Chapter 8 The Real Andrew Harding
Roger hated Andrew Harding.
But Andrew never knew.
They were supposed to be boys—little League, travel teams, birthdays, splitting a hoagie at Willow Park, beer cans in the Claremont woods. But for Roger, it was a private rivalry, one-sided and lifelong.
At parties, he’d dap Andrew up like blood, then talk shit about him on the stoop the second he turned his back.
Call it Montclair etiquette: smile first, cut later.
“He’s everybody’s boy but no one’s man,” Roger’d mutter.
But what he meant to say is this:
Andrew's more habit than man.
A presence without permanence, always there but never within reach.
He lived in moments, not people. Had all the girls, wanted none.
And Roger watched him, always, long enough for Elle to see the truth—he didn’t hate Andrew. He wanted to be wanted by Andrew. And for Roger, that was worse.
“He don’t even fuckin’ like girls, Elle,” he told her once. “He likes damage. Makes him feel like a fuckin’ god.”
Another time: “He’s a fake, Elle. Only goes down on girls ‘cause it keeps his mouth too full to lie. Fuckin’ sick, right?”
Then drunk one night: “Swear, if I told Harding to suck my dick, he’d ask if I wanted him to spit or swallow. Bro’s a queer hiding in plain sight.”
Words straight from Montclair’s golden boy, who was three seasons in the minors with a fastball that could take your head off, and a curveball that nobody could hit.
He loved the fuck out of baseball.
Never loved Elle.
He barely looked at her sober. Only kissed her when his breath was soaked in bourbon. Only fucked her when he was drunk, lights off, face turned. He never went down on her, claiming it was “too intimate.”
But Montclair girls aren’t stupid, they only play dumb when it suits them.
Elle knew Roger was using her the same way he used mouthwash before Sunday dinner—to cover something up.
Because it played well in Montclair, and no one'd believe who he loved in private if he had the right girl on his arm in public.
It’s not like she stayed for love, either.
She stayed for the daydream. The diamond ring.
The diamond field. Stone-front house in Scarsdale.
Her name on the Benz, his team stitched in the headrests.
She stayed for the travel days, the dugout seats, future title of MLB Wife, and the league life—Lululemon, press passes, and birthday shoutouts on ESPN.
She’d trade sex, truth, even dignity for it.
He was trying to hide the gay, and she was trying to hold onto the name. And while Roger got the field and fans, Andrew got into her bloodstream.
Elle’s obsession with Andrew grew the same way Roger’s did, from the sidelines, pretending not to look. Andrew wasn’t always around, didn’t go out much, but when he did, time with him felt borrowed.
He was a ghost—hard to find, harder to touch.
He always showed up enough to stay a legend, always disappeared before he became real.
Even staring at him felt forbidden, as if he’d always been promised to another.
Off-limits by design, stamped for someone else’s hands, a boy who’d been carved for a nameless girl.
So when she did see him, she started hugging him a second longer. Always played the “What’d you say?” card so he’d lean in and breathe against her neck.
She memorized the triangle of freckles along his throat. His cologne that moved in layers—first fresh, then warm, then animal. His Jersey boy smirk and Union City vowels—half swallowed, all attitude. The gold chain that always peeked out from his neckline.
She’d wait for the moment his shirt would ride up when he stretched. How his laugh took him forward. How it cracked his voice and hit low in her spine. And that slow lean-back when he roasted someone, lashes low, voice lower.
At pre-games, she always claimed the seat next to him, acting like it was random. She stole sips from his red cup, licked the rim after, and wore the same perfume every time they hung out, just in case he ever noticed the scent on someone else and thought of her.
He didn’t hit on girls, didn’t chase. He floated off and let them wonder. That’s what made her want him more. Only boy harder to keep than a pitcher in the minors who didn’t like girls?
Andrew fucking Harding.
Until the call came.
Roger died on a Tuesday, going out the same way he lived—chasing ghosts. He collapsed between a bottle of Maker’s and a Yankee classic rerun flashing blue light on his dead body, face-down, Rivera’s cutter spinning on replay across the flatscreen.
His heart gave out at twenty-seven.
They called it a tragedy, but Elle called it robbery. Because he died and took her entire future with him.
She wore the perfume to the funeral.
Not for Roger.
For Andrew.
Even grief looked good on him, standing in the back in all black, hair slicked, face carved in stone-sorrow, ready to bury a body… or ruin one. His eyes were unfocused like he wasn’t seeing Roger in the casket. It was as if he were somewhere else entirely.
