“Chance is here because he’s the best catcher I’ve ever seen behind the plate. You know it. I know it. Coach knows it. Hell, all the scouts know it too. You’re only here because your last name is played out, and frankly, it’s fucking stupid.”
“Fuck you, McAllister,” Dylan said to our best pitcher, Cayden, before sitting down and pulling the girl back onto his lap.
She squealed in delight, and before I knew it, they were making out, all conversations stopped.
“Thanks.” I gave a nod to Cayden.
“It’s all true,” he said, “but you’re welcome anyway.”
“Chance?” Mac’s voice dragged me back into the present. “You good?”
“Yeah, man. Sorry. Just got lost there for a second.” I went back to unpacking.
“So”—Mac grinned at me, and it was the kind of grin that told me I was going to hate whatever he said next—“end-of-summer party before school starts?”
“Are you asking me?” I cocked my head toward him because it had sounded like a question.
“I’m not asking, dude. It’s happening.” He wiggled his brows, and I realized that even though he was legit the most girl-crazed guy I’d ever met in my life, I’d missed hanging out with him.
“When?” I wasn’t in the mood at all to have a party at the house, but I knew I’d be in the minority.
The guys loved having people over. Correction: the guys loved having girls over. And girls were the last thing I wanted. If it were up to me, we’d never host any parties or have any single females here.
“Later.”
“Tonight?” I blew out an exasperated breath. All I wanted to do was sleep. I was exhausted.
“Yep. And don’t even think about staying in this room all night, or I’ll fill it with pussy. And I don’t mean cats.”
“Get out.” I pointed at my door with a laugh, and he stood up and walked backward, his hands in the air, still whispering under his breath.
After looking around at the things I still had left to organize, I fell backward onto my bed, knowing that Mac would follow through with his threat if I tried to hide in here without at least making an appearance.
Guess I have a party to get ready for.
Pre-Fall Party
Danika
“The guys are throwing a party tonight,” my roommate announced as she bounced into our tiny living room, where I had been sitting and reading a book quietly just moments before.
She was always ridiculously happy. I guessed that was what happened when you had a name like Sunny. You had to live up to it.
“What guys?” I asked because there were thousands of guys on campus, and without being more specific, I had no idea who she meant.
“The baseball team!” she exclaimed, and her smile grew even wider.
Like I’d said, Sunny was the epitome of her name.
If there were an opposite to her light, it would be me. Sunny was all blonde hair and fair-skinned, where I was dark-haired and olive-toned. She had been born and raised in the suburbs of Southern California, and I had been born and raised in the city of Manhattan. We were as different as night and day, but somehow, our friendship worked. What I liked most about Sunny was that she was genuine and honest—two things that I respected more than anything else when it came to girls who were my friends … or when it came to anyone actually.
“Okay. And your point is?” I folded my book, my hand tucked between the pages to hold my place as I waited for her reply. I couldn’t have cared less that the baseball team was throwing anything, much less a party.
Don’t they celebrate themselves enough?
It wasn’t that I didn’t like to go to parties on campus because I absolutely did. I loved the freedom that being away from home gave me, and I intended to enjoy it for as long as I was still living in California—away from the watchful eye of my father. My dad wasn’t a bad guy by any means, but he worried about his only child—me. And after my mom had died the summer before my senior year of high school, his worry had turned into a serious bout of overprotectiveness. One I needed to escape before it suffocated the life out of me completely.
“My point is that it’s the baseball team! Make an exception this one time. For my sake? Please,” Sunny begged, her pretty smile now turned into a full-on pout. “Jared isn’t back from New York yet, and we never go to the baseball parties when he’s here.”
She wasn’t wrong. I usually avoided the athletic parties and only went to fraternity-hosted ones … with my boyfriend, Jared, by my side. For whatever reason, guys in frats seemed easier for me to handle. I wasn’t sure why because fraternity guys were in a class of their own, especially when they were drunk, but they felt like pieces of cake to deal with when I compared them to the athletes at Fullton State.
Maybe it was because the athletes on this campus tended to be arrogant pricks who were above the law. Even worse, they all knew it. I didn’t trust them. So, I pretended like they didn’t exist—unlike every other female on campus. Where most girls chased the players here, I walked the other direction, hoping like hell they didn’t follow.
I’d been dating Jared since high school. We moved here from New York together after Jared suggested we go together on a whim one night during dinner. I wasn’t sure if he’d even thought it through or not, but the way my dad’s face had relaxed, like the idea was the only thing in the world that gave him any semblance of peace about my wanting to move across the country for school, made me unable to say no.
Plus, the idea of my boyfriend and me moving across the country without anyone else was exciting. My only stipulation was that we didn’t live together even though Jared had mentioned it once. I thought we were way too young to really start playing house. Moving to attend the same college was one thing, but living together was another thing entirely. Thankfully, my dad and Jared’s parents had all agreed. Our two families had been friends for as long as I could remember. Even though I would have sworn up and down that I didn’t need anyone to go to California with me, it was comforting, having Jared here. He was a piece of home who always understood me when it felt like no one else did.
I’d been lost in my own thoughts as Sunny continued her pitch, “I want to hang out with the team so bad. Maybe make out with one of the players. Or two. I will go alone because that’s how much I want to go, but I really don’t want to go by myself. Come onnnnn,” she whined.
I removed my hand from inside my book and placed it on the coffee table. I was obviously done reading for the day.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and she jumped up and down like a grand-prize winner on the Wheel of Fortune.
“That means yes.” She did a little dance, her hands waving in the air. “Thank you, Danika. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You won’t be sorry.”
Even as she said the words, I knew they were a lie. I would end up regretting this. And that wasn’t me being pessimistic even though Jared and Sunny both constantly tried to tell me that I was. I was a realist. And realistically, this party was going to suck because the athletes at this school were total assholes, and I was sure the baseball team was no different. Matter of fact, they were probably the worst.