Behind the Plate (The Boys of Baseball #2) - J. Sterling Page 0,8
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.
I was hating this already. Sunny was dressed to impress. Well, as much as it took to impress a college guy, that was. The rule was basically this: show as much skin as possible. The end. She was in a tiny crop top that barely covered her girls and painted-on skinny jeans full of rips and tears. I wore my usual ensemble of black leggings with shit-kicking combat boots and an off-the-shoulder black cropped sweater. You could take the girl out of