Basically, I sucked at hitting.
But this season would be different. I’d been working on my form, my stance, my hips, and my body alignment and weight distribution at the plate. Chance and I were always at the cages, taking hacks and hitting more than anyone else on the team. I felt like I had the most to lose.
This was my last year on the field. It was my last chance to impress the baseball scouts enough for them to want to take a chance on me. I had been eligible for the draft after last season ended, but there wasn’t even a single scout sniffing around or talking me up. No one reached out, told me they liked what they saw on the field but to get that batting average up over the summer. Not a damn scout had said a damn thing. And not a single agent had unofficially talked to me, letting me know they wanted to represent me when the time came.
That was when the panic had officially started to set in. I was on a clock that would eventually stop ticking. My days to further my baseball career were numbered, and I was getting down to the wire. What the hell would I do with my life if I didn’t play baseball? I really didn’t want to follow in my old man’s footsteps. I wondered how long it would take to get over feeling like a failure if that happened.
It was the one question every athlete asked themselves. Most of us had been playing for so long that the sport was tied up in our identity. It was a part of who we were. If I didn’t have the game and wasn’t a baseball player, who was I exactly? I’d been working toward this dream, this goal for so long that I’d abandoned any other dreams I might have had, not that I could think of any in the moment.
Baseball was all I saw. And I was not unique in that perspective. Baseball was all most ballplayers saw. We all shared the same dream—to get to the minor leagues and hopefully get into the bigs one day.
I knew that I could go work for my dad if this dream died, but the last thing that interested me was being an electrician for other people to snub their noses at. Not that it wasn’t a fine profession, and my dad made plenty of money; it just wasn’t for me. But then again, outside of baseball, I wasn’t sure what was.
“You think your parents ever hung out here at the house?” I asked, knowing it was a fucked up question, but every player at Fullton knew the story of Jack and Cassie Carter. Or at least, part of the story.
Jack had been the best pitcher the college had ever seen at the time. He had gotten drafted but not before falling for a sassy and mouthy girl he had to work to get. There was more to the story, but the part that had been most drilled into us was the part about the girls who would stop at nothing to hitch a ride to a player heading out of town. We had been warned to be careful, to think with the head on our shoulders and not the one in our pants.
“Dude. Really?” Chance grimaced, and I laughed. “I don’t want to think about my parents right now.”
He shuddered, like he was washing away a bad memory, and I laughed more, tossing the rest of my beer into the grass. I wasn’t in the mood to get drunk even though we had just won the series and should be celebrating. The season was in full swing, and I needed to be in my best shape.
Beer made you round. I’d seen it happen. The last fucking thing I wanted to be was round.
“Who on the team do you think is most like your dad was?” Another weird question, but I found myself lost a little in time, thinking back to when the great Jack Carter had gone to school here and how it must have felt to be him.
Chance narrowed his eyes at me, knowing exactly what I was asking. Who was the biggest player? Within a second, he gave a nod of his head toward the door and said, “Mac. Hands down.”
I followed his gaze and watched as Mac attacked some girl’s face with his own. He had a different girl as often as he wanted, even when we traveled to away games. How the hell he seemed to pull it off with little to no drama was beyond me, but that was Mac for you. A line out the door of girls always wanting more. None of us understood it.
My smile dropped instantly when I spotted the familiar girl wiggling her way around Mac and his latest conquest. Her face twisted as she shot him a look of disgust before her eyes searched the yard for the keg. Or maybe they were searching for me. No. Of course, she would be looking for the keg and not me. I was probably the last person she wanted to see, but then again, she was at a party for my team, at my house.
Still, had to be the keg. Christina only drank beer. I remembered her telling me once that hard alcohol made you do stupid things but beer made you lazy. She’d said she preferred being lazy to stupid. That it gave people less things to talk about. The last thing Christina wanted was to be the topic of gossip. I always knew there was more to that story, but she never told me, and I never pushed. I should have pushed.
The soft blue eyes that I knew by heart locked on to my own, and I sat there like an idiot, watching her. I hadn’t seen her face in seven months, and every part of me realized it all at once. My breath caught in my throat, but I shoved it down, acting like I was unaffected by the way her long, tanned legs stepped carefully through our lopsided yard. Her bare stomach peeked out from underneath her tube top, showcasing her hourglass figure. One that my hands were all too familiar with touching.
Christina Travers. The one girl who had been my constant since I started going here. At least, she had been until I finally cut her loose one hot night last August after a disastrous summer ball performance. It was Cole Anders’s self-preservation at its finest. I was sure someone somewhere would have been proud, although I had no idea who.
Seven months. Seven torturous months since I’d laid eyes on her. At least in person. Attempted online stalking definitely didn’t count. After that night last summer, she’d unfriended me on all social media and made her profiles private. I’d asked Christina to disappear from my life, and she’d given me exactly what I’d asked for. And I fucking hated it.
I tried in vain to find pictures of her online whenever I missed her, which was more often than I was willing to admit, but she’d made it impossible. She’d even gone so far as to block all of my friends and teammates, so I couldn’t get to her through them. She’d always been smart. Except when it came to me.
I watched as she made her way toward the keg, which Chance and I still stood next to like we were its bodyguards. Her light-brown hair spilled around her shoulders, and I stopped myself from reaching out and grabbing her like she belonged to me. She didn’t. And I’d told her that more times than I cared to remember.
“Hey, Chance. Hey, Cole.” She gave us both a small smile before reaching for a plastic cup and pulling the black nozzle toward it.
I didn’t think I’d even responded. She seemed so composed, so … unaffected by my presence, and here I was, coming undone from the inside out.
“Here, I’ll get that for you,” Chance said before taking her cup and filling it up.
The only thing that stopped me from raging at him, even though I had no right to, was the fact that I knew he wasn’t flirting with her or trying to get in her pants. Chance was just being nice.
“Thanks.” She looked at me once more and hesitated, those blue eyes saying something I couldn’t quite decipher, but her friends screamed her name from inside the house, and the spell broke.
Her eyes tore away from mine, and I stood there like some kind of love-struck fool as she walked away without another word. I watched her hips move from side to side with each step she took, silently berating myself for letting her go.