Afterward, he spoke to no one but Roger’s mother. Then he let Elle cry into his chest for two whole minutes. Her diamond life, her Lululemon, her league-wife future buried six feet under, and her new future standing beside her, soaking up her tears.
Montclair lost a pitcher. Elle lost a lifestyle.
“Here,” he said, taking her phone to punch in his number. “Call if you need somethin’.” Then he walked off, head down, one hand in his pocket, the other swinging empty like maybe it already missed holding her.
He didn’t look back.
She smiled anyway.
// AUG 22, ‘24 - 2:26 AM - BLOOMFIELD, NJ //
Elle waits the respectful twenty-four hours before texting him.
Not because she’s grieving, but because she knows his hours, and when his shift's almost over. Then she sends the text: Hey… I know it’s late. But… I’m having a really hard night.
No emoji or exclamation point.
Only ellipses and sorrow because she knows what she's doing.
He replies: I’ll come by after work. But I’m not going inside.
It brought it all back, that old rule of his. How he never went into other girls' homes, and never let anyone into his. Even back then, when it was her and Roger, and Andrew was a third-wheeler in the backseat, he had rules.
She had to pee once, so bad she cried. He pointed her down the block to a Dunkin’, saying girls weren’t allowed inside unless they came out of his mother. He had a different excuse every time.
So Elle makes the back porch the stage by pulling the bench out into a daybed, laying a blanket over the cushion, lighting the citronella.
She puts on a Spotify playlist titled: songs i wanna get fucked to, and turns the volume low enough to drown her breathing.
But not loud enough to wake the roommate.
Afterward, she showers, shaves, slips into her silk pajamas—cropped tank, no bra, loose shorts to show she’s wearing no panties.
She swipes on mascara, smudges it with her thumb like tear tracks, and pats shadows under her eyes.
Then she pours a glass of wine and cracks the porch door as if she needed to step outside for a minute mid-breakdown, like none of this was planned.
If you’re a Jersey girl, you know Harding’s 8 Deadly Don’ts.
He doesn’t chase, charm, make the first move, take off his clothes, kiss, let you touch him, double back, or fuck. Not unless the planets line up, it’s a leap year, and he’s feeling some type of way.
You want him? Get him alone. He’ll make anyone come one time.
Roger told her he’s got the hero syndrome.
Real bad. A sucker for sad girls. Roger also gave her the metaphorical middle finger when he died, ripped her whole goddamn future out from under her, so this is her fuck you right back.
She hopes Roger’s watching from wherever he is, because the only person he ever wanted is about to be on his knees for Elle, and that’s close to justice.
But Elle’s also in it for the long haul. She wants legacy. To be the first girl who breaks Harding’s Deadly 8. The girl who cracks him open, steals his heart, caging the ghost.
And if four years of psych lectures taught her anything, it’s this: the only way to keep Andrew Harding is to leave the cage wide open… and let him think locking himself inside was his idea all along.
She hears the latch click on the side gate.
Showtime.
She slaps her cheeks, pinches her nose pink, pours a little water from the bottle onto her fingers and wets her lashes. She keeps her gaze hazy and distant like she’s somewhere else. Not on this porch in silk shorts, but folded over Roger’s grave, mourning a life that never happened.
She waits, counting his footsteps up the porch, the wood creaking.
Then she lifts her chin, eyes a mess, and parts her lips. After a little breath hitching, she’s the picture of grief, gift-wrapped for a savior. Tragedy staged to seduce.
Andrew has the after-hours look—half-tired, half-trouble.
He stops at the top step and leans into his hip, keys in one hand, shirt bartender-black, sleeves rolled, forearms flexing, blue veins glinting under porch light.
His hair’s damp, a little fucked from the night, curling at the edges of his face.
The August air wraps around him and sticks to his skin, sweat glistening across his neck.
“It’s past four,” he says, tired disbelief in his throat. “Figured you’d be knocked the fuck out by now.” He moves up the last step, into the porch light glow, jaw working overtime and eyes burnt out. “Don’t tell me you been sittin’ here all night waitin’ on me.”
She has. She got the timing wrong, thinking he’d be free by three. When he finally checked in again, her too-fast reply gave her away—still up and waiting, a little too obvious.
She plays it off with a shrug. “Kinda hard to fall asleep when your whole life just died, y’know?”