Bonus Epilogue
Logan
I’m in my favorite setting surrounded by my favorite people, yet everything hurts—from my brain to my heart and the back of my eyes, nose, and throat in between.
I’m happy for Lucas and for Liesel, glad to have Scottie and Coop expanding our family circle.
And if anything, my feeling of isolation should make me appreciate my dad more, as he’s been alone the last few years with not even his kids around. At least I’ve had Lucas.
I’ve always had Lucas.
He’s as much emotional support human as he is twin at this point. Or rather, until this point.
I’ve watched the inevitability of him and Scottie creep closer and closer over the last year, and now it’s on the Jumbotron for everyone to see.
He’s going to thrive on the Firebirds. His spot on the permanent roster is all but guaranteed.
Mine is not.
That means I have to figure out how to go back to South Carolina by myself, navigate an ever-changing roster of people getting called up, sent back down, picked up, and traded for another season after so many already.
And I have to do it alone.
The sun is unforgiving as it beats down on me, making my skin feel dry and cracking in spite of my careful sunscreen application. My hair is sweaty and matted beneath my baseball cap, and I’m trying to pretend the burning in my chest is just the heat.
A hand squeezes mine, and I look down to see Liesel smiling. With Lucas too preoccupied to notice me, I’m glad that the sister who doesn’t realize her boyfriend is proposing tonight still remembers me. For now.
Wow, Fischer, a part of me thinks. Self-pity is a terrible look on you.
I smile at my sister and we both turn back to the game, but because the pitcher is still warming up, there’s no gameplay to distract us yet. I move my eyes as far from Lucas and Scottie as I can, looking across the stands to people watch.
In the lower deck up first base line, I spot kids waving homemade signs, grown men laughing and sloshing the last inches of their stadium beers onto the concrete, and a young boy wearing a jersey so big it nearly swallows him as he tries to catch the attention of players.
And then I spot a flash of waist-long blonde hair the color of honey butter—
My entire body locks up.
Georgiana?
I crane my neck to see around the pole in our way, and then I watch her bend down, helping a younger girl tie her shoe.
It can’t be Lulabelle, can it?
But those thick brown curls are unmistakable.
I smack Lucas’s back in front of me, and he turns from where he’s hugging Scottie. I point to the lower deck, and he follows my finger.
Then he whips back toward me.
“Dude! Is that Book Babe?”
“Book Babe?” Coop asks, lunging forward to see.
“It is!” Lucas says. “What are you doing here? Go!”
“Go and what?” I ask, my heart ping-ponging violently in my chest.
“Ask for her number!” Coop says.
“Come on,” Lucas says, climbing over the chair to get back to our row. “Coop, you get on his left, I’ll be on his right. Break.”
They’re dragging and pushing me out of the row, apologizing to everyone as our thick, long legs knock into the knees of people who refuse to stand.
I’m not fighting either of them, though.
I’m hoping too hard to fight.
“Keep an eye on her,” Lucas tells Coop.
We hit the aisle and start climbing the steps two at a time.
“She’s moving,” Coop says, glancing down toward the lower section. “Taking the kid up the stairs.”
“Go, go, go,” Lucas mutters.
We start jogging.
“She’s heading toward the concourse,” Coop says. “Wait—no, she stopped—”
We pass a support pole, and I catch another flash of that long blonde hair swinging behind her shoulders, and the hope is mounting, swelling like a balloon inflating in my chest.
“Still there,” Coop says. “Over by the pretzel cart!”
My heart is hammering in my ears as we push past people crowding the food line when the game’s about to start.
We’re so close.
Almost there.
We reach the cart, and—
The balloon pops in my chest.
She’s gone.
Coop stops dead, scanning the crowd.
Lucas immediately starts moving again, weaving between groups of people like he’s chasing a fly ball in the gap.
“Georgiana!” he calls. “Georgie!”
Nothing.
I turn in a slow circle, stranger after stranger crossing my line of sight.
But none of them are her.
Coop leans over the railing, looking down toward where they’d been sitting. “Maybe she’s with someone,” he says.
But the seats are empty now. Whoever they were with is already gone.
Lucas jogs back over, breathing hard.
“Stay here. I’ll keep walking around the concourse.”
“I’ll check the team store,” Coop says, and they both break.
All the while, I stay put, turning, thinking about the way her green eyes flashed when we talked about books and baseball while Lulabelle did a color-by-sticker book at my signing table.
Coop returns first, then finally Lucas. He claps my shoulder.
“Anything?” he asks, his hopeful tone clashing with his sympathetic brow.
I swallow. “No,” I say, forcing a shrug. “It’s okay. It probably wasn’t her, anyway.”
Lucas studies my face for a second longer than I like, then nods.
“Want me to check again? We could all take an exit and watch—”
“No, it’s fine,” I insist, sounding far steadier than I feel. I put a hand on his back and one on Coop’s. “I’m going to get myself a pretzel. Why don’t you guys head back before everyone thinks you found a better family.”
“Impossible,” Coop says.
“Suck-up,” Lucas says. But then he looks at me. “Logan, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Give me a minute, okay?”
There was a time when Lucas and I could read each other like a, well, book.
This last month changed things. We both got better at hiding. I’m not sure Lucas is buying what I’m selling, but he’s not pushing me, either. I don’t know how I feel about that.
They do one more check. “Are you sure?” Coop asks.
“Go,” I say. “You’re just gonna steal my pretzel,” I add, and the two walk back to our section.
The noise of the stadium swells around me—music, vendors, laughter—but it all feels far away, like I’m stuck underwater while everyone else is walking above me.
I walk numbly through the chaos, scanning every blonde head I pass, knowing none of them are hers but unable to stop.
She’s nowhere.
I stop near a trashcan beside the pillar where we last saw her, tugging my cap off to drag a hand through my sweaty hair. I scratch my head with my eyes closed, and then I open them.
And that’s when I see it.
A small scrap of fabric on the concrete with a bent safety pin sticking out of the corner.
The air in my lungs seems to freeze.
I crouch and pick it up.
The patch is slightly frayed around the edges, the safety pin still half threaded through the cloth but sprung open.
The embroidered words and logo are both familiar:
My heart stalls.
Then it revs back to life.
The first time I saw Georgiana, she was wearing patches pinned to the side of her Converse like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I turn the patch over in my fingers, feeling each stitch.
She was here.
She’s gone now, but she was here. And she’s been to Meant to Bean, the shop Lucas and I have ordered from, from the outside counter, hundreds of times.
Without ever going inside.
Could she really have been that close the whole time? Is there a chance she’ll be there again?
For the first time in weeks, the thought of going back to Mullet Ridge doesn’t fill me with dread.
It doesn’t feel like a punishment or isolation.
It feels like a chance.
Logan’s spent his whole life reading stories.
It’s finally time to write his own.