22. Chapter 22
The dreaded first day of school finally hit; I had on a new polo (thanks, Mrs. Quinn) and a pair of old khakis that were starting to creep up my ankles. I walked into my third class of the day, AP Stats, expecting to know nobody.
Stats was the only AP class I could handle. I didn’t consider myself as smart as the students who had schedules filled with AP Lit and AP Bio classes, but numbers made sense to me. Maybe all those years of calculating my batting average after every at-bat had prepped me more than I’d realized.
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the room was the unmistakable presence of Maissie.
She sat dead center of the second row, scribbling in a pink notebook, her focus locked on writing whatever nerds wrote before class had even started.
I debated sitting in the back but took the seat next to Maissie, choosing familiarity over a room full of strangers.
“Aren’t you a little young for this class?” I asked as I sat.
“Aren’t you a little dumb for this class?” she sniped back, not even glancing at me.
“Good one, for a kid,” I said.
“Right, because I’ve never had an idiot senior think he’s smarter than me.”
I laughed at her boldness. I pulled out a notebook and pen, the smell of a new school year everywhere. “Okay, okay. Do you want to keep exchanging insults, or do you want to call a truce?”
“Can I get one more first?” she asked, turning to face me. She finally let the smile wipe across her face, almost like she could tolerate me.
I rolled my eyes at the sophomore.
“Truce,” she said.
There was a beat of quiet between us as she flipped a page in her notebook. Then I asked, “Gav says you’ll keep tutoring him this year? We need him to be eligible.”
She groaned. “How are you all so obsessed with such a dumb game?”
“No need for such hateful language,” I said.
“Besides,” she said, not meeting my eye, “it’s called studying when you’re dating.”
That sentence hit like a foul ball to the ribs. Dating? Gavin? My mouth hung open, unable to process such a foreign concept.
But was it foreign? That explained the lame excuse of summer tutoring. The pink when her name came up, then Gavin defending her to Zach at breakfast.
Before I could recover enough brain cells to form a sentence, the bell rang for the start of class. She gave me one last look—barely containing her own blush climbing her face—before she turned back to her notes.
I spent the rest of class pretending to follow the syllabus while trying to figure out when the hell that had happened.
After the last bell, I met briefly with Coach Berrios before I biked straight to the Quinns’—well, I guessed, my home now.
The sound of ball hitting metal greeted me as I made my way to the backyard. I didn’t have to see him to know Gavin was batting. The contact he made had a distinct pop now and grew sharper by the day.
When I stepped into the backyard, I spotted Zach behind the L-screen, feeding balls from the bucket without pause. Jake was sprawled on the grass, barely paying attention. None of them looked over as I dropped my bag by the netting; Gavin just switched sides of the plate.
I watched his swing as he settled in left-handed. It had tightened over the summer—still compact, but the explosion in his hips was real now. He drove everything with power, his strength catching up with his swing, the workouts with Zach paying off.
“Last one,” Zach said.
The pitch floated across the middle, and Gavin hammered it right back to where it’d come from.
I ducked under the netting to help pick up the bucket of balls. “Nice round, kid.”
“Stop calling me kid, Easton,” he said, swiping sweat off his shorts. “I’m taller than you.”
“No way,” I said, getting an inch away.
I looked at Gavin. Even at fifteen, he still had a baby face that could pass for twelve.
His cheeks were round, with no facial hair in sight.
But he wasn’t wrong. We were eye level, and he may have had me by an inch.
His shoulders were narrow, his arms still stringy, but I had to tilt up ever so slightly. When had this happened?
“Told you,” he said smugly.
“Maybe you won’t look like a skeleton in a baseball uniform by next season,” I shot back.
“I’ll still be taller than you,” he proudly said.
“I’m sure you will,” I said. Then I leaned toward his ear and whispered. “The real question, though, is if you’ll still be dating Maissie.”
Gavin froze as I pulled away. His face went red immediately, his eyes pointed at the ground and unmoving. “Don’t say anything yet,” he said, his voice loud enough for me and no one else.
I nodded, remembering how long he’d kept his mouth shut about Tanner and me. “Up to you.”
“Fine,” he said, a grin tugging at his face. “If you really want to, you can tell them.”
“I didn’t say anything,” I replied.
“Dude, quit begging me,” Gavin said, a glint in his eyes. “It’s not a good look for you. I already said you could tell them. Just do it.”
Jake spoke up, his ears sensing gossip. “Tell us what?”
“Easton is being an ass and forcing me to tell you guys something,” Gavin said.
“You’re just making stuff up now,” I said as I shook my head.
“Will one of you two just say it so we can finish hitting?” Zach said from behind the screen. “Quit being dumb.”
Gavin raised an eyebrow at me, still thinking he could get me to talk. Not this time, kid. I shook my head.
“Okay, fine,” Gavin finally relented. “Maissie and I are dating.”
Jake jumped to his feet and flew under the netting. “MAISSIE?”
Zach whistled. “Little Gavin has a girlfriend. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“How about you three act normal?”
“We’re just teasing you, Gav,” I said. “Although I’m not sure how you can stand her, to be honest.”
He looked back at me. “She’s smart and funny. And she doesn’t treat me like I’m Tanner and Zach’s little brother, which is a nice change from literally everybody else in that school.”
I nodded, impressed. And maybe a little jealous, though not of Gavin exactly, but how simple it got to be for him. He liked a girl, the girl liked him, and the worst-case scenario was the three of us teasing him.
No closet. No best friend twenty minutes away, which might as well be three thousand miles, now with a boyfriend. Just a fifteen-year-old who’d figured out he liked someone and could tell his friends.
For me, I’d gotten a voice in my head that showed up every time I looked at Tanner too long, asking what was wrong with me.
My dad built that voice years ago in a garage, and he and that stupid voice never had to consider that I couldn’t control who I liked any more than I could control the fact there are people who liked the Cubs.
“Good for you,” I said, and meant it. Even if I still had some things to figure out, it didn’t mean Gavin shouldn’t be happy. “But it’s weird you’re dating someone. When I met you, you were scared of girls and bawled during Up.”
“It’s a sad movie!” he shot back.
“When did this start?” Zach asked, holding the half-full bucket of baseballs.
“We kept texting after she tutored me. Kind of just happened, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“MAISSIE?” Jake yelled again. He paced around the cage, circling all of us.
“Yeah. I like her. And you two need to act like normal people when she comes over.”
“Anything for you, young master Gavin,” I said, giving a mock bow.
“Seriously.”
“Okay, we’re done,” I added, more serious. “Good for you, man.”
“We’re done talking about this. The bucket is full; I’ll throw to one of you. Who’s next?”
I grabbed my bat and stepped into the box. Gavin used to tell me everything. The dumb ideas, the gross milestones, every half-formed thought that sprinted in and out of his head. This he’d kept a secret for weeks—which meant that maybe it was real.
He took his place behind the screen, taller than me now. The kid who’d puked at his first workout was gone. Maybe if he was keeping things from me, he wouldn’t need me much longer.
“Ready, short stuff?”
Or maybe he just didn’t need how we used to be. He still wanted me in the box, hitting like always. He’d just turned into a peer somewhere along the way.