the minors. Doug doesn’t like the idea of spending that much money for a dude who may wash out after his injury. Also, he agreed that Colt is a giant blowhard.”
She turns toward me and tucks a leg under her, getting comfortable. “So let me guess: we’re going to call up your boy Betancourt and keep Jessup for one more season.”
“Not my call. But that’s on the table, as we agreed, if you remember.”
“I do remember,” she says. She pinches the bridge of her nose.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just a headache,” she says.
“I kind of have one, too,” I say. “Nothing like getting trapped on the freeway in a blizzard to give you a tension headache.”
She sniffs. “Yeah, no kidding.”
“So … are we going to talk about the elephant in the room now?”
“What elephant?” she asks. I give her a level gaze. “What elephant?”
“The ‘I can’t believe I wanted to kiss you’ elephant.”
She pushes my shoulder. “You can’t be serious!”
“As a heart attack! You said you wanted to kiss me! Frankly, I’m impressed by my own restraint. I thought you were trying a little harder to play hard to get.”
“I wasn’t playing hard to get.”
“No, you wish you were. You’re just like your brothers: you telegraph every move.”
“How are you like this?”
“Like what? A … classless, overpaid punk?”
She closes her eyes a bit hard, like she’s feeling woozy. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Liese. You meant it.”
“At the time, maybe.” She shifts in her seat.
I like seeing her squirm. But, I also want to know how she really feels. “I’ve never been accused of being classy, but do you really think I’m overpaid?” My ego wasn’t bruised when she said it in the airport—I’ve heard so much worse so many times, it’s white noise. But the idea that she still may think that hurts. Don’t get me wrong: if there’s a flaw in my game I don’t know about, I want to know, even if it hurts. But if the girl I like thinks I’m mediocre at the game we both love …
“Overpaid isn’t the right word,” she says, her neck almost matching her red blouse.
“But not as good as Hideo Suzuki.”
She puffs her cheeks full of air and blows. She’s breathing a bit too hard. But then, so am I. “Um, you’re a little better than Suzuki.”
“A little? How little?” Her blush is all the way to her ears. “How do I show up on your all-seeing analytics program?”
“It’s not all-seeing.”
“Did you know I was gonna get injured? Is that why you were so mad?”
“No. I mean, yes, by the end of the regular season, we predicted with a high confidence level that you’d get injured, but that’s not the reason I was upset we traded for you.”
“Wait, you were upset the team traded for me in the first place? Liesel Fischer! What is so wrong with me? Is this because you’re a traditionalist? Because I’m so brash?” Lee pulls the hood of her coat up, like she’s trying to cover her face. “Sugar Plum?”
“ItsbecauseIhadacrushonyou.”
“One more time, in English.”
“It’s because I had a crush on you!”
“WHAT?”
I say this so loud, people in neighboring cars can probably hear us. Liesel is fully covering her face with her hood now, curling in a ball in her seat.
I tug her hood down, getting my face right next to hers, my lips puffing against her ear in a way that zings against my lip. “Spill. Now.”
She looks one glare away from an explosion. “I don’t have a crush anymore, obviously.”
I grin. “Obviously.”
“It’s when I was a teenager, okay? You were on the cover of every sports magazine, and I … may have had a poster of you.”
“But I was in high school. I didn’t have any posters until I was drafted.”
She is redder than Santa’s sleigh. “So, it was kind of homemade.”
I gape in utter delight. “You made a poster of me?!”
“My brothers did! I, uh, took one of the magazines you were on and I sort of had it in my room?—”
“Oh my gosh, did you kiss it? Did you kiss the cover with my face on it?”
“NO! I was fifteen, not twelve. I wasn’t kissing the cover.”
“You just put the magazine right beside your bed and said goodnight to my face every night, didn’t you? It’s okay. You can admit it.”
If looks could kill, I would be deader than last year’s Christmas tree. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You telling me is truly the greatest Christmas gift I’ve ever received.”
“I think I’m back to hating you.”
“It’s okay now that I know you started with loving me. You’ll come around.”
“I didn’t love you. I thought you were eye candy. And so my brothers thought it would be hilarious if they made a life-size cutout of you and put it on the back of my door.”
I almost cackle. “Life-size? We’ve gone from a magazine cover to a poster to a life-size cutout ? This is the best day of my life.”
“Don’t you want to know how I went from a crush to loathing you with every fiber of my being?”
My laughter stops. “Oh. Uh …” Her challenging expression doesn’t bode well. “Yes?”
“I met you.”
“What? No way. I would remember meeting you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Do you remember your first major league game?”
“Of course.”
“My mom got our whole family tickets because she knew what a huge fan I was. My dad adjusted his schedule so he could fly out with us, and everything. You got a walk, hit a single, and hit a sac fly. It was incredible. Your bat speed was like nothing I’d ever seen. My brothers were almost as obsessed as I was. Even my dad was impressed. So after the game, we stuck around so I could ask you for your autograph.”
It’s my turn to wince. Hard. As exciting as that day was, it was also devastating.
My mom had made me a promise: when I played my first game in the majors—my lifelong dream—she would be there. She was working with a therapist and was ready. She swore up and down she would be there.
She wasn’t.
To top it off, the hate I got from the opposing team and their fans was vicious. Heck, even some of my own teammates were hostile.
Being on the cover of Sports Illustrated at seventeen changed my life, but it also set the tone for how everyone else in baseball would approach me from that moment forward.
“You said, ‘Get a life.’”
“No,” I admit, my insides writhing, “I said ‘get a life and stop ruining mine.’” I can’t swallow. I’m feeling nauseous and even a little lightheaded. And I still need to pee.
“You remember?”
“Not you . I didn’t even look you in the eyes. But yeah, I remember what I said. It’s eaten away at me for the last, what, seven years?”
She gives a slow blink. “Why? Why has it eaten away at you? Why did you say it?”
Why did I say it?
No seriously. Why did I say it? I’m having a hard time remembering, but this is something I feel like I should know. I pinch my temples. My headache is getting worse, as is my nausea. Maybe that protein bar isn’t sitting well with me. And my other … bodily urge is getting too bad to handle.
Liesel closes her eyes, resting her head on the seat. It’s late afternoon, but she looks tired.
She breathes deeply, almost painfully. “I feel off.”
“I hear you,” I say.
“It’s probably stress, right?” she asks.
“Probably. I’m sorry to do this, but I have to go. Like go go. I hope you can still look at me when I get back.”
She nods and waves her hand, not even looking up as she draws in another deep breath.
I grab the door handle, the movement almost tiring. How can grabbing a handle be so draining? I’m breathing way too heavy for an hour and half of doing nothing. I wonder if I’m coming down with something or if it’s stress, like Liesel said.
I open the door, and a gust of icy wind slaps me in the face. My foot sinks into the snow drift that’s already formed around the car. I shiver and plunge my other foot in. I try to leave as quickly as I can, but I hear Liesel moan.
“Cold!” she says.
I duck my head back in the car. “Sorry!”
“Close it!”
“On it.” I close the door and then look around in the thick storm. The snow is thicker and wetter out here than I thought, and the cars stretch on in both directions for as far as I can see. I make my way over to the barrier, and the snow banks lessen the farther I get from the cars. It’s been snowing all week, and the wind seems to be pushing the ground cover against the cars, creating the snow drift I stepped in. After I take care of business as fast as a human can, I weave around cars to get back to Liesel.
It’s only been two minutes, and I’m freezing—my legs and hands are numb, and my face feels chapped from the snow—but my head already feels better. In fact, I don’t feel quite as nauseated, either.
Huh. Maybe I just needed some fresh air. Or to get my blood pumping?
Somehow, I overshoot Liesel’s white Prius. It’s hard to get a clear enough view with the snow attacking me as it is. I keep my head down and at an angle, instead looking at my footsteps and a few feet around them. I follow them back to Liesel’s car, and that’s when I notice something odd.
Because she fishtailed when she slammed on her brakes, she stopped at a different angle than the other cars around us, and that angle is causing the snow to hit directly against the back of her car instead of the side.
Something doesn’t look right.
I glance at the other cars. Snow dumps on them just like on Liesel’s. The people in them are huddled against their heaters or talking or looking at something on their phones. Hot exhaust pipes from their cars just like?—
“The exhaust!”
I sprint to Liesel’s car and open the passenger door. “Your tailpipe is blocked!” I say.
“What?”
I can’t explain more. I leave the door open to let in as much fresh air as possible and run around to the back, where dense snow has compacted and clogged the exhaust pipe. It’s covering the tailpipe completely. I kick and swipe at the chunk until it’s dislodged, and then I run back to the car. Liesel is shaking her head, breathing deeply.
“Are you okay?”
“My head hurts and I think I’m going to throw up,” she says.
“That’s the carbon monoxide. The angle of your car meant that the snow somehow got clogged up in the worst possible spot. Can you reverse and readjust your position?”
“I’m too dizzy. Can you do it?”
Liesel climbs over the console and into the passenger seat, and I slide into the driver’s seat. We close both doors but open the windows to keep as much fresh air coming in as possible.
It’s freezing. My face hurts. My hands are red and already feel chapped. I back up a foot, move forward a foot, and repeat for the next thirty seconds until the Prius is in a safer spot.
“How’s your head?” I ask Liesel.
“A little better. The nausea’s not as bad, either.”
“Do you want to call Juliet? She’s a nurse, right?”
“No, Dr. Google will do just fine. If I call Jules, she’ll send in a literal cavalry.”
She looks up carbon monoxide poisoning on her phone, and a minute later, she says. “Turns out breathing oxygen is really good for recovering from carbon monoxide exposure. Who knew!”
I smile and close the windows, confident the frigid air is as fresh as it comes. Liesel opens her water bottle and guzzles. “I know I’ll have to pee later, but water and staying calm are the only other things we can do. Drink up, pal.”
I grab my water bottle, bump it against hers, and then we both chug.
When we’ve breathed deeply for a couple of minutes, she reclines her seat. The lights from the dashboard and other cars’ brake lights are the only points of illumination in the otherwise bleak, dark evening.
“So, where were we before we were so rudely poisoned?”
“I think we were talking about your crush on me.” I move the seat back as far as it can go. Liesel isn’t short, but I’m a lot taller than she is.
“No. We’re well past that. I think we were talking about what a huge jerk you were to me when I was a young, impressionable fan who only wanted an autograph.”
“Right.” I chew on my lip. “It’s a long story.”
“Since there’s no place to go …”
I nod. Here goes nothing